A young female poet lives in New York City in 1972. After her longtime boyfriend breaks up with her, he takes his things and leaves her with an empty house. A friend connects the woman with a man, Daniel Varsky, who is returning to his home in Chile for a while and wants a place to keep his furniture until he comes back to New York. The woman goes to retrieve the furniture from Daniel Varsky, but they end up talking about poetry and politics all day and into the night. Their time together is only slightly romantic—they kiss once, but just as a means of punctuating their drifting conversation. Eventually, they say goodbye to one another. The furniture arrives at the poet's house in a moving truck a few days later. For a while, she receives postcards from Daniel Varsky, but they eventually stop. Her friend tells her he was taken by the secret police. Now, thirty years later, she still holds his furniture. She feels as though the possibility of returning the furniture kept her in New York all this time, but she knows this is just an excuse.