“This night job of yours is really undercutting my efforts to royally exploit you,” she said, breezing her way to the bedroom that had the console piano. Over her shoulder she added, “Frankly, you may have to make a decision here. On the one hand, I’m offering you fifty dollars for a tremendous amount of work so that your name may be associated with an unknown college student’s composition to be performed once at an exposition that in a matter of weeks will be dismantled for all time. On the other hand, Jack Donovan is offering you a good salary, travel expenses and accommodations, and the chance to play top-notch swing with a highly respected aggregation of sidemen in luxurious settings. Something may have to go. The only question is how we break the bad news to Jack.”

We entered the bedroom. She had set up a card table and straight-backed chair for herself next to the orange crates and, probably for lack of anything else to do, had sharpened several dozen more pencils.

Her piano score was unfolded across the length of the bed. I sat beside it and began, all business: “Okay, now obviously we have very little time and my orchestration needs to go to a music copyist in a couple of days. I’ll be there for you right through to the concert, but after that, you know I’ll be leaving town, right?”

She picked up an already sharp pencil and started to sharpen it. “Where does the band go next, Ray?”

“Three weeks in Seattle, then back to the Midwest—that’s our strength. We have a whole bunch of one- and two-night stands for several months.”

“If you’re free at Christmas—”

“Bands don’t take a Christmas break, Gail. There’s no musician on the face of the earth who can’t get work around Christmas and New Year’s if he owns his instrument.”

Gail ceased her sharpening and stared at me, looking mildly hurt. “No, Ray, I meant where will you be playing when I have my Christmas break?”

It would be easy enough for her to find out by looking in Variety or Metronome. “Jack always plays the Heathman Hotel in Portland, Oregon.”

She rolled her eyes. “What the hell am I going to do with myself in Portland?”