Winter has set in a small town on the California coast and a fishing vessel has been lost amongst the gray waves. Grace runs the bowling alley and ghosts through his own life. He lives in the layer of fat between the underbelly and society. He completes tasks given to him by the people who run the town and is grounded only by his aging grandmother and her weekly bingo trips.

Grace is charged with issuing payments to the fishermen's widows. He pulls on his funeral suit and borrows his grandmother's New Yorker. When Grace is unable to find one woman, he uncovers something that threatens the oligarchy's reign and his way of life.