As prostitutes are arrested in New York, a flashback begins to the life of one of them, a Dutch secretary Xaviera Hollander who moved to New York in hopes of marrying her fiancé Carl, whom she met whilst visiting her sister in South Africa.
Observing how Carl does not help her take her bags off the airplane and his increasingly long morning routine and primping, Xaviera grows concerned he is not the man she thought he was. Her suspicions are confirmed when his mother insults her over dinner. Xaviera offers him a choice of her or his mother and he picks his mother.