Mrs. Warner, the manager of The Fountainblue Hotel and Apartments on Isla Vista, California, treks the property with her vacuum cleaner. She thinks back to a more pristine Foutainblue, when the gold carpeting in the lobby and the Refreshment Room’s pink shag carpet wasn’t covered and tufted by thousands of “ineradicable tar spots” from a recent oil spill, when the apartment room walls and doors weren’t warped and damaged from the 49s playing indoor football during a training stint at hotel. As she cleans in the lobby, a string quartet rehearses Mozart’s K. 590 in the Refreshment Room, the sound of the vacuum and quartet producing a “harmonic tension.” The first violinists, David, suddenly waves the quartet to stop and pointedly suggests the second violinist play more joyfully and spritely. They continue on and stop again, this time David remarking that the quartet is playing in an agitated manner. David lifts his bow and starts the first of K. 590’s movements with a slightly faster tempo just as two girls enter the room heading for the cold-drink vending machine. As the quartet plays, the loud vending machines drops the sodas in a distant thud the sound of which is followed by the piercing pop of the cans opening and fizzing— the girls stop to listen. 

After the quartet finishes, this time successfully through the first movement, Mrs. Warren, intending to vacuum the carpet, is arrested by the “nice, calm, graceful music,” and she sits and watches the players. The music stops again when the second violinist brusquely remarks that the first violinist’s vibrato disrupts the melody; an argument ensues. One of the two girls interrupts the quarrel and suggests the quartet play at Borsodi’s Coffee Emporium, the coffee shop where she works. The second violinist declines her offer as “freebie charity” the quartet is trying to evolve beyond. They return to their music and as they play, Mrs. Warren notices one of the girls scrapping off a deposit of tar on the curve of her foot onto the pink shag carpet. Quietly outraged by the spectacle, Mrs. Warner quickly leaves the Refreshment Room to her office where she flips a switch, turning on The Foutainblue’s titular fountain—the only beauty that has lasted weathering time—to restore her peace and serenity. 

Later, the players and the girls emerge from the Refreshment Room, heading for Borsodi’s, when they notice the dormant fountain had be switched on. The second violinist calls the fountain tacky, and as the leave, the fountain stops.