A long time ago, Joe was in Europe with his then-boyfriend Louis, as he had just won a small pot in the Massachusetts lottery. While on the trip, Louis often sent stamps back to his friend who collected them. Joe gave Louis money from his pot to buy a place for his own salon, which made them business partners. Because of this, Joe gets a call which notifies him of a car crash and asks him to come see Louis in the hospital. Joe goes, and finds out that Louis had put Joe's name down as an emergency contact. Louis is in a coma, and Joe ends up at a motel in Rhode Island for the night. As he drives back the next morning, he sees Louis' friend the stamp collector. Joe thinks back to the walks he, Louis, and Louis' cranky mother would take, where they would always run into Louis' neighbor with his disabled son—the stamp collector. This memory is mostly overtaken by Louis' mother's rudeness and hidden alcoholism. Back at the hospital, one of Louis' friends, April, is there, and she tries to get Joe to help with the funeral planning for Louis' mother. Joe refuses, and breaks down as he says that he thinks Louis' mother had been driving drunk, and that the accident had been her fault. Joe goes back to Boston to get some clothes and decides to bring his cat back with him. On his way back, he stops by Louis' house, and drinks Louis' mother's scotch. Drunk, he crawls under Louis' car in the driveway, into the dirt, and bangs his head around until he sees stars. In the morning, he is awoken by his cat with a dead mouse, and he goes into the house but is intercepted by Louis' neighbor and the stamp collector. They convince Joe to go to Louis' mother's funeral, and Joe goes to clean up. As he thinks about their Europe trip, Joe recalls their last night in Venice, which happened after their return flight was canceled. In their lovely hotel room, Louis had talked dreamily about his fantasy of opening his own salon, and Joe had been happy and content to stay in that moment forever.