Heywood is a poet who works several jobs to make a living. He was a florist for a while and he has been working as a video editor ever since he moved to New York. Heywood lives a lonely life with two homeless men as his only friends, until an expected encounter rocks his world. One morning he meets a woman suffering from "Moon Butterfly Syndrome”, a condition that makes her invisible to everyone except carriers of the syndrome, such as Heywood. The two start seeing each other, often to go waltzing in secret on a Manhattan rooftop.
But at the same time, Heywood starts wondering whether he'll be able to ignore the prejudice cast upon him by people who could only see a man talking to himself in the streets, while in fact he was with the invisible woman.
Will Heywood have the courage to be himself? This dilemma represents Heywood's challenge and the very core of this New York fairy tale, a film that combines two narrative threads while honoring the history of cinema thanks to the presence of James Ivory.