Love with the Proper Stranger

Italian-American Macy's shop-girl Angie Rossini still lives at home with her widowed mother and her three protective brothers in a small apartment. Angie considers her life to resemble living in a fishbowl: her brothers control everything, from what she does to whom she sees and to whom she should marry. That intended husband is Anthony Columbo, a shy, clumsy man, with whom she doesn't hear the "bells and banjos" she envisions with romantic love. As an act of defiance, Angie has a one-night stand - her first and only sexual encounter - with womanizing jazz trumpeter Rocky Papasano, a man she doesn't even know. Rocky escaped a life much like Angie's. His Italian-American parents still live in the Bowery where he grew up. He doesn't visit his parents often as it reminds him of the repressive lifestyle of unhappy married people as witnessed by his old neighborhood friends. Angie manages to track down Rocky to tell him that she is pregnant with his child. Despite barely remembering Angie, Rocky decides to help Angie with the one and only thing she requests: the name of a doctor to abort the pregnancy. As Angie and Rocky spend the day together leading up to the scheduled abortion, they begin to get to know each other, the good and the bad. This day begins the process of Angie and Rocky actually figuring out what it is they want out of life.