AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Have you been there?”
“No,” I answered shortly. “But I’ve been near it.”
She shifted from foot to foot. “I would like to see if I can get pictures of the town covered in snow. I hear they’re supposed to have some interesting weather in a little bit, and I need to get there as soon as possible.”
“I think it’d be better for you to take a commercial flight if you can, Miss Overstreet,” I said. “And even then, I can’t guarantee that you would be able to get there. Oregon is not the only place to get odd weather in the forecast in the next couple of weeks. The entire northwest is gearing up for a snowstorm. You never know how far south or close to the coast it’ll get.”
“I’m willing to pay you double your rate to arrive in Corinth – or wherever the closest airstrip is. I know that will cost me almost the same as a round trip ticket on an airline, but once you add in a rental car and gas to get from the airport to Corinth and back again, I’ll be spending far more to fly commercial than I will be to fly into the small airport in Corinth.”
“You still haven’t told me why Corinth.”
She hesitated briefly. I’d heard of the tourist city before, but I always advised against going. Sure, it was fun to see the miniatures. Once. And they were all available in Vegas, which at least was easier to navigate with a GPS. However, I always believed that it was better to go to Greece and Italy to see the actual sights and see the majesty of the still-standing ruins where these ancients had been instead of seeing mini replicas in the United States.
The same could ostensibly be said about Las Vegas, but since they had current tourist sites from around the world, I was more willing to forgive that and help shuttle people there if they wanted to go and not pay as much for the ticket.
“The paper wants to start a piece for the summer on good places to travel. And they don’t want to see the same old places rehashed for the families. They want something that not everyone has heard of. It doesn’t have to be advertised as family-oriented, because the goal is to highlight places that could pique the family’s interest once they learn about these spots. I’ve wanted to see Corinth’s mini ancient wonders get the kind of publicity they deserve for a while, and I think this is their chance.”
I couldn’t knock her any points for conviction. Most reporters were only willing to travel if they were being paid. From what she had told me so far, I couldn’t understand why she would be willing to pay so much just to travel to some small town on the Oregon coast.
“Do you have a budget?”
“Even if I did, it wouldn’t cover a trip to Corinth from the airport,” Grace shot back.
My brain struggled to comprehend why she had come to me, of all people. If she was looking to do this on the cheap, I believed driving to the destination would have been much better between gas and hotel prices. I could have been wrong, but it might have also been easier to fit it all into the travel budget instead of trying to make it work with a flight.
“So, that’s a negative on a travel budget?”
“I can pay, if that’s what you’re getting at. I’d even be willing to pay double your usual charge just to save the travel time. So, what do you say, Mr. Delaney?”
I paused for a moment. She looked hopeful, but this was not how I usually conducted business. “I’ll have to think it over and look at my schedule. You’ll have to forgive me; I was not expecting to be approached about a possible job here at the concert.” Before I knew it, the next words were out of my mouth: “I had hoped that I would be able to enjoy the night without any distractions.” It came out ruder than I meant, but I just wanted to escape this uncomfortable interaction. I tried to sidestep her to go back to my car, but she also stepped to the side, blocking me.
She frowned. While I normally enjoyed work, I had intentionally made sure I could come to this concert without having to worry about my flight schedule or trying to make plans for another flight. As beautiful as I found her, I felt ambushed. I didn’t understand her insistence on speaking about work after such a beautiful concert. It was frustrating. No, it was more than that. It was unacceptable – especially considering she was asking to go all the way to Corinth in bad weather for a dumb travel column.
“I’m sorry,” Miss Overstreet said, but I heard an edge of sarcasm in her voice. “I didn’t realize you were such a stickler with your hours. Here is my information. Call me after you’ve made your decision. But I must say that I need it sooner than later if you can help it.”
She handed me a small business card. I took it begrudgingly. Other than her seemingly juvenile insistence that this get figured out as soon as possible, I wanted to believe that she was used to people doing whatever she wanted because she had a press pass. It was easy to wave those around at events like the concert and get all the access one could need.
However, for a private flight, the all-access passes were not the press passes. Those were the pilot’s wings. I had to admit that I admired her enthusiasm and her drive to get to her destination, but it would take more than this to convince me to take her to Corinth. If I didn’t get her out to Oregon, I imagined another pilot would be willing to take her there.
There were a few other private pilots around, but they all charged far more than I did. Was it possible she would just fly commercial and rent a car to drive down to the coast if I didn’t take her?
I walked out to my truck and started the engine. I breathed a deep sigh of relief that my conversation with Miss Overstreet was over.
As I started to drive home, I couldn’t get her beautiful, intent gaze out of my head. She had looked into my eyes as she spoke as if she were looking into the eyes of someone she had known for years. Perhaps she felt that way, but I couldn’t entirely be sure. Reporters were one of the few professions I interacted with as little as possible. For one, they all seemed pretty boring. For two, I didn’t like the idea of them taking your words and quoting them in an article, twisting them whichever way they wanted. It seemed too easy for reporters to take advantage of people or manipulate a situation. I wasn’t comfortable around them.
To see Miss Overstreet’s enthusiasm for her job, though, was a welcome change. She spoke with so much passion for the column, even though to me the column sounded too niche – only speaking to an audience that already liked mini replicas of ancient ruins.
Upon arriving home, I changed into my pajamas and thought no more of Miss Overstreet for the night. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I allowed her to consume my thoughts like this. Grace’s dreams were clearly numerous and far-reaching. Even this one article had captured all of her energy. To me, that didn’t seem practical. What about the next article? And the one after that? Wouldn’t it be far more reasonable to pace your energy and plan ahead? In my mind, flights in the air were the perfect mixture of dreaming and practical, solid, reality. I knew all the mechanics to keep everyone safe in the air, but I still felt a sense of peace every time I broke through the clouds. I guess others find planes magical because it’s all a mystery to them, and they want it to stay that way.
The next morning, I woke up and started to run my day-off checklist. Sometimes, I couldn’t help but allow the way I did things as a pilot to guide me in the other areas of my life. Making a checklist of things to do for the day helped tremendously.
The first thing on that list was to check the forecasted weather and my schedule to see if I could even feasibly fit Miss Overstreet into it. It wasn’t because I thought the column would do well. In fact, I felt that the column would do horribly, and they’d have three places they featured before closing the column for good.
The only reason I was even considering taking Miss Overstreet was because I couldn’t get her eyes out of my head. I don’t think I even really admitted that to myself. But I knew for certain that I wanted to get to know her as a person. Even journalists had personalities when they weren’t on the job interviewing people or getting pictures. Since she appeared to be mainly a press photographer, I wondered if that was why she hadn’t had a perfectly monotone voice for speaking to me to make a request. Other reporters I had talked to had almost entirely wiped their voices of emotion in an interview, even when I thought it would have been appropriate to laugh, smile, or show some sort of emotion in their voice.
I had a few days next week when no one had booked me, and I decided to look at the weather for those days. They appeared cloudy, perhaps a little foggy, but nothing too horrible. Knowing that we would be going through Colorado helped. There were plenty of small towns in Colorado with airports that were used as a place to send planes to hunker in odd weather.
I took a deep breath.
