Charlie is a piano player in a rundown jazz bar, he used to be Edouard Saroyan a gifted classical pianist, but after suffering his wife's suicide gave up his rising fame. He's miserable and lonely and so self-absorbed that he can't see that Lena, the bars waitress, is in love with him. When Chico, Charlie's crooked brother, uses the bar as a refuge from two gangsters he's double-crossed, Charlie becomes embroiled in the mayhem.

Will the resulting events awaken Charlie's emotions again?