Dusty Cole is a young prostitute who lives with her boyfriend, Tony, in a small apartment above a street front store somewhere in Queens, New York. When Tony arrives home after grocery shopping, he is dismayed to see Dusty sitting around the small apartment, doing nothing. Tom and Dusty get into a big argument where Tony demands that she either get a job or clean up the place. Dusty manages to calm him down by pleasuring him with sex.When Tony leaves to go to work at his job as a bartender for the afternoon and evening shift, Dusty packs her suitcase, steals some items from his apartment including an old TV set and a tape recorder. She goes down the street to a pawn shop and tries to sell the items for cash. The sleazy owner, Sammy, refuses to give Dusty any money for the worthless items, but instead offers to give her $55 if she has sex with him in the back storage room. After having sex, Dusty tells Sammy that she wants to meet him later for lunch. While he is not looking, she steals an extra set of keys off a hook in the storage room. When she leaves the store and Sammy leaves soon after and locks up, Dusty returns, steals all the cash she saw him kept in a vase in the back room, as well as some silver items, and leaves the store, throwing the spare keys in a wastebasket outside on the street. Dusty then takes a subway train to Manhattan.The next morning, while walking down 42nd Street near Times Square, Dusty runs into an old friend, an aging drag queen hooker named Cherry Lane. After talking over coffee, Dusty shacks up with Cherry at his small apartment in the Lower East Side where they decide to team up to trade tricks like the old days when Dusty used to cruise 42nd street and hustle johns and other victims out of their money. There, a trick named Jimmie visits, and upon seeing Dusty, insists on hiring her instead of Cherry. Although Cherry is concerned that Dusty will steal her clients, she accepts Dusty's offer of half of her earnings. After Cherry leaves the apartment, Dusty insists that Jimmie have sex "normally," but as soon as they begin, he takes out a belt and whips her. Afterward, she inquires about his wife and recalls her own four-month marriage at the age of sixteen. When Jimmie, like all of Dusty's tricks, declares that his wife will not have sex with him, Dusty counsels him to be more honest and more demanding with his wife. He asks her to attend a poker game the next Friday night, in order to have sex with four men present, for a fee of $150. After agreeing, Dusty shies away when Jimmie touches her face, then tells him her reaction is "just a reflex."That night, Dusty and Cherry go to a bar with another homosexual prostitute, Billy. They are joined by the Simmons sisters, Susie and Sally, two loud and boozy streetwalkers with whom Cherry regularly spars. Susie and Sally show off some of their singing ability while talking about currently working at an off-off-Broadway theater to make some extra money on the sides. Finally, one of them slaps Cherry and a brawl briefly breaks out between them. As Mac, the bartender, tries to quell the minor brawl, it is here that Dusty meets Bob, a young yuppie at the bar and they both take an instant liking to each other.Dusty quickly entices Bob to take her to his house on Staten Island, and he asks her to be the first person to stay the night with him there. When he stares into her eyes, she flinches and asks that he not look too deep, but he responds that he is not looking for perfection. After making love, they admit that they are falling for each other, and even after she confesses her profession, Bob responds that everyone hustles in his or her own way. The following morning, Bob leaves for work and gives Dusty a copy of his house keys. Dusty phones Cherry, who at first assumes that Dusty plans to rob Bob, and upon realizing that Dusty is falling in love, insists that they meet for a discussion.By the ferry, Cherry warns her to be more disciplined with her emotions and not be too optimistic. Cherry is propositioned by a trick, but when she performs oral sex on him in a nearby warehouse, the man attacks her after Cherry's wig falls off, after which she and Dusty run off.At home, Cherry admits that behind her happy-go-lucky exterior, she is lonely and afraid, and is envious of Dusty finding love. Feeling that she cannot function in the straight world, Cherry cries at her lack of options. Dusty states that Bob makes her want to change and go "legit," and she plans to take it slow with him.Although Dusty announces that she is canceling her Friday night appointment at the poker game, Cherry, concerned that she is so quickly losing her new roommate and source of income, urges her to go. Dusty reluctantly concedes, and shows up to the game, where Jimmie, along with three card-playing friends, Walt, Joe and Carl, have a separate room available for her use. After the first man, Joe, takes his turn, Jimmie enters and, against Dusty's wishes, begins to beat her again. She races away in horror after taking all of his money, and then some, he plans to give her.Meanwhile, Cherry is at the bar, gossiping with the Simmons sisters about Dusty's waning appeal. Just then, an angry Dusty walks in, slaps Cherry, gives him the $150 cash that she earned and tells Cherry that she is moving out and never to talk to her again for setting her up with the creep Jimmie and his friends.Dusty heads to Bob's house on Staten Island, where they make love and talk throughout the night. In the morning, she walks with him to the ferry he takes to work, but as they step into the street, Bob is run over by a car. As a crowd gathers around, Dusty claims not to know him and runs off, collapsing in tears around the corner.In the final scene, set some time later in Times Square on the street outside the notorious Grant's Deli, Dusty is seen back to the only life she knows, turning tricks on the streets while clearly high on drugs.