Alone in his apartment, Simon watches over his wife's body. Anna has just committed suicide. Beside himself, he remembers when they first met a year ago. Simon, fortyish, is a pawnbroker in New York's Spanish Harlem. He leads a strict, solitary life, obsessed with order and money. One day, Anna comes into his store to sell a few jewels. She's thirty-years-old, beautiful, enigmatic. She seems to have come from nowhere, and doesn't really know where to go. Simon is intrigued. He's touched by her beauty, her sadness. Anna returns to see him several times. One evening, he invites her to dinner, and abruptly asks her to marry him…