After she drops out of her English PhD program, a New Yorker named Laura works in HR for a company called Verdance. The company sends her on a six-week trip to their branch in a small midwestern town where productivity is low, and promise her a significant bonus. She and her husband, Hugh, who are about to move into a new apartment, agree to spend the bonus on nice furniture, though her taste significantly clashes with his modernist interests. When she gets to the town, her apartment is dismal and awfully-decorated. She visits an antique store where she meets the storeowner, a woman named Lois, who sells her what she feels is the perfect chair — even though she knows Hugh won't like it. Lois has awful taste in fashion and blotchy skin, but Laura likes her. Together, they take the chair to a man named Rusty to have it repaired. The next day, Lois calls and offers her china plates with a rose pattern. Laura had told Lois about the thesis she never wrote, about poems about roses. She knows that Hugh won't like them and that they will be difficult to transport back to New York, but Laura buys the china set as well. Lois insists that she drop off the china at Laura's apartment. She is shocked by the unloveliness of it and convinces Laura to move into a room in her lake house for free, furnished with things from her store. Laura comes to love the lake house and her room, furnished only with what she needs. She wakes up early, sees the sunrise over the lake, and embraces a simple life. She dreams of life as Rusty's apprentice and dreads the end of her stay. When Hugh comes to pick her up, she forgot how attracted she would be to him and to sex. However, he calls her chair a "monstrosity" and makes fun of the decor of the entire place. In an act of self-betrayal, she says that the chair she purchased is her landlady's. She doesn't want Hugh to meet and judge Lois, but Lois arrives and, after she leaves, Hugh talks about her ugliness. Laura is struck by the word "ugly." She thinks it is a word she would never use, and that it is not the opposite of beautiful. Laura does splendidly at her job and gets a large raise. On her last day in town, she feels as if she has woken up and wants to leave immediately. She and Hugh rush out the door, but then she goes back in for one last look. She tells the chair, ‘‘You are very beautiful. You are fine, you are good, you are full of goodness and I am not. You don’t belong with me. You wouldn’t want to belong to me. You should be grateful that you aren’t mine.’’