Pam, a child-woman aged 14 has just killed her first lover, a man much older than herself. This brief news item is followed by a flashback to a time five years earlier. Pam is a little girl who has just turned nine. It is her job is to dress her mother Lily and protect her from intrusions as she accompanies her in peregrinations from one cabaret stage to another, where Lily performs a very special number in which she manages to transform the banal rituals of eroticism into a true work of art.