Alice has just moved to Montreal to go to McGill. She's never had a boyfriend and doesn't know how to do laundry. She joins the Film Society and hangs out in the library, drifting away from her high school friend to an artist in her dorm. And then she meets Nellcott, a 23-year-old who works at Basement Records and wears black eyeliner. He asks her out on a date, and soon she is stepping into diners and sleeping under a cloud of cigarette smoke. She doesn't know how it happened, but Nellcott has become her darling.