A wealthy screenwriter is checked into a New York psych ward. He’s been in many psych wards in the past due to his bipolar disorder. Because he recently made a comment about suicide, he’s followed around by a volunteer named Bob, who wants to write screenplays. Annoyed at being followed and alone, the screenwriter starts talking to a beautiful Yugoslavian ballerina. He compliments her dancing, but she claims that she’s terrible and her body is too big. She then proceeds to take his cigarette and burns her own thigh, which lands her on observation too.

Nevertheless, the screenwriter and the ballerina become closer. They cannot have sex or even touch while at the ward, but eventually, the ballerina gets on some anti-depressants and is released from the hospital. When the screenwriter is no longer being so strangely observed, he gets the opportunity to leave the ward for a few hours at a time, during which he visits the ballerina. They finally have sex, during which she asks him to touch each of her scars as she tells the story behind each of them. He goes back at the end of their date, and he reflects on how, one day, she’ll point to her new scar and tell another man about her brief romance with a screenwriter.