Structure

Title

The title of the short story is a phrase used in the story by Jessica. When she analyses the painting “The Robbing of the Bride”, she asks “Don’t you hate having two heads?”; she is aware that the creature in the painting has two heads – one of a human and one of an owl:

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Beginning

The story begins in media res, directly in the middle of events. The protagonist is depicted in the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, looking at a strange sculpture. As you can see, the exposition is quite detailed and lengthy:

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Middle

The rising action presents the interaction between the protagonist and the woman. After they exchange a few words about the surrealist paintings, the two separate, but meet again after the man follows the woman into the café. There, they reveal their names – Jessica David and Richard Ford – but the man is not sincere about it. It becomes clear that he is hiding something: "There was a directness about her that threw him off balance: he almost gave his real name. Well, the Richard was real enough." (p. 13, ll. 29-30)

In this part, there is no explicit climax, but several tension points. First, Richard gets tense once he notices the title in Jessica’s newspaper: "As he cast around for something to say, his eye fell on the newspaper that Jessica had left on the empty chair between them. ASSASSINIO SUL CANAL GRANDE the headline read." (p. 14, ll. 28-30)

Another tension point is marked when Richard goes in the bathroom and thinks about this strange encounter. Here, the author introduces a red herring, employing a piece of information which is purposefully misleading:

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Ending

In the falling action, Richard is presented talking to his wife, whom he has just picked up from the airport. Then, we find out why Richard tried to pick up Jessica – because he needed material for his new book:

”Well, I did establish that it would be easy to pick someone up in the Guggenheim Museum.”
“I told you it would be. Art galleries and museums are well-known intellectual pick-up places.” (p. 16, ll. 31-34)

However, a tension point is marked by Richard realising that he might have decided to pursue an affair with Jessica:

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