Hazlitt is an older academic who lives in California with his anxious, nagging wife. At her encouragement, he embarks on a flight to New York to seek "life assurance" from a medical specialist.

On the plane, he is seated next to a couple. The man seems strikes him as a fellow academic of sorts; the woman he finds "a little sharp to his taste, but attractive."

He becomes fixated on the women throughout the flight, and grows irate when he notices that she is reading her book backwards. The woman soon abandons the book and opens to an article about crime in her magazine. "There's no place to go!" she exclaims. "Where would you go?" she asks Hazlitt.

After offering a disjointed anecdote in reply, Hazlitt uses the conversational opening to suggest that the woman should read the book in her lap as it was printed. He lies and asserts he knows the author.

The woman grows upset and involves her husband, who defends his wife's right to read the book any way she pleases. But Hazlitt claims that he and the husband exchange "the glances of complicit males." Perhaps picking up on this, the woman grows even more furious, and throws the book at Hazlitt. She then proceeds to ignore him for the rest of the flight. Hazlitt reflects that she reminds him of someone — perhaps his wife, he thinks.

Hazlitt settles into his hotel and decides to take a horse-drawn carriage to Bloomingdale's before it closes. When disembarking, he sees the woman from the plane making a purchase from street peddlers. Hazlitt topples off the carriage and one of the peddlers catches him; the woman quickly strides off before they can exchange any words.

In Bloomingdale's, Hazlitt tries to buy some bracelets for his wife. As he waits for the clerk to process his check, he watches a television screen that depicts a massive crowd in India milling about, oblivious to the "sleeping" bodies strewn on the ground around them. Hazlitt reflects that it was "a glimpse into a strange country where the quick and the dormant were accustomed to mingle." Perhaps, he thinks, "it was not the walkers but the sleepers who would range farthest in their travels."

Hazlitt's attention is suddenly pulled from the television by a more proximate scene of chaos: streams of people are fleeing the department store. A man pulls Hazlitt out, though Hazlitt protests that the clerk still has his driver's license.

A bomb squad enters the building, and the license-less Hazlitt walks back to his hotel. Hazlitt calls his wife from the hotel room but neglects to tell her about the bomb threat, since he fears it will distress her. He also neglects to mention the women from the plane.

The next morning, Hazlitt visits the doctor for his "life assurance" and is relieved to learn that he is of relatively good health. Feeling "free of a nameless burden," Hazlitt returns to Bloomingdale's. He abandons the previous in-progress purchase and inquires about a beautiful, glowing pearl necklace on display.

Despite its outrageous price, he decides to buy it for his wife. In his mind's eye, he sees his wife "gaze at him openmouthed, as she would a stranger." Hazlitt feels exhilarated and energized by his acquisition of the pearls. He buys a croissant, flirting with the pastry clerk, and then goes to the Met. He recalls visiting there with his wife when he was seeking his graduate degree in the city; he notes that the museum "confused and tired her."

At the museum, he sees a woman reading a collection of van Gogh's letters backwards. It is indeed the woman from the plane; Hazlitt is "unsurprised" by her reappearance.

Hazlitt descends into the museum's basement to use the lavatory, where he comes across "six or seven small boys of assorted colors and sizes." One boy approaches Hazlitt and says "Trick-or-treat," holding out his hands. Despite the fact that his wife had given him $100 to carry in case of a mugging, Hazlitt gives up the freshly-purchased pearls without protest.

He then goes to the museum gift shop and buys a pin that "he felt his wife would consider a sensible value." Exiting the museum, he sees the woman from the plane through the window of a bus. She waves goodbye to him.