Swimming in the summer rain, Vincent’s eyes fall upon an ill-dressed girl he recognizes. In a brief moment of reconnaissance, she lights his cigarette, then he hastily draws away, and she follows him down the street. In a winter before this moment, the girl walks into Garland Gallery, Vincent’s place of work, intent on selling her painting of a headless figure and a headless hawk. Moved by the raw emotion in the work, Vincent buys it for himself, asking for her name and address to write a check. She leaves only her initials and ‘YWCA’, and unable to find her, Vincent waits for her to reappear, catching glimpses of her hair all over the city in months of fretful waiting. Finally, in the slow budding of springtime, he finds her in a crowd mesmerized by jazz dancers. She comes home with him. The girl refuses to give her name, saying she would if not for her fear of ‘Mr. Destronelli’ – who, on her account, looks like just about anybody, who had killed his wife Miss Hall, and who, she contends, probably killed Vincent’s last love who had passed away. She stays in the apartment and goes to the cinema day in and day out, buys only a military jacket when Vincent offers money for new clothes, and remains resolutely anchored in the present with no intent to reveal her past and no plans for the future. Vincent dreams of a decrepit version of himself at a horrible dance, paired with all his past lovers until a headless hawk swoops down with talons poised to seize. He wakes to find the girl outside – she has seen Mr. Destronelli, she says, leave her be. She must be crazy, he admits, just like those he’d loved before – those who reflect him. When the super’s wife questions the girl’s disturbing behavior, he assures her the stay is coming to an end. As soon as she leaves the apartment for the day, he packs her suitcase, cries, and recounts her sinister musings on Mr. Destronelli – he took the form, she said, of every man she'd been with, and he was going to murder her one day. It isn’t me, Vincent had to scream, but she just smiled – and much later, in the sweltering summer night with sheets of rain, she comes to stand beside him once more.