Overview
The setting is a walk-up apartment on Manhattan's West Side where, as
the curtain rises, Frankie (a waitress) and Johnny (a short-order cook
who works in the same restaurant) are discovered in bed. It is their
first encounter, after having met several weeks ago on the job, and
Frankie is hopeful that Johnny will now put on his clothes and depart,
so she can return to her usual routine of watching TV and eating ice
cream. But Johnny, a compulsive talker (and romantic), has other ideas.
He is convinced that he loves Frankie, a notion that she, at first,
considers to be ridiculous. She has had more disappointments than
delights in life, and he is the veteran of one broken marriage already.
And neither of them is in the bloom of youth. Yet out of their sometimes
touching, sometimes hilarious interplay the promise of a relationship
beyond a "one-night stand" does begin to emerge and, as the lights dim,
the two are back in bed again, but this time side-by-side, holding hands
before the glowing television screen.