'I should've been born with a silver spoon poised over life's bowl of cherries,' is the signature lament of Olney Garkle, a sybarite manqué who tends to bankroll every adventure with a sum barely adequate for an unwashed Sunday morning stroll to the 7-Eleven. Living in the O of Outsider since childhood, Olney meets and falls head-over-heels with Maggie Bebette, an outsider herself and, to Olney's mind, a bumpkin version of Louise Brooks' Lulu. Her perceived vulnerability excites his ever-whinnying satyr within, and when she suggests they pool their resources for a trip to Paris, he quickly makes a list of her assets. Through Olney's French friends, they sublet an apartment in the 15th arrondissement, and thus begins a love story between two misfits whose character deficits are revealed against the backdrop of the cream of capitals, the city where l'amour is meant to be anything but ludicrous.