On a Wednesday evening, Esther hosts a small salon for their neighbor Murray Eustis to screen his new film. Attendees include Bud, Tim, Julia Felder, and Francisco, a Mexican baker who works at a local French bakery despite the shop’s reputation as quintessentially French.

Murray, drunk and existentially troubled, speaks with Bud about the relentless bad news cycle and questions life’s meaning, prompting Bud to reflect, “He was drunk, bonkers, and made complete sense to me” (163). Murray laments that men are emotionally inarticulate and admits to weeping at Subaru commercials. After congratulating Bud on being dead to the system, he leaves to use the bathroom.

The group watches Murray’s documentary, Profanity City, which explores his lifelong fascination with profanity across New York’s diverse linguistic landscape. He discusses curse words in French, Portuguese, and Tagalog, praising Staten Island’s creativity in vulgarity.

Later, Francisco plays Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” on violin, accompanied by Julia Felder on piano. After a false start, Julia calmly guides Francisco back into the piece. Tim turns pages as flour dust falls from Francisco’s sleeve. Bud reflects on music as a universal language that reaches across three centuries, making the past alive in the present moment among friends.

Clara gives Bud and Tim the location of a wake in Tottenville, Staten Island. During the drive across the Verrazzano Bridge through snow squalls, Tim asks about Bud’s fear of bridges, revealing his own childhood “gephyrophobia” and telling him about driver assistance programs on other notoriously frightening bridges.

At the funeral home, a long line of mourners waits outside. Inside, Bud discovers two caskets—one large, one small. A pamphlet identifies the deceased as Molly Donnelly and her six-year-old son, Eddie, killed in a tractor-trailer accident on the Jersey Turnpike. Women in line explain that Molly was a hairdresser, Eddie’s father had left her, and mother and son were inseparable. Clara appears briefly, touching Bud’s arm and cheek before leaving.

Bud imagines Molly’s final afternoon with Eddie—the mundane rituals of pickup from school, the crossing guard wave, friends’ greetings, the drive home planning dinner and bath time. He thinks about how lives are measured in small moments, the daily routines families trust will continue: “See you tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. We have time. Of course we have time. Please dear God” (170).

On the return drive, traffic stops them on the Verrazzano Bridge. Bud, emotional, questions what they are doing. Tim responds that they honor the Donnellys by remembering and by living.

After Jen’s departure, Howard and Tuan urge Bud to see a therapist, concerned about his deteriorating hygiene and listless demeanor. Bud chooses Judith, a therapist in her seventies with distinctive silver hair, based solely on her address near Central Park and her photograph.

During sessions, Judith asks Bud to identify what he would like to change, showing little tolerance for his attempts at deflection: “Sarcasm is a defense, Bud. One we usually outgrow in our teens” (173). He eventually describes an unrelenting critical voice that replays conversations and reinforces his perceived failures. She assigned him homework: Write a list of his regrets and wishes. Bud then reads his list aloud in therapy. He wishes that Jen had not left, that their baby had not died, and that he had become a real reporter—a London correspondent. He wishes that he had rebounded faster, met someone new, and escaped the loop of regrets. Most of all, he wishes he could call his mother.

Using a road-trip metaphor, Bud explains feeling like he passed an unmarked signpost into life’s second half, where youth and possibility now sit in the rearview mirror. He notes that when he tries to ask why nobody warned him, an internal voice responds that it tried—every day, through every wasted moment he failed to make matter.

Judith observes that important women have left Bud and that he blames himself, creating a hardened story he now believes as truth. She notes that Bud will turn 45 next year, the same age his mother was when she died. Bud admits that this has crossed his mind.

After a sleepless night filled with anxieties and memories, Bud joins Tim for a funeral in Mott Haven, the Bronx. They drive through the diverse neighborhood and arrive at Saint Luke’s Church, where Father Thomas Barry delivers the eulogy for Ava Gutierrez, who died at 41 after a long illness. The priest shares that he sat with Ava and her family in the hospital. She told him she was not afraid to die but wished for more time. Father Barry confesses his own struggles with faith on such days but finds inspiration in Ava’s family and her insistence that they live fully. He urges them to do now whatever honors life.

After mourners leave and the church empties, Tim and Bud remain. Tim asks what Bud believes about the afterlife and reveals that he himself thinks about death frequently, explaining that, as a wheelchair user, he expects to die prematurely. He criticizes society for never teaching people how to face mortality. When Tim brings up Bud’s mother’s death, Bud becomes angry, accusing Tim of being “preachy” and trying to diagnose him. An elderly volunteer shushes them, and Bud rudely shushes her back.

Tim, disgusted, accuses Bud of being a spectator in life, afraid to engage because vulnerability requires courage and risks hurt. Bud tells Tim to “fuck off.” Outside, Bud announces that he will take the subway home. Tim angrily tells him that their funeral attendance is not about death but about “the privilege of being alive” (189), asking how Bud does not understand this by now. He then repeats Bud’s profanities back at him.

Bud admits that he has lied to Tim three times, including about never touching a dead person. The truth involves his mother, Louise.

Bud recalls a Saturday morning when Gerry was a high school senior. Their mother gathered them to say that she needed a hospital checkup. Bud sensed her fear despite her casual tone. She remained hospitalized for 26 days, growing progressively weaker.

The boys’ father, Gerald, took them to visit Louise on Sundays. On the final Sunday, Bud and Gerry waited in the car while Gerald went ahead. When Gerald’s beeper went off, Gerry ran inside, and Bud followed. At their mother’s room, they found nurses holding their father back. Gerry forced the door open. Inside, doctors were trying to resuscitate Louise, who was gasping for air. Bud thought he saw her notice them, perhaps lift a hand, but cannot be certain. Then she died. Gerry howled and later pounded dents into the car roof.

That evening, friends and neighbors filled their house. Bud felt detached, watching everyone. At the wake days later, a devastated Gerald led them to the casket. When Bud kneeled, he reached out and touched his mother’s cold, lifeless arm before Gerry pulled him back. For hours, Bud stood in the receiving line, numb and unsure what to do with his hands.

Later, Bud saw his mother’s obituary contained only 74 words. He was angry that her life—her beach-loving, hip-shaking, humming presence—could be reduced to basic facts. He wanted to rewrite it, to capture who she actually was, but did not know how.

Clara texts Bud about a funeral. They meet at a Brooklyn subway stop and walk through Holy Cross Cemetery. Clara stops at gravestones, wondering about the lives of strangers. She asks if Bud believes in God. He says that he does not know. She explains that her own faith fluctuates: “When I sit in my kitchen in the winter with coffee and watch the sunrise, yes. When I volunteered at Memorial Sloan Kettering in the children's unit, no. When I see the parents who sleep next to their children for weeks at a time in that unit, yes” (202-03).

Clara asks what Bud has lied about. He confesses to telling people he tried stand-up comedy. She admits lying about having been to Spain; she studied the country so extensively to maintain the lie that she feels she has visited. She asks if Bud visits his mother’s grave. He says that it’s been a long time. Clara explains an ancient Egyptian belief that you die twice—first when you die, second when people stop saying your name. She says aloud, “Louise Stanley.” She then says her father’s name: “Joseph Darrell.” She reveals that he died the previous fall while she was flying home, having delayed her return for a work meeting. She feels immense guilt for prioritizing business over seeing him. Bud repeats her father’s name.

At Saint Catherine of Genoa Church, they attend Vinny Marchetti’s funeral. His brother delivers a eulogy sharing fond memories of their youth working at a Bay Ridge garage and driving a Pontiac GTO. He imagines Vinny’s final thoughts were of those perfect summer afternoons—cruising with the radio on, waving to neighborhood friends, no rush before dinner. Breaking down in tears, he receives applause. To honor a promise, he plays AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” from his phone into the church microphone.

Bud visits Clara’s apartment in Fort Greene. She cooks pasta while he builds a fire, though she takes over to properly arrange the logs and open the flue. Over dinner, Bud tells her about encountering Jen with her new boyfriend months after the divorce. He stood behind them at a bar until Jen saw his reflection in the mirror and looked terrified, but he left before she could turn around. Bud also describes his fight with Tim, admitting that he was angry because Tim’s criticisms contained truth. He confesses to feeling emotionally detached, unable to close the gap between understanding tragedy intellectually and feeling it. Clara responds that he is “on the outside” (214), waiting to live.

Clara shares that she had been involved with a married colleague and that, after her father’s death, guilt triggered severe depression, leading to six weeks at a treatment facility. A therapist there taught her about being trapped by old stories. Clara tells Bud about monarch butterflies that continue flying around a mountain that no longer exists, illustrating how past experiences shape behavior long after circumstances change. She cites Virginia Woolf on finding illumination through small daily miracles rather than one grand revelation.

On the rooftop, Clara identifies constellations her father taught her and shares astronomical facts, revealing her mathematical aptitude. Back at her door, she tells Bud that she is leaving in five days to teach in Bhutan for a year. Bud is shocked and disappointed. Clara admits that she did not expect to like him so much. Drawing on Leo’s trivia about mayflies living only 24 hours, Bud tells her that they have five lifetimes together before she leaves. Clara smiles and says that she would like that.