A Black singer is preparing to leave Paris with his Swedish wife Harriet and young son Paul. On their last night in the city, Harriet goes out with her husband's sister Louisa, and the singer goes out with Vidal, a producer on the latest movie he's starred in. Louisa, the singer knows, is counseling Harriet on how to protect her husband and son from the American racism she is unfamiliar with but will soon encounter.

Walking out, the singer reminisces about the moment he realized he was in love - walking on a Parisian bridge quarreling with Harriet when he realized there was no specter of the white man's world, the hostile world he was accustomed to, dividing them. The moment came shortly before the singer's visit home after his mother's death, which shook him profoundly. He'd forgotten just how thoroughly Americans bought into the fallacy of racial hierarchy.

Vidal and the singer talk about their quarrel over how the singer played the leading character, Chico. Vidal finally coaxed an authentic performance out of the singer by forcing him to think about times he had been denigrated, the nightmares he had as a black man, like Chico. These nightmares for the singer are the possible fates of his son, Paul: he does not want the world to treat Paul the same way it did him and his father.

The two go to dinner and then to a discotheque, where they meet a group of young Black American students who are fans and eager to get to know them. They all head out to an outdoor cafe, where the singer spies an old friend of his, a North African, and invites him along to come dancing with the rest of them. In the dance hall, one of the students pulled the singer aside and said he saw the North African friend stealing money from one of the other students' purses. They try not to make a fuss over it, but the whole group ends up arguing outside the venue; the friend says he would never steal, and he is just being accused because he is from Africa. Privately, the singer knows he must steal to live, but he says nothing. They make amends, and each heads their separate way.