The man hears a car honking on the street at 6 a.m.—a cabbie hailed by someone close to him—and heads out of his motel after packing his belongings. He recalls how he was recently afflicted by headaches which thwarted the last leg of his family vacation to Idaho. The woman driving the cab remarks that his children have gone rafting with him, to which he enters her car without a word. He thinks about how glad he is to take a car up to Boise rather than flying. The woman starts driving.

As the woman drives, the man gets comfortable. He hears his wife’s lecturing in his head, and he recalls how she decided not to tag along since she didn’t like whitewater rafting. He thinks about how she used to have a difficult condition that eventually eased up years ago. In the car, the woman briefly speaks to the man, though he dozes off and dreams about his wife soon enough.

However, later on, the woman ends up keeping the man awake by talking to him, specifically about her daughter, which prompts her to ask him about what his kids are like. The woman then says that her daughter is up in Boise, that she visits her whenever she has to drive up there as a cabbie. While the taxicab drives along an upcoming ridge, the woman tells the man to look out for sheep. They then exchange photos of their kids for each other to look at. Eventually, the woman confesses that she caught her daughter doing heroin, after which she sent her to rehab in Boise.

After some time driving, the man feels the need to vomit after some curves in the road. The woman immediately finds a place to stop, exits her car, and comes around to let him outside. In front of a beautiful vista, they sit down on a picnic blanket the woman has prepared, and she gives him a cup of water to drink down. All of a sudden, he feels something like love toward her.

Half an hour passes, and the man wakes up from his nap to see that the woman is reading the book about orgasms which his wife had given him at the airport earlier. They awkwardly talk about it for some time before moving on to more serious matters. The woman shares that her husband never once took her daughter out to the playground, whereas the man says that he went on a trip with his kids now to compensate for time not spent with them before.

The man then goes on to say that he’s broken, that he can’t tell his wife and kids how he feels, that any happiness he gets only dissipates. The woman is heartened to be the only person who knows, as he can’t ever muster the courage to tell anyone else. She then shares in return that she’s scared every day of her life due to the absence of her daughter’s father, as well as money problems. They then decide to hit the road again. The man naps once more but is awakened when the woman gets into Boise.

At a hotel in Boise, the man gets out and pays the woman for driving him. He thinks about whether to ask her out to dinner, though he hesitates, fearing that he will be looked at in the wrong light. However, the woman then points out a Middle Eastern diner that they saw on the way here, after which she asks him whether he would like to come. Holding hands, they go there together.