Ricardo has gone to live in Paris, fulfilling the one ambition of his life. There, he meets Paúl Escobar, a Peruvian communist involved in organizing a revolution to liberate Peru after the fashion of the Cuban Revolution. Helping Paúl transport and house the new recruits who are on their way to Cuba via Paris for guerrilla training, Ricardo meets Comrade Arlette, who is in fact the “Chilean” girl. A period of ecstatic happiness follows for Ricardo when Comrade Arlette moves into his room, becomes his lover, and is willing to forsake the revolutionary cause and live with him in Paris. Unfortunately, it is impossible to obtain her release from her commitment to go to Cuba. Thus, the bad girl, promising to return in three months, again disappears from Ricardo’s life. Before long, Paúl informs Ricardo that Comrade Arlette has become the mistress of Comandante Chacón. Crushed and depressed, Ricardo loses himself in his work as an interpreter at UNESCO and in a fanatical study of Russian.

Then, one day in the lobby of UNESCO, he encounters the bad girl, who is now the elegant Mme Arnoux and addresses him as “good boy.” Their relationship resumes, and Ricardo again enjoys a period of ecstatic happiness. Then, upon returning from an interpreting assignment in Vienna, he is unable to contact the bad girl. Soon he learns from her husband that she has disappeared, along with all the funds of his Swiss bank account. Ricardo, emotionally overwrought and depressed, once again buries himself in work.

Toward the end of the 1960’s, Ricardo’s work takes him to England, where he meets an old school friend, Juan Barreto. Barreto has a very lucrative career painting the racehorses of affluent owners. Looking at photos of Barreto and his patrons, Ricardo sees a woman who resembles the bad girl. Barreto tells him she is Mrs. David Richardson. Ricardo manages to meet her, and the relationship resumes. However, the bad girl disappears again when her husband has discovered that she is still married to M. Robert Arnoux.

Their next serendipitous meeting takes place in Tokyo. Ricardo’s colleague Salomón Toledano sends him a letter with a postscript in which he mentions “the bad girl,” who is now Kuriko, the mistress of a sinister Japanese businessman, Fukuda. Ricardo goes to Japan, sees her, and is victimized as she uses him to satisfy her voyeur lover.

Ricardo vows never to see her again; however, fate once again intervenes. Ricardo’s Parisian neighbors Simon and Elena Gravoski insist that he talk to her. Their adopted Vietnamese son Yilal, who is mute because of emotional trauma, may have spoken to her on the phone, and they must know if he did. Also, when Ricardo tells Elena the story of his love affair with the bad girl, she is adamant that he not let it end in his silence. Thus, Ricardo not only accepts the bad girl’s subsequent phone call but also agrees to meet her. Physically and mentally ill as a result of the abuse she suffered from Fukuda, the bad girl is nothing more than a skeleton, aged ten years and poorly dressed. Eventually, Ricardo takes her to his apartment and with the help of Elena arranges for her hospitalization in a private sanatorium where she regains her health.

A period of happiness ensues for Ricardo. The bad girl stays with him and they marry. Then, one day, he finds her waiting for him with her bags packed. She explains that she can no longer stand the dull, suffocating life she has with him. Admonishing him not to kill himself, she leaves. He later learns that she has seduced the wealthy husband of her employer and has estranged him from his family.

Convinced she will not return because this time she has explained her reason for leaving, Ricardo eventually becomes involved with Marcella, an Italian theatrical set designer twenty years his junior, and moves to Madrid with her. Abandoned by Marcella, who has fallen in love with a young choreographer, Ricardo is working in the Café Barberi when the bad girl appears. This is her final return to him. She is dying of cancer. Thus, this time she is also going away for the final time; Ricardo will be left with only his memories.

Vargas Llosa presents a series of dichotomies in the novel, most notably the characters of the good boy and the bad girl. Ricardo has little ambition; he simply wants to live in Paris. He pursues a career in translating and interpreting that enables him to become merely a voice linking other human beings. His work becomes a means of escaping his unhappiness each time the bad girl leaves him. Ricardo is totally capable of self-effacement, in which he finds solace. By contrast, from an early age, the bad girl has sought recognition, money, social prestige, and excitement in life. The author reveals these facts about the bad girl when Ricardo, visiting in Peru, by chance meets an old man named Arquímedes, who is mysteriously endowed with a knowledge of where to build breakwaters and who turns out to be the bad girl’s father. As the child Otilita, she was never satisfied and was always wanting more. Although she is drawn to the good boy, her fascination with wealth and power prevent her from ever being satisfied with the safe, secure, bourgeois life that the good boy offers her. This explains her pattern of abandoning and returning. The unfolding of the bad girl’s life is also a motif of contrast. The more she ascends in terms of social status, wealth, and power, the more she descends in terms of human dignity, personal freedom, and both physical and mental health.

The political subplot of the novel further develops the structure of contrasts. Paúl Escobar and his communist comrades idealistically believe that they can successfully bring about a revolution in Peru and thus improve the life of their fellow countrymen. This belief is an illusion, as they are brutally killed and the revolution fails. Ricardo’s uncle, Dr. Ataúlfo Lamiel, though not a revolutionary, has had hopes that political change would improve his country, but he lives to realize that this is only an illusion, that in reality Peru’s economic and political situation has worsened.

Vargas Llosa’s depiction of the characters Juan Barreto and Salomón Toledano adds an ironic twist to the theme of opposites. Barreto lives a double life. In New Market in the presence of his wealthy clients for whom he paints horses, he is a model of propriety. He makes every effort to protect his source of income. In contrast, when he is at his pied-à-terre in London, he leads a dissolute life of polyamorous bisexual activity that results in his death from AIDS. Toledano has always admonished Ricardo for falling in love and insisted that romantic love only brings unhappiness. He even introduces Ricardo to his world of sex with no emotional attachments and sex for hire. Then, while in Tokyo on an assignment, Toledano falls madly in love with Muriko, a Japanese lawyer. The relationship becomes suffocating for her, and she tells him she no longer loves him. Devastated, Toledano commits suicide.

Throughout the novel, Ricardo’s relationships, along with the other important characters in his life, mirror his love affair with the bad girl. Each one of them leaves him. Paúl Escobar, his first friend in Paris, returns to Peru and dies for the cause. Juan Barreto, his former school friend and fellow Peruvian, dies. Salomón Toledano commits suicide. Uncle Ataúlfo, who became his primary family tie upon the death of his Aunt Alberta, who reared him, dies. The Gravoskis, who had become his closest friends, leave for Princeton University, where Simon has received a research grant, and only rarely return to Paris for short periods of time. Marcella, with whom he has moved to Spain, leaves him.

The bad girl’s death at the end of the novel is a traditional ending for such a story, but Vargas Llosa innovatively recasts the ending, as the bad girl’s final words are that she has provided Ricardo with the novel he wanted to write. He can relive their love affair by writing the novel, and this is just what he has done.