A woman is hit on by her boss’s longtime friend. He warns her that his friend “has a reputation,” and at first, she doesn’t entertain his advances, but when her boyfriend goes to visit his family, the woman accepts the man’s invitation to a dinner party in the New York suburbs. They ride on the train together. The man puts his hand on her knee. She asks him what he wants, and he says, “I want to taste you… I want to gulp you down.” She responds awkwardly: “I taste best when stored at room temperature and kept in a cool, dry place.” When they get to the train station, there’s not enough room in the car for the woman, so she has to sit on the man’s lap. They arrive at the house, and the woman is asked by the host to make name cards for everyone. The host begins to flirt with the man the woman came with. On her way to the bathroom, the woman runs into the host’s husband. She asks him about the names of the people she doesn’t know. They all go on a walk, and the host lets the woman borrow some clothes. On the way back, the man she came with kisses her aggressively then says she tastes like apricots. He says that apricots are “a very rare flavor in a woman.”

At dinner, the people ask how she and the man know each other. They say that they just met the other day, that the man’s longtime friend is her boss. The host’s husband used to be their supervisor, and they discuss some drama that happened back then. The night gets later, and they play charades, get drunk. The host suggests they all spend the night, and her husband tells the woman she can have her own room, that she doesn’t have to sleep with the man she came with. She declines his offer. The woman and the man she came with go into the room, turn off the lights, begin to have sex, but he can’t keep an erection. The thought of seducing him exhausts the woman. She suggests they go downstairs for a drink, and he tells her to go on without him, that he’s exhausted, will go to bed. Downstairs, the host’s husband tells the woman that he and and the host are getting a divorce. He asks her, “What are you doing here, Holly? Don’t you have a nice boyfriend or something?” She says she has a boyfriend “[b]ut he’s not very nice.” This response makes the husband cold. The woman goes upstairs, goes to bed. She sleeps in. She and the man she came with get a taxi back to the station; they catch the train back into the city. The man dismisses her, and she decides “to walk until [she] fe[els] like stopping.” She walks and walks, then wonders about the name cards she made for the party, if the host—who frames the name cards from every party—will frame the woman’s name next to the man she came with. She wonders if anyone she knows “would ever go to her house and see me there.”