Danny had never believed Carly.

Despite everything she had said to him, he was sure that he'd Done Something Wrong. And so, if she would only tell him what it was, or if he could figure it out for himself, he might be able to Make Everything Right again. He didn't understand why she wouldn't tell him what the Something was, unless for some perverse reason she didn't want it to be Made Right.

This was, he knew, why she refused to have any contact with him. And, when he came upon her in the park, he knew he had only one lever to keep her from brushing him off. He hated to use it, but he did, figuring that if he could make everything right again it would be the best for both of them.

So, he offered to buy her dinner. And she accepted.

Danny watched Carly as they walked along the narrow street between the dingy tenements. She had her hands in the pockets of her pea coat, her head tilted as she trudged so her hair fell forward and hid her face.

Her coat was the same one she'd been wearing when he'd met her a month before. The black jeans and worn work boots were the same, too. The hair was a little longer and the clothes were a little dirtier, that was all. He'd managed to prevail upon her to borrow a pair of gloves and a hat when the weather had started to get colder, but she'd left them behind when she'd moved out. She hadn't taken anything that she hadn't brought with her, which was very little indeed.

He'd never mentioned it, but he'd always thought her haircut was wrong for her. Her hair was thick and dark, cut in bangs which nearly hid her rather fierce eyebrows, and fell straight to her shoulders on either side of her face. It looked like a heavy plush theater curtain which had opened only halfway and then got stuck. She apparently knew he felt this way, because her compromise was to tie it back when they had sex.

Of course, the real mystery was why she bothered to hide her face at all, since it never revealed anything anyway.

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