A book store, a fair, a music hall, park

Everywhere I went, I saw her

At a circus run down on the outskirts of town, we sat down and started talking

The hours stop

The days unwind

At a quarter to

The best of times

In hindsight, I wish

The sweet painful bliss of seduction had drawn out longer

′Cause we fell in fast, fell hard and the world spun past

Like a waltz that swept along us

The hours stop

The days unwind

At five to the best of times

From money she came, weekends in those days

Our soirees were the wildest in town

The inspired, the mad, the thinkers, the poets all laughed, raised a glass and whirled past

The hours stop

The days unwind

It's precisely now the best of times

But times they darken

The purges had started

On the day they came, Dorothy was taken

The doors all were locked

The parties all stopped

I learned to drink scotch in a dark room, forsaken

Years passed but then

I saw her again, sewing clothes in a room without fans

She didn′t know me

She couldn't, you see

In her eyes, something missed

There's a trick with a pick, the doctor gives it a nick

It makes you docile real quick

The hours stop

The days unwind

Moments pass

Memories sigh

At half past the best of times