In New York, a young woman makes “the mistake of rooming with a woman named Mukta, an Indian-Irish beauty who was in New York without a visa.” She doesn’t know her well when they decide to live together, but she likes “when she said ‘fuck,’ which sounded like ‘fook,’ as in, ‘I’m going to be fookin’ sick.’” Her new roommate wants to be an actress, a dream that “involved a good deal of rage and disappointment.” The young woman says that she, unlike Mukta, does not have any burning ambitions. She works at a boutique shop where she uses her beauty to convince people to buy clothes. If she, a beautiful woman, compliments them in something from the store, the customers usually end up buying it. She feels “sometimes, like [she’s] spent the last few years learning nothing and now [she’s] got, predictably, nothing to show for it.” She makes money at the boutique and decides to get a hair straightening treatment. She addresses her mother, asks her if she remembers how “growing up, summer would come and [the young woman, as a child, would] weep all day, lamenting [her] curly hair” because “[i]t sprang from [her] head like a thousand wires; like snakes or poodle fur.”

The young woman’s roommate auditions for a part that seems perfect for her: “Indian woman for the part of the best friend on NBC sitcom. Ages 21-32. Must be able to do an Irish accent.” The young woman wishes she had a similar direction, a similar passion. Her roommate doesn’t get the part because, as she texts the woman, “They gave it to the mtrfkn Lebanese girl from Binghamton.”

At the boutique, the boyfriend of the young woman’s boss flirts with her. She ignores him at first, but eventually has sex with him. Her boss finds them and fires her.

The young woman's roommate tries desperately to get a role in something but when she doesn’t succeed, she goes back to Ireland, at her parents’ request. The young woman has run out of money now that she’s fired, but she’s not sure her mother would take her in. As she tries to decide what to do, she thinks of the day her roommate left, how before she got in the cab, she hugged the young woman and told her, “I’ll always think of you when I think of America.”