Dr. Tokai, the writer says, was a complex person living an artificial life which one day experienced a seismic change. Tokai was a successful and well-respected plastic surgeon and a cultured bachelor who kept a number of girlfriends at any one time. His able secretary kept track of his professional and personal schedule, so he was able to coordinate time spent between multiple relationships. He enjoyed the companionship of witty and opinionated women and respected their boundaries as many were married or in other relationships.

The writer met Tokai at their gym, where they became squash partners and socialized over beers after their games. One day Tokai came to him, distressed, and confessed that he'd fallen in love like never before. He couldn't eat or take interest in anything else, he wanted to spend all his time with this woman and was enraged when she was away or busy with her husband. He couldn't even describe what it was about her that he loved, he just loved her wholly and intensely.

Tokai tells the writer he's been asking himself the question, "Who am I?" Aside from his assets and skills, if he were stripped of everything he had, who would he be? The thought came to him after reading about an accomplished Jewish doctor like himself who was reduced to nothing in Auschwitz. Between this and his torn-up love, he felt not himself at all. He asks the writer for advice, but the writer can only say that love like this is quite common.

After their conversation Tokai stopped showing up at the gym. Months later his secretary called the writer and told him, much to his shock, that Tokai had passed away. The two met and the secretary described how Tokai had become emaciated and aimless, how he'd stopped showing up to work, and how the secretary finally found him shrunken, barely responsive and bedridden in a filthy apartment. It turned out that the woman he loved had left both her husband and him for another man, and he couldn't bear the pain of her betrayal. Tokai died not long after, but left the secretary instructions to gift the writer a squash racket.