Louise's Los Angeles house is rapidly turning into rubble as her architect husband David takes a sledge-hammer to it as effectively as he has to their marriage. Louise escapes her unhappiness through fantasies of a former lover (who appears in various guises culled from movies and romantic fiction) and through her close, but often stormy, friendship with Bibi, a cook who dreams of becoming an animal behaviourist. They prop up each other's success, reminisce over past times, flatter each other, get drunk, experiment with kissing, slaughter each other with home truths and eventually part.