A man and his girlfriend, Clea, are obsessed with sentences. When they come up with sentences they’re proud of, they write them across their walls and distribute them on slips of paper across the city. The sentences are central to their sex lives, too—but both are writing manuscripts that they keep secret from one another. They are particularly enamored of one particular, largely unknown, author whom they refer to as the “King of Sentences”, and they set out to meet him. They send a postcard to his P.O. box in Hastings-on-Hudon announcing their intent to appear in two weeks, and follow through with their word. After a brief interaction with the postmistress, the man and Clea stand waiting for the King of Sentences to appear—though they are soon approached by the Chief of Police, who asks if they were responsible for the postcard the King received two weeks earlier. He waits with them for the King, who appears some length of time later; the man and Clea greet him on their knees with much adulation, though he’s unimpressed. But he agrees to meet them at a local Econo Lodge in fifteen minutes. The man and Clea get a ride with the Chief of Police, who alludes to some sordid past associated with the King of Sentences. In a hotel room, the King offers them money to leave him alone—and the man gives the King a chapter of his novel, which he clearly doesn’t want. The King says he thought the man was going to get undressed when he pulled the novel out of his waistband, and Clea asks him if he would like them to get undressed. He says yes, and the couple races to undress before him. Then the King destroys their clothing, tearing it and shredding it with his teeth, and leaves them in the hotel room.