Charlie Driggs is a conventional yuppie investment banker in New York City who finds his ordinary routine upended after a chance encounter with a wildly dressed woman calling herself Lulu. After he slips out of a greasy spoon without paying, Lulu confronts him, offers a ride downtown, and instead heads toward New Jersey, casually tossing his beeper from the speeding car. She drinks openly as she drives and stops to stock up on more liquor, while Charlie phones his office and remains unaware that Lulu is already pulling off a liquor-store robbery behind his back. He claims the cash he carries is for his Christmas club, but Lulu persuades him to pay for a room at a roadside motel. Inside, she handcuffs him to the bed, turns the situation intimate and awkward, and even uses the phone to force a tense conversation with his boss while they’re in the act.
As the night unfolds, Charlie feigns a call to his wife, only to realize that his marriage ended nine months earlier. After a shared meal at an Italian restaurant, he discovers he cannot settle the check with his dwindling cash, and Lulu leaves him to face an angry chef who demands payment. They spend the night in a motel again, until dawn reveals a police officer and a tow truck near the car Lulu drove down an embankment the night before. Lulu abandons the wreck and buys a replacement from a seedy used-car dealer, leaving Charlie to wonder where she finds the money. Slowly, he begins to enjoy Lulu’s free‑wheeling lifestyle and, against his prior beliefs, finds himself falling in love.
Audrey confesses her true name to him and introduces Charlie as her husband to her mother, Peaches, at a Pennsylvania home, shedding the brunette wig to reveal a demure blonde persona. She tours him to a high school reunion, where a former classmate recognizes him as a coworker, and the mood shifts when Audrey’s violent ex-convict husband, Ray Sinclair, arrives with a clear plan to reclaim her. Ray drags Charlie into the drama by forcing him to accompany Audrey and himself on a robbery spree; a pistol-whipping of a clerk and a broken nose for Charlie escalate the danger. They drive to a cheap motel, where Ray pushes Charlie to admit that his wife left him—knowledge he had learned earlier at the reunion—and Audrey realizes she has been deceived. She stays behind with Ray, and Charlie quietly follows as the trio departs.
Despite Ray’s warnings to stay away, Charlie secretly tails them to a Virginia restaurant where he confronts Ray in the presence of several officers and threatens to reveal parole violations unless Audrey can leave with him. He compels Ray to surrender his wallet and keys, leaving a check with Ray to delay him while they escape, a gambit interrupted only by a shop girl who had crossed paths with Ray earlier. Charlie then brings Audrey back to his home in Stony Brook, Long Island, where their peaceful suburban life is shattered when Ray hurls a patio chair through the sliding-glass door. Ray beats Charlie cruelly, handcuffs him to pipes under the bathroom sink, and assaults Audrey. Charlie frees himself and, in a desperate struggle, strangles Ray with the handcuffs. Ray dies when he inadvertently impales himself on the knife Charlie is holding, and Audrey is taken in for questioning as the police arrive.
In the aftermath, Charlie quits his job and searches for Audrey, only to learn she has moved on. At the diner where he first met Audrey, a waitress accuses him of leaving without paying, but Audrey reappears with the cash he left on the table tucked in her hand. With a polished, stylish new look and a confident smile, she invites Charlie into her woodie station wagon and back into a life she’s chosen to offer—one that challenges his old sense of order and invites him to follow where she leads.
