The History of Love begins with Leo Gursky, a retired locksmith with a weak heart, in his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He is thinking about what will happen when he dies, particularly who will be the last person to see him alive. Leo worries about dying “on a day when [he] went unseen” (4), so he draws attention to himself when he goes out by dropping change on the floor or trying on shoes that he has no intention of buying. When Leo sees an advertisement for a nude model in the newspaper, he calls the number immediately, amazed by the opportunity “[t]o have so much looked at. By so many” (4).

Leo’s friend Bruno lives in the apartment upstairs. The two knew each other as boys in Poland but were separated during the war. Years later, they ran into one another on the New York sidewalk, and when Bruno’s wife passed away, he moved into Leo’s building. After a neighbor died alone in her apartment and wasn’t found for several days, Leo and Bruno started dropping by to check up on each other and ensure the other was still alive. Leo describes Bruno as a short, bespectacled man who was an aspiring writer as a child.