One night, a husband and his wife are washing dishes in their kitchen. The couple talks about interracial relationships. The husband does not believe Black Americans and white Americans should marry. His wife, Ann, is upset by this and asks why he doesn’t support interracial marriage. He claims he doesn’t have anything against Black Americans, but he feels that white Americans can never understand Black people fully, claiming statistically most interracial marriages end in divorce. He admits he feels the same way about American citizens marrying people from other countries.

His wife completely disagrees and believes if two people love each other they will have a genuine and lasting marriage. The husband believes that it’s impossible for her to love someone who comes from a different background. Their argument becomes very tense as they continue to wash the dishes. The husband scolds his wife for not washing the dishes thoroughly enough. The wife reaches into the sink and cuts her thumb. A single drop of blood drips onto the kitchen floor as the husband bandages the wound.

Ann insists that she can still help wash the dishes and brings up the topic of interracial marriage again. She asks her husband, through a hypothetical scenario, if he would marry her if she were a Black American. He says he wouldn’t, which upsets Ann. Hurt by his rejection of her hypothetical proposal, she retreats to the living room, where she reads a magazine. Her husband decides to clean the entire kitchen so that it looks brand new.

After he cleans the kitchen, the husband goes outside to take out the trash. He feels guilty about the argument and thinks about how long they’ve been married. He sees two mutts in the street knocking over the garbage can. Though he typically throws rocks at them, he leaves them alone.

When the husband goes back in the house, it’s dark. His wife is in the bathroom. He tells her that he would marry her if she were a Black woman. From the bathroom, Ann tells her husband to get undressed, get under the covers, and to turn off the light. In the darkness, the husband waits for his wife to come to bed. He’s nervous and feels as if it is their first night together. He listens to her movements and likens them to that of a stranger sneaking through the house in the middle of the night.