A white man is mugged and beaten in Harlem and wakes up with amnesia in a Kafkaesque nightmare of a room. His only hope is a black man, Rumor, who promises to help him get out but decides to keep him a virtual prisoner, while at the same time exploring his life, visiting his apartment, meeting his girlfriend and ultimately co-opting his life as a means of escaping Harlem. Running parallel to all this are the complica­tions in Rumor's own life. The gang he is a mem­ber of, the mother and sister he lives with and the photographic journal he keeps hidden in his room. As the story unfolds there appear to be an increasing number of reasons why both men are unlikely to emerge intact from a perilous and futile situation, intensifying by the moment, sur­rounded as they are by menacing forces.