This is the same commission we've been bargaining with since April 2005. Why are they going to jump up and agree with us now?

We know they have to impose a contract on us. We just hope it includes what we've been asking for all along.

The city just imposes a contract on you. But it gets worse. It really has created a 'them' versus 'us' department.

We're not expecting the city to accept it. These are not binding suggestions. The city doesn't have to accept.

It's almost like you're just going to keep butting heads because you only go back to the same group you couldn't agree with in the beginning.

In Rome, Matt had told her, ‘I knew that if I kept up my playing, we would have a baby.’ That was what music represented to him now: a bargain he had sought with fate. In a less anaemic age, he would have sacrificed virgins or immaculate lambs.