Mickey, Keith Carradine, a man released from a mental hospital where his stories are dismissed as lies, returns to Los Angeles in search of someone named Eve. He finds himself drawn to a bar titled Eve, now owned by a former call girl also named Eve, who bought the place after the previous owner killed herself “over some guy.” The new Eve is wary of commitment, convinced she has ruined too many marriages to ever settle down with one man. That very night, she rebuffs Mickey’s advance and gives in to a different kind of intimacy with a bartender, all while carefully avoiding Zack, the wealthy married lover who keeps surfacing in her life.
Dr. Nancy Love, Geneviève Bujold, a French radio talk show host famed for dispensing relationship advice, appears as a contrasting voice of reason and romance. She answers Eve’s ad for a roommate and soon moves into Eve’s house, keeping her own identity hidden while quietly guiding Eve through the airwaves. On the bar’s periphery, Zack’s wife Pearl, Rae Dawn Chong, begins to haunt the place, hoping to trap him in the act of infidelity.
Mickey returns the next night because a bus fare home to Las Vegas is beyond his reach. Pearl proposes a shortcut to money by slipping him into a high-stakes card game, and the gamble pays off, inflaming Zack’s temper as he loses big and confronts Mickey. Zack warns him off, then heads to Eve’s side, only to be sent away as Eve declares the affair over. The tension between pursuit and retreat intensifies as Mickey, exhausted and hopeful, crashes at Pearl’s apartment and starts to photograph her as she sleeps. When Zack bursts in, he attacks Mickey, pulls a gun, retrieves the evening’s winnings, and slaps Pearl, wrongly assuming a sexual tryst has occurred.
That night, Mickey calls Eve’s house, and Nancy answers, inviting him to crash there. Inside, Nancy lets him in, he bathes and eats, and his suitcase of memorabilia—proof of the tales he has told—draws her into curiosity. The two share a night together, and he at last asks Nancy to marry him and accompany him to Las Vegas. Nancy, however, urges him to leave only as she heads off to work. Eve, meanwhile, tunes into Nancy’s show to listen, torn between her growing attraction to Mickey and the dread of repeating past mistakes. Nancy’s post-coital exhilaration pushes her to urge Eve to surrender to her feelings.
When Mickey shows up at Eve’s bar seeking entry into her life, Eve seems ready to open the door, but Zack appears and again assaults Mickey. Eve slips away, retreating to her own home, where Nancy confronts her with the truth behind Mickey’s stories and travels. A provocative proposal emerges: could they “share” Mickey’s affections? Devastated, Eve tells Nancy that she can have him, then hurriedly runs out.
Mickey pursues Eve to reclaim his suitcase, only to be ambushed again by Zack. In a brutal scramble, Mickey prevails, recovering the money and the suitcase, and he hurries toward a ride to the bus station. A rooftop encounter atop Eve’s bar changes everything: Eve stands with a gun and threatens to shoot herself unless Mickey does the same. He agrees to pretend to pull the trigger, but in truth he has begun carrying a loaded gun after the previous confrontation with Zack. The moment becomes a fragile vow rather than a final act of violence.
With emotions laid bare, Mickey and Eve decide to leave their old lives behind and board a bus toward Las Vegas as a couple. A fellow passenger asks if they are headed toward gambling, and Eve answers with a quiet certainty that they are, in fact, about to be married.
In the end, the film tracks a delicate journey through memory, deception, longing, and fear, where two people navigate a labyrinth of intimate entanglements with a shared desire for stability and a future they can call their own. The story unfolds at the edge of truth, where stories may be as much a shield as a bridge, and where love presses against the boundaries of trust and risk.
