Mae recently roamed the streets of Vienna as a punk, living off canned beer and discussing metaphysics and more complex topics with her friend. At the AIDS support house, where she is serving a sentence for bodily harm, she meets Paul and falls in love with him. When his illness takes hold, Mae begins to fight against his disappearance: she collects his hair and toenails like relics and ultimately captures the air in his hospital room in a Tupperware container. She has already lost a loved one before, her older brother, of whom she only has a pair of red Chuck Taylors left.