Nina is a manicurist at Leon and Jules, a beauty salon on the top floor of a swanky New York hotel. At work, Nina imagines herself as her clients’ confidante. When she gets off, she dons her best clothes to descend to the lobby. There, she often sees Mr. Peter Koch, the hotel’s assistant manager. He’s a womanizer who pursues hotel staff, but he is also married with children. When Nina exits the gilded doors, reality hits. She spends her evenings as a laundress in a cramped apartment. One day, Nina services a new customer at Leon and Jules. The blonde woman asks about Adele, a former salon employee. Nina says that Adele left after a dispute with management. After a bit of back-and-forth, the client reveals that Adele was forced to leave because she was having an affair with Mr. Koch. His ailing wife, who has now passed away, discovered them. Nina confirms the story. When she and Adele were roommates, they used to go on double dates with their boyfriends. The friendship fell apart when Mr. Koch broke up with Adele. Nina tells the blonde that she’d warned Adele about dating her married boss. The blonde woman agrees that it makes sense to blame Adele for her own demise, but she can’t help but fault Koch. She confesses that she dated Koch for six years when they were both cashiers at the hotel. Their relationship ended similarly: Koch remained married and moved up the professional ladder, while she lost her job, her lover, and her marriage prospects. She urges Nina to learn from her and Adele’s mistakes and marry her boyfriend. Nina exclaims that she broke up with her boyfriend a while ago and marriage is just a way for a woman to throw herself away. After the woman’s manicure is finished, she goes to the lobby to leave. On her way out, she sees Koch flirting with another young, female employee.