In present times, a 32-year-old woman named Tara works as a waitress to afford her community college tuition. She is taking one course for the summer, a memoir writing class. During one of her shifts, she meets Gretchen, a wealthy 49-year-old woman, who theatrically brandishes her dining check and pays her bill without a glance. After observing Tara interact with customers, Gretchen invites her over, and they have sex. The two soon begin an affair, with Gretchen's elementary school-aged sons fawning for Tara.   While Tara takes to doting on Gretchen's children, she secretly criticizes Gretchen's narcissistic lifestyle exercised "by those who found themselves with plenty of money and time but no way to imbue either with meaning." Gretchen's personality also reminds Tara of her neighbors, who advised her to keep her cat Toots inside. Such people, Tara thinks, love to assert their unsolicited opinions. Still, Tara drops her college class to spend more time with Gretchen, presumably getting paid for her work around Gretchen's house. Tara suggests bringing Toots to help with Gretchen's mice problem, but Gretchen does not allow it, so Tara has to keep paying her rent and visiting him daily.   Eventually, Tara runs into her writing professor at a grocery store, where they casually discuss the assignment prompt she missed, to describe her first sexual experience. Tara vividly remembers it -- kissing her best friend Sheila, a mentally-ill adopted girl, when they were thirteen.    Several months pass from summer to winter, and Gretchen invites her lesbian club to the house, a group of six "coiffed and made-up" women. Gretchen explains to Tara that they meet monthly to chat and drink. After Tara witnesses the pretentiousness of these women while they converse about successful ways they have bargained for expensive items as she served them drinks and snacks, she decides to leave Gretchen the following morning. In response to this, Gretchen gives Tara a check for $500,000, telling Tara that if she deposits it, she will know Tara is ready to come back.   Later, at the bank's parking lot, Tara rips apart the check and throws it out the car window. When she returns home, she lets Toots outside and imagines the satisfaction of seeing him hunt mice.