Plot summary

The movie opens with footage of Stephen talking about his experience about what happened with the companion he met. At intervals more sessions of the footage are shown during the movie.Stephen (Steve) is a withdrawn 40-year something single man, shy and in desperate need of a companion. At the suggestion of his open-minded colleague Nick, who poses him direct questions about his personal life, Stephen goes out to find a prostitute. He picks a young and attractive one and offers her $20 for a hand job. The girl does it coldly and he doesn't seem to enjoy it and at one point she asks him what's wrong with him since he doesn't get hard. He handles her another $30 for a blow job but it proves unsuccessful too. He takes her back to the point where he picked her.Steve then opens with Nick regarding his experience. Nick is amused he gave it a try and he suggests he should try the girlfriend experience. At first Stephen is again reluctant but then he goes out for the hunt. Near a diner he spots a hooker whom he instantly likes and asks her to be his companion. When asked her name she says 'Candy'. They dine and talk about their personal lives and pays her fee accordingly. Before he leaves her he asks to meet again.On their second appointment Candy takes him to a horror house which she knew the owner. Stephen looks perplexed and even frightened; yet he states to Candy 'it's OK'.On their next appointment Stephen asks for the girlfriend experience. Candy lays out the rules to which Stephen finds no objections. He takes her out near an airfield laying on the ground watching stars and planes. Meanwhile discussions about personal lives continue getting deeper.On another appointment Stephen takes her home. He pays a fee for sex however even when Candy asks explicitly to make sex he refuses and says he just wants to stay next to her in bed. Candy is amused, even goes far as asking if he is gay.Subsequent sequences shows they are getting along well while doing various social activities.The pick-up place is generally the diner he saw her the first time.Meanwhile Steve keeps talking to Nick about what he's doing and about his feelings and Nick warns him prostitution is like a business transaction - you should not get attracted to.Steve feels strongly attracted to her and thinks about taking some vacation days to take her for a holiday. Candy is amused with this but says no-one can refuse a free holiday. He asks Blaze, his superior for some days off and Blaze makes it difficult for him. Stephen protests saying he rarely took days off, is always punctual and has always been loyal. Blaze tells him to sign a paper and will talk to the top management and should be OK. However Blaze after tells Steve he regrets management has refused his off days request. A furious Steve insults him in front of all work team. Soon Blaze is back with a security officer and Steve is fired from work.He meets Candy at home and tells her he cannot take her on holiday and cannot even keep dating due to having been made redundant. Candy confesses that she is in love with him, so much that has not seen anyone else except him since they met, and that she has taken a job at the diner they always met by. She reveals her true name to the now emotional Stephen, 'Christa Sullivan' and tells him also her address. Not only, she gives him a part of the money he paid her so far promising to give him the rest gradually. She had fallen in love with him too.Candy (now Christa) asks him for sex to which Steve now is fully prepared. She tells her to wait a minute to go to the bathroom before. While waiting for her Steve falls asleep. Waking up and seeing Christa is not near him he checks the bathroom and find Christa has died from an overdose. She was a junky. A devastated Stephen lays her next to him on the bed.Suddenly Stephen and Christa are talking, however the talking is cut by a separate scene showing Christa has really died and Steve was just imagining.The movie keeps cutting between Steve's imagination and the real situation, with Steve gradually even making love to the corpse.One day a neighbour rings the door bell and asks Steve about the awful smell coming from his home; Steve tells that while doing basement works he accidentally hit a sewer pipe and is going to be fixed soon. Meanwhile the movie keeps switching between Steve's discussions in his imaginations and the gruesome situation in his house showing the gradual decomposition of Christa.One day Christa tells Steve he soon won't be able to hug her etc. anymore, implying she will rot in pieces and suggests him that to be really together he must also die. Steve asks how he should die, whether jumping from a building or something else as long as it's not cutting his veins from which he is terrified. Christa suggests he uses the pistol she always had in her bag for security and die by shouting in his mouth while they are having sex and when they are climaxing together. He likes the idea, and a sequence showing intense missionary sex starts. Meanwhile police are heard at the door; as revealed later a neighbour has spied through the window following the smell. Just before they are climaxing police break in and Steve doesn't make it in time to kill himself.Steve is now confined to some mental asylum/hospital from where the footage we see at intervals was recorded. It is now revealed 'Nick' was also an imaginary colleague.Movie ends with Steve reflecting in silence that maybe cutting the veins would not have been a bad idea.