A young woman meets William Bell at a park one afternoon, and the two begin to talk often on the phone. Soon, William asks to come over to the woman's apartment near Cayuga Lake in New York. When he comes over, they lay next to each other in bed and fall asleep. The woman wakes in the morning to find William watching her; he looks sad. He tells her that she could never love him, and leaves her apartment. She falls back asleep, and when she wakes, William is sitting in the chair in her room, eating takeout and watching TV. She muses that she should probably be scared of him, as he came back into her apartment while she slept, but she is not. They have sex and the woman feels incredibly happy. When the woman stands up on the bed, William compares her to Galatea because her rigid stance is very statue-like. The two of them leave the woman's apartment to go for a walk. William takes her to an encampment near a creek and tells her that she must trust him. There are many people under tarps and around fires, and William and the woman approach a group who call out to William. He tells them he has brought the woman whom he is going to marry, and the young woman is very taken aback. An older man appears from a tarp who looks very much like William. He tells William to leave. William and the young woman marry in a civil ceremony and William moves into the woman's apartment with her. The space starts to get messy, and it is often unbearably cold. Soon, the young woman begins to notice that her possessions have disappeared. She suspects that William has brought them to the people whom they met at the encampment. She confronts William about these missing possessions, and he vanishes for weeks. One day, while William is gone, the young woman runs into an acquaintance at the Laundromat and invites him back to her apartment. When they get there, the boy asks if she's sure about inviting him in; he could be the Collegetown Creeper, for all she knew, a man who showed up in women's unlocked apartments while they slept. The young woman tells him that she knows he is not. She also knows that after they sleep together, the boy will look at her tenderly, and then leave, just like all the other men. The young woman goes home for Easter, and when she returns to her apartment all of its furnishings are gone. She knows William has taken them. She thinks back to the silent promise of their future, before they had wed.