The narrator searches for a 17-year-old belly dancer he’s in love with at the local bars but can’t find her anywhere. At one bar, he confronts someone over the 25 cents he’s owed. The night before, the narrator slept in the same bed as the belly-dancer and a man claiming to be her brother. The man was actually in love with her and slept next to them. He gave money to the girl and her roommates, who left the apartment and crashed into a telephone pole.

The narrator, still looking for the dancer, rides the bus for a while, until the driver asks him to get off. After happy hour at a local bar, the narrator keeps asking around about the dancer but is told she left town. The narrator goes to a bar called Pig Alley. He recognizes a nurse he knows, who has a black eye, and asks her about her boyfriend, who also owes him money. The nurse offers to sell him a pill made of ground psychedelic mushrooms. The narrator says it’s the largest pill he's ever seen and swallows it.