Frances is an upholder of the public order in the daytime: she is a skip-tracer and credit-collection specialist. She is married to a mentally unstable man, and doesn't find enough in his companionship to meet her needs. Each night she determines to abandon every trace of prudishness in herself in her quest for an endless succession of one-night stands. However, she needs to fortify herself with large quantities of alcohol in order to accomplish this goal. In one scene, she pretends to be a prostitute in order to be able to stay overnight someplace. Her new life is marred by some tragedies, but she bravely persists. Despite the fact that this is a movie about the quest for sexual encounters, very few of these encounters are shown, and those are very discreetly handled.