Hil is a middle-aged woman who lives in contemporary Houston, Texas. She attends meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), where she lies about being sober and spends most of her time telling stories about her neighbor, Bergeron Love. Bergeron came from a rich family, most of whose members had died. She used to live with her son, Allistair, before he moved away. Now she lives with her boyfriend, Boyd. Recently, Bergeron has been up to all sorts of trouble. Hil tells the AA crowd how, at one point, Bergeron was walking naked up and down the street intentionally to get arrested, and at another point, she had a vicious duel with another neighbor. The groups react to the story in different ways: one really eats it up, another quieter. After the end of a meeting, Hil goes to the bar with a friend she met through AA, Joe, who also lies about his sobriety. He asks her why she didn’t finish the story with what came after. Five days following her naked stroll down the street, Bergeron died of a heart attack. That prompts Hil to think how she would fit that part into her “chapter two” of the story. She figures next time she’ll start with Bergeron’s good, absentee son, Allistair, whom she hopes will come back to deal with his deceased mother’s estate one day.