"I just want a bit of the good life, Artie," she’d say, her eyes fixed on the glossy magazines. "Is that too much to ask?"
Arthur was a jazz man in a rock-and-roll world. He played the upright bass at The Blue Note, a basement club where the floor was always sticky and the applause was polite but thin. Across the street, the cavernous clubs were packed with kids screaming for four lads with mop-tops.
Arthur’s girlfriend, Clara, worked at the record shop. She was saving every penny for a silk dress she’d seen in a boutique window—the kind of dress that belonged on a woman who didn't spend her days dusting vinyl.