In the first of four comical tales of social dissonance, a traveling salesman, Mateo Strano, walks out on his wife Maria. Twenty years later, he returns and lures her new husband to his apartment across the street where he has been hiding with strange, supernatural spirits. In the second tale, Georges Vickers, a professor of "negative anthropology" at the Sorbonne, drops everything to become a homeless beggar. Vickers meets Tania, a kinky prostitute whose only fault, in his eyes, is her appreciation of writer Carlos Castaneda. Vickers soon learns that Tania has also been leading a double life--she is the president of a huge corporation. In the third tale, a penniless young couple inherit a magnificent mansion and an endowment on the condition that they keep the butler. Gradually, they realize he is both their servant and benefactor. The final tale ties together the other three, but introduces Luc Allamand, a successful businessman whose imaginary family suddenly arrives in Paris to visit him.