Thirty-nine years ago, Stella Crater is asleep at her cabin on the lake in Maine when she hears her husband Joe’s car arrive. When she goes out to meet him, she notices he isn’t wearing his wedding ring: He’s been with another woman. When he dismisses her anger, she slams the car door shut on his hand. Later, he has trouble dressing for dinner, but she refuses to help, angry that he expects her to accept his obvious infidelity. 

During dinner, he excuses himself to make a phone call and returns to say that he will head back to the city tomorrow but return before her birthday in a few days. Stella doesn’t get up the next morning to see Joe off.

Thirty-two-year-old Maria and her husband, Jude, lie in bed, debating the effect of their different religious beliefs on their marriage. Maria is Catholic, and Jude’s an atheist. She has another doctor’s appointment in two weeks and hopes to learn why she hasn’t been able to conceive. Maria hands Jude a gift to celebrate his promotion to detective the previous March: It’s a cigarette lighter engraved with his initials. Jude loves it but dislikes that Maria works two jobs, as a maid and as a seamstress. She reminds him that Smithson, her employer for her seamstress job, won’t hire a woman full-time because it hurts his ego.

Wearing her maid’s uniform, Maria enters the Craters’ apartment, assuming they’re in Maine. When she walks into the bedroom, she finds a naked young woman in the bed, and Mr. Crater, a New York State Supreme Court justice, emerging from the bathroom in a towel. Crater yells at her to get out, saying she should remember what he did for her husband because he can “take it all away” (17). She’s surprised when his mistress comes to her defense, and the young woman implores her not to say anything. Maria feels no loyalty to Crater, but she notes the sadness in the girl’s eyes and promises to say nothing.

Several months earlier, Mrs. Crater had intimated to Maria that she had persuaded her husband to put a good word in for Jude. Maria was grateful, but she didn’t want Jude to find out, and Mrs. Crater assured her that, as women, she and Maria were “in this together” (19). Mrs. Crater said that the entire city runs on favors like this one.

After leaving the Craters’ apartment, Maria goes to Smithson Tailors, and Donald Smithson says her next appointment will arrive in five minutes. She is a talented seamstress, and her next customer requested her specifically. A few minutes later, Smithson introduces Maria to Owney Madden, a notorious gangster originally from Liverpool. He ogles her, and she uncomfortably takes his measurements.

Crater is with his mistress, Sally Lou Ritz (nicknamed “Ritzi”), an aspiring Broadway actress and chorus girl. They occupy a table at Owney’s “speakeasy” club, Club Abbey, while Owney sits in his booth across the room. This is the era of Prohibition, when the sale of alcohol is illegal, but that helps liquor sales. 

William Klein, Crater’s good friend, joins Crater and Ritzi. Crater tells Ritzi to go powder her nose. She goes to the bathroom and smokes a cigarette to kill time. When she returns, the men are ready to depart, and they all head outside. When Crater’s back is turned, Klein makes a pass at Ritzi, who rebuffs him. He insinuates that he could help her get better parts on Broadway if she’d be with him instead of Crater.

Crater hails a cab, and he and Ritzi go to the Belasco Theater to see a show. However, Crater only reserved one ticket, and the show is sold out, so he tells the driver to take them to Coney Island. Crater leads Ritzi to a hotel. She doesn’t want to go in with him, but she feels she has no choice. She asks Crater if his wife knows about her, and he brandishes his hurt hand. Seeing the injury makes Ritzi feel proud of Mrs. Crater. 

Later, Crater falls asleep after sex, and Ritzi gets up to go. When she hears someone at the door, she hides in a cabinet in the bathroom. Someone breaks down the door, and she hears a group of men beat the judge. The man in charge accuses Crater of tipping off a police investigator and reporter. The group of men removes Crater from the room.

The chauffeur, Fred, tells Stella that Crater instructed him to stay behind when he went into the city. She tells him to go to the station to see if Crater is on the morning train, though she knows he won’t be. 

Ritzi goes to see Klein and tells him what she heard last night. She asks him to lie to police, saying he had dinner with her and Crater at Billy Haas’s Chophouse, not that they were at Club Abbey. She threatens him, and he finally agrees, but only if she’ll go out with him. She tacitly agrees, and they have sex before she leaves.

When Maria arrives at the Craters’ apartment, it’s a mess. While there, she hears someone opening the door; to her surprise, it’s her husband, Jude, and his partner, Leo Lowenthall. From a hiding spot in the closet, she sees Jude open a drawer in the Craters’ bureau and deposit four envelopes inside. Lowenthall says Owney wanted Maria to see this, and Jude insists that she be left out of it. Lowenthall laughs and says that’s not how things work, that “Nothing in this town happens on accident” (43).

Vivian Gordon, Ritzi’s roommate and a notorious “madam” (sex worker), wakes Ritzi up for an audition that Owney got her. Ritzi is exhausted after vomiting all morning. She declines to tell Vivian what happened to Crater the night before, hoping to protect her. Ritzi clutches a knotted gray sock wrapped around something she refuses to name; she’d brought it with her from home and treats it like a security blanket. After sobbing in the shower, Ritzi looks in the mirror and recognizes the girl who came from Iowa three years earlier. Shorty Petak, Owney’s thug, picks her up for the audition, and though she used to long for just such an opportunity, she no longer wants it. Shorty tells her how to sing the Cole Porter song, but she chooses a different route, curious if she’ll still get the part. She does.

Maria makes dinner, wondering what—if anything—she should say to Jude about what she saw him do in the Craters’ apartment. She asks if he knows Owney Madden, and Jude becomes instantly suspicious. He insists that she not lie to or keep things from him, but that he knows she would if she thought it would protect him. She moves away from him. He reaches for her, snagging her rosary and breaking it. He feels terrible and admits he went to see Father Finn Donnegal earlier that day.

As Stella swims in the lake, she sees Irv Bean pull up in his delivery truck. He brings a bright red canoe Joe ordered for her birthday. When Irv didn’t hear from Joe, he decided to bring it. Irv deposits the canoe in the lake, and Stella wonders what happened to her husband.

Stella sends Fred to New York City to look for Joe. She finds a Club Abbey matchbook and two business cards in Joe’s dinner jacket: one for Simon Rifkind, Joe’s associate, and one for Owney Madden. Stella calls Owney first, leaving a message. Next, she calls Simon Rifkind, and she says he has to find Joe because she needs money. Simon offers to pick up Joe’s paycheck and deposit it; he also advises Stella not to mention Joe’s disappearance to anyone because it could affect his upcoming reelection.

When Maria gets to work, Smithson tells her that Owney ordered five new suits and paid in advance; he thinks the gangster likes her.

Maria waits her turn in the obstetrics office. She can hear another patient desperately imploring the doctor to terminate her pregnancy, but he refuses because it is illegal. Meanwhile, Maria wants nothing more than to get pregnant. When the woman emerges from the examination room, Maria sees that it’s the girl from Crater’s bed, Ritzi. Maria reaches out, but the girl bats her hand away. 

Maria explains to the doctor that her periods are irregular, and she often feels pain and bloating. He performs an external exam but wishes to perform an internal one, offering to get a nurse so she feels more comfortable. When he leaves the room, Maria grabs the clipboard with Ritzi’s information and stuffs the paper into her purse.

Ritzi takes the subway and thinks of the three girls she knows who recently got medicine to induce a chemical pregnancy termination. She considers the myriad ways women try to prevent pregnancy, some dangerous. Exiting the station, she vomits onto the tracks.

Reading Fred’s letter, Stella realizes that Joe’s associates are hiding his disappearance. Fred hasn’t seen Crater, he says, but all his associates say that the judge has “been around.” Rifkind encouraged Fred not to ask too many questions that would create suspicion.