Lillian lives with her Aunt Bedelia until she dies. As a widowed, working woman, Lillian feels that she never had the opportunity to be stately or steady in the way her aunt seemed to be. Even so, she tries to maintain her dignity in small ways. She has an aversion to aggressive confrontation, so she lets people walk over her sometimes because she refuses to set aside convention. Vladimir - her aunt's close companion -encourages her to be more aggressive, but his own aggression causes her to recoil. He had a great respect for her aunt and would never curse in her presence, even though he does frequently when he's with Lillian. Because of his history of mental instability, Lillian fears that she may have to convince him to check into an institution.

Meanwhile, Lillian's upstairs neighbor - a girl named Jody - is continually loud, even though she attempts to take action by speaking to the girl and reaching out to the landlord. There are also stories going around about a murderer in the area. One rainy night Jody asks her to go make sure the stove in the apartment is turned off. Lillian does so and gets a peek into the life of the young woman. Jody's boyfriend - a man named Jamie - comes home and, finding Lillian in the apartment, engages her in an odd, stilted conversation. Jody and Jamie are full of contradictory elements that perplex her. After this occurrence, Lillian feels less and less like herself even as she becomes more concerned about the murderer the newspapers are talking about. She is disturbed by the changes in herself, especially as sex occupies more of her thoughts as she observes the relationship between Jamie and Jody. One night Vladimir visits and berates her for a number of things, including wearing makeup, then tries to set her up with a man as he insists she needs a protector. Lillian resists and it becomes more obvious that her mind is on sex. In a frenzied move Vladimir seizes Lillian violently, then proceeds to leave after he lets her go. His car dies outside in the rain, so he comes back and knocks, but Lillian does not let him in. She sees him start walking outside. A few minutes later she hears knocking again. Giving in to her compassion, she opens the door. It is Jamie, who was left out in the rain by Jody. Lillian has only just started to apologize when he launches himself at her and kills her.