It is June in Paris, and a new resident, Catherine, is moving in to the apartment building at 27 Rue Montagnard where Monsieur Jean Perdu lives. The owner of the building, Madame Bernard, and the concierge, Madame Rosalette, convince Perdu to give Catherine a table because she has very few belongings after enduring a nasty divorce.

To get the table, Perdu must enter a room in his apartment that he has not entered for 21 years. He has blocked the door to the room with a large bookcase full of books. He tries to avoid thinking of the woman who shared this room with him many years ago, a woman named Manon with whom he had an intense, five-year romance. Perdu doesn’t think of Manon’s name, only calling her “---” in his mind. He fights down his sadness and scrubs the old table clean. Perdu takes the table across the hall to his new neighbor and overhears Catherine sobbing from behind her apartment door.

Perdu decides to give Catherine some privacy, so he leaves the table in the hall and goes back to fetch the accompanying chair from his apartment. On his way, he thinks fondly about all the other residents in the building.