When her best friend, Patrik, develops multiple sclerosis, Fialka sets out to earn the money to buy him a wheelchair (the socialist state has a ten-year waiting period) by throwing herself into prostitution with the international truck drivers who pass through Czechoslovakia with hard currency and Western treats for the women they pick up along the highway. In her quest, Fialka discovers another, far less likable, self. What she once did from pure exuberance, from a desire to experience everything possible, she now does with a calculated purpose, and she is changed.