I finished the last bar of music, took a straight edge, and drew a double bar down the right-hand side of the page with what I imagine would be the same feeling of satisfaction that an author gets typing “The End.” In the bottom right-hand corner I wrote, “Composed by Gail Prentice,” and in smaller letters below that, “Orchestrated by Ray Sherwood, Oakland, California, 1940.”

As people often do when finished with an arduous task, I started to look for approval in a seemingly humble way, even while pointing out how much I deserved it.

“So would you say I did an okay job?” I asked, knowing I’d done an amazing job.

“Mm, yes,” said Gail, not looking up from her work.

“See, here . . .” I pointed to a section she was working on. “I’ve tried to underline some of your leitmotifs with identical instrumentation each time they occur,” I said.

“My leitmotifs?” She looked up from the score with a smile. “Isn’t that word reserved for Wagner?”

I shook my head. “No, lots of composers have recurring musical phrases that run through a piece. Here’s one of yours, this little phrase. I’d call that a leitmotif, wouldn’t you?”

“I didn’t think of it as anything that highfalutin,” she said modestly.

“And here. You don’t use this A very often, but when you do, you always seem to go down a fifth to the D below it.”

She sang the two notes. “Ding-dong. Dominant to the tonic, very reassuring. My uncle Joe used to sing it to get me to sleep.”

I unpeeled the joiner between the last page of her original piano score and its protective back cover. “Well, here you go—the last page of what you wrote, to proof against my last page.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I know you’re finished, but I shouldn’t be doing this when I’m beginning to see double.” As Gail noticed what I was doing, she said, “Oh, you don’t have to undo that sheet. It’s just there as a cover, to protect the last penciled page from smudging. And for the dedication.”

The back cover read, Dedicated to a World of International Understanding. I suppressed a smile and Gail winced. “Yeah, I know, I was hoping you wouldn’t see my apple-polishing for the judges. But I guess it worked.”

I handed her the last piano score page, along with my final orchestrated page. “No harm done. The copyist will only be working with my orchestration, so you can keep your original piano score with you here. What’s this?”