She missed the music of the seventies. To the mainstream public, it was the decade of disco, but she’d been into fusion and progressive rock, movements on the edge of the mainstream that took chances, expanded boundaries, celebrated artistic ambition and musical ability. Everyone now had been ground down into mediocrity, afraid to shoot too high, afraid of being ridiculed as pretentious, and the result was a music scene that was terminally banal.

Art.

That’s what she respected.

Which was why she was so happy with Matt.

They’d been going together for a year, living together for the past four months, and while the situation at work had been up and down, she’d never been happier at home.

Matt, she thought, was a true artist. He created his work not for money, not for fame, not for recognition by his peers.

He did it because he had to.

He didn’t look or dress the part either, and that’s what had sold her on his integrity. There were two looks for artists in San Francisco: designer duds and an up-to-the-minute coif, or thrift-store clothes and uncombed hair. Matt looked more like a sales clerk or a civil servant—average—and the fact that he didn’t feel obligated to play into the media’s conception of an artiste made her think he was the real thing.

In actuality, he did work as a sales clerk. At Montgomery Ward’s. Cameras and Luggage. He used the money he earned at his nine-to-five to fund his art: films he shot in and around Golden Gate Park with “found” actors—people he picked off the street to read his scripts. When he completed a film, he copied it onto videotape, passed the tapes out to friends and coworkers, and told them to copy the film and pass it on as well. Most of the people who watched his work, she knew, were not even aware that he was the filmmaker. He always acted as though this were just some low-budget movie he’d discovered and wanted to share with them.

She found that charming.

Matt’s Mustang was in the driveway when she arrived home, and her spirits lifted as she hurried across the small yard and up the porch steps. The front door was unlocked—as usual—and she opened the door and went inside. She was about to pull her Ricky Ricardo routine and yell “Honey, I’m home!” but instead she decided to surprise him, and she moved quietly through the living room.

There was the sound of someone peeing in the bathroom, and she walked over to the open door—

—where a nude blond woman was sitting on the toilet, legs spread.

Matt, her artist, was kneeling before the toilet, his head in the woman’s lap.