Mary, a sometimes employed Midwest transplant living in New York is forced to share an apartment with Jack, a starving artist-night watchman. Both having problems paying their rent, landlord comes up with idea to share one apartment on a shift basis.—mkeasey

Eli West, the proprietor of the Venus de Milo Arms, knows the goings-on of all his tenants whether they like it or not. Gary Martin and Mary Wilson are two of his tenants who are having problems paying rent. Gary has just quit his good paying job with Crumwell Sausages so as not to feel like a kept man to his girlfriend Edith Crumwell, the owner's daughter. Gary has instead just started working the much lower paying job as a dispatcher on the graveyard shift at a transport company, the down time during his shift which at least allows him to indulge in his hobby of drawing and painting. As she has no one in the world and nowhere else to go, Eli won't evict unemployed Mary despite she being already six months behind in rent. Just as Mary gets a job as a salesgirl working solely on commission, Eli thinks he has a solution to their rent paying problem while helping himself. Eli needs an extra room to rent to the Ghonoff Brothers, an Eastern European acrobat act, he giving them Mary's room, while he strongly suggests Mary share Gary's much larger basement apartment, the two who would never even see each other as she works during the day and he works at night, they each getting the apartment for twelve hours minus a fifteen minute "shift" transition period per each twenty-four hour cycle. While Gary and Mary have no option but to agree, they already hate each other really knowing nothing not even having seen the other, they each making it their mission to make living in their shared apartment the other's worst nightmare. Their situation becomes more complex when they meet each other away from the apartment, and not knowing the other is actually his/her roommate, start to fall for each other. The situation becomes even more complicated when others enter the picture, including some of the other tenants who know they hate each other as roommates but seem to be more than chummy when together away from the apartment, Edith who gets wind that there may be another woman in Gary's life, and Mary's boss Ogilvie O. Oglethorpe who is romantically interested in Mary himself.—Huggo