The novel opens with the story of female war refugees in Cambodia who visited their doctors with a common complaint: They could no longer see.

The unnamed female narrator then begins to reflect on the recent suicide of a loved one. She is struggling to deal with the loss and has cried so much and so often that she has given herself a “throbbing headache for days” (9). She thinks back on her friends’ writing and his habits; the grief is causing her to miss deadlines. The man’s third wife arranges a memorial service, though those who knew him better believed that he would consider such a service “repugnant.” The narrator attends, mingling with the fellow mourners, but leaves early. She reflects on various literary-related suicides.

The narrator worries about why Wife Three wants to talk to her. Thinking about her relationship with the deceased, the narrator says that it was “somewhat unusual” (14) because “you were, to an almost pathological degree, incapable of being alone” (14). There were three wives and many girlfriends. In recent years, the narrator has only been able to keep in touch “mainly through email” (15) but is somewhat afraid to go to the man’s house.