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Making conversation was arduous. When Carly and Danny had first met each other, it hadn’t been unusual for them to spend four or five hours talking without a break. The night they’d met, in a local bar called The Quarter, they’d started talking about movies and then, two hours later, when the band had started to play, they’d stopped talking and listened. Then, as soon as the encore was over, Danny had leaned forward eagerly and finished the point he’d been making.
Then, as the band started its second set and the raid started, they ran for the rear exit together, suddenly holding hands.
She stayed with him for several days before anything physical happened between them. Danny was later to think that sex was the beginning of the end. As they sat now, attempting to find anything to talk about, Danny decided that sex was the whole problem between men and women. This idea could easily have warped his whole future, if he’d had one. Had she decided to sleep with him out of a genuine emotion? Or was it that she’d figured there was a limit to how long he’d let her stay in his apartment otherwise? In fact, could consent be given freely in a situation where one person depends on the other for something as basic as food or shelter?
Topics discussed during dinner included:
- The weather
- How good a deal the Burger Special was
- Whether the defeat of the term limits bill meant that Uncle Mike was now mayor for life
- Was the burger in the Burger Special a bit smaller than it had been a month before?
- The relative merits of two different Chinese restaurants in the area
- How quickly Danny’s cat had reclaimed Carly’s side of Danny’s bed for his own (which was perhaps a coded way of telling her that he didn’t have a new girlfriend, though he was sure every word that came out of his mouth conveyed this information just fine)
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