Emily Moore is a 40-year-old bartender in a Massachusetts town. Emily feels she has a plain and therefore unattractive face. She is hung up on this. One evening at work, a quadriplegic man, drew, and his personal attendant, Alvin, come into the bar. This is the first time she has ever seen a man in a wheelchair come into the bar. Emily, her co-workers, Rita and Kay, and her manager, Jeff, slowly become friends with the pair throughout the night and after hours. Rita is getting over her boyfriend, who left her. Kay seems to be in love with Rita. Jeff, who is divorced, has asked Emily out before, and while Emily is attracted to him and wanted to go out with him, she effectively turned him down with her body language when she said yes. She is terrified of vulnerability and thinks love impossible.

At the bar, Jeff talks to Emily about how he should renovate the bar bathroom to make it accessible. Emily learns he had a friend who was quadriplegic, due to a landmine in Vietnam. Jeff says he was often smiling but never happy. He would take the friend fishing, helping him through every bit of the process, until he died of pneumonia.

Emily had quit her old job as a teacher to work full time at the bar because of the "spiritual pain" of trying to teach poetry to disinterested high schoolers. This pain was the same reason she kept Jeff at a distance, believing all men's love for her would soon become exhausted. She reflects on her ability and the vulnerability and intimacy in disability and reliance on others.

Emily longingly remembers watching the blind jazz musician Roland Kirk perform at a bar 20 years ago, how he embraced members in the crowd without knowing what they looked like.

Emily asks Alvin how he came to be working for Drew, and Alvin says he "wanted to do grand things." Drew tells a story of a time he went skydiving and the instructor warned him he had a 90% chance of getting hurt as a quadriplegic and Alvin cautioned against it but he was set on it. On the landing, he broke both his legs, but couldn't feel and was laughing the whole time as the bones loudly snapped. Later, he had to convince a psychiatrist he hadn't wanted to die--which nobody would've asked an able-bodied person who chose to skydive, he pointed out. When asked, he says he first became paralyzed diving into a wave. Emily, horrified, says she loves diving into waves. Drew advises her not to stop, as she could just as easily injure herself falling in the shower.

Emily recites some poetry lines, lighting up Jeff's eyes. Every night at home, she reads fiction and poetry. Everyone else dances, while Emily asks Drew more about becoming paralyzed. Jeff asks Emily to dance, while Kay dances with Drew. Jeff notes Drew smiling. Emily says Jeff told her his friend was always smiling but never happy, and Jeff explains that being happy and having fun, despite the energy and willpower it takes to have fun against certain odds, are different things.

Drew tells Emily about his wife, who left him for his best friend. Emily is surprised that someone married him after his accident. Kay and Rita dance together. Emily holds hands with Jeff.

Kay invites everyone to come dance at her house but Drew, Emily, and Jeff say they need to sleep. Jeff walks Emily to her car. Jeff has made plans to take Drew and Alvin fishing on Monday, and Emily says she would like to come. She asks to have lunch at Jeff's, after they both wake up.