It is SEPTEMBER. 20xx, Baltimore, USA.:David West lives in B.. He studies history. He lives in a small apartment which he shares with Elsa. Elsa is a nurse, and the two of them are just friends.David is lonely, but he has got Elsa and her friends, her Brother Raymond, and his girlfriend, Beth. Beth has a pal called Odile.In the convenient store works Ethan, a black teen boy, and David wants to meet more with him. On the way to Ethan´s store David comes to talk to a man with a dog which has got epilepsia.This is Reuben Longman, an he is a former sea-captain. He lives alone, since his wife, Martha, suddenly died last spring, in a park, of unknown causes. Some say she was killed. He is unhappy because he is lonely. He is helping a neighbour, Mrs Campbell with her dog. He does not talk about Martha, who was a free spirit, and who slept with many other men in Baltimore, sometimes against gifts of all kind. In a villa in Connecticut an old doctor, Eric, who once was one of Martha´s men, decides to find out what happened to Martha, because he has heard that Longman is not interested, neither is the police in Baltimore, who has much to do anyway. A former friend of Martha´s, Inga North, is summoned to the doctors place and they decides to find out who killed Martha. A young girl who works in the neighbourhood, and who studies forensivs, by the name of Armamente, a transsexual, joins the party. The three of them takes a bus to Baltimore, to go there and firstly to meet with Longman, and find out more about under which circumstances Martha died. But the doctor becomes ill from the bad seats on the Greyhound bus.
He ends up laying in bed at their hotel. Inga has got letters from Martha with her. In the letters Martha says she is bored and tired of Longman. She also says she began a writer´s circle in Baltimore, with young aspiring authors. Some of them are black, and Martha is very fond of black men, because of libido. She has lived in Africa, in various countries there.
After David met with Longman in the street he meets with the clerk at the convenience store and they become friends.
They talk and they decide to go fishing in the outer harbor.
They do. Then they decide to visit upon Longman.....