In Phoenix, Arizona, Turtle discovers his neighbor, Mrs. Walker, dead in her house. Although he’s horrified at first that the kind widow who used to lend his mother sugar has died, he takes over her home. He looks through her pictures at night and imagines what her life must have been like. During the day, he defends the house from neighborhood gangs, who progressively get more violent. He uses the house as a place to party and host girls, although he’s always too shy to do anything with them. One day, a girl named Tessa arrives on a Greyhound from Oakland, and Turtle invites her to be in the house with him and his brother and friend. They’re enjoying their time until a gang comes with guns and tries to take over the house. After that traumatic episode, the house slowly becomes a makeshift hotel, housing people who are homeless and prostitutes looking to do their work. Turtle gets older and he turns to other ventures, vengeful after the tumultuous experience he had with the house. He channels his anger at what he’s lost into violence against the prostitutes and beggars he comes across.