A man wakes up on a park bench in Central Park with his mind a total blank. He has no identification or money, only a folded slip of paper enclosing two large white pills and a phone number. He steadies his nerves, dials the number, and reaches Gloria, who at first mistakes him for her shiftless husband, Sam. She offers a rendezvous and, as he improvises an identity, he coins Buddwing—a name born from the first two things that seize his attention, a Budweiser beer truck and an airplane. Gloria, clearly in no mood to care for truth, gives him cash as he leaves, a painful but pitiful mercy gift.
Over breakfast he scans a newspaper that bears a colossal headline about the escape of a violently insane criminal, and the image unsettles him. A ring on his finger bears initials that might match, feeding a growing fear that he could be the fugitive himself. The street outside seems to tilt into a fog of possibilities and dangers, and soon he spots a woman he mistakes for the elusive Grace.
That woman turns out to be Janet, a student at a music school in Washington Square. In a flashback, we glimpse an earlier life where he was a struggling student composer, and in a spontaneous moment they marry. Yet back in the park, Janet rejects him and a scene unfolds that draws a quick, urgent line between promise and trouble. A Policeman arrives and Buddwing is briefly questioned before he flees, slipping away as the patrolman’s attention is drawn elsewhere by hecklers.
The world seems to press in from every side as a mad street person pursues him, railing that Buddwing is the murderer on the loose. He darts through avenues and avenues of the city, losing himself in motion and memory.
Then he meets a sultry, coquettish actress named Fiddle, whom he mistakes for Grace. They sleep together, and the act of being with her unlocks further shards of his unclear past. He wakes in her arms and a grim, intimate nightmare surges forward: a fight with his wife over a pregnancy they cannot afford, culminating in the brutal ache of abortion. Crushed by the memory, she climbs over the railing of the 59th Street Bridge, ready to end everything—yet he clamps his arms around her to pull her back.
He flees again, seeking oblivion in whiskey. A rich socialite on a scavenger-hunt night drags him into Harlem where a craps game offers the chance to win a fortune and complete her list. They drink, gamble, and wander, but the glamour dissolves into a harsher truth: wealth cannot buy a life that still feels devoid of meaning. The lover’s fever dream intensifies—Grace becomes his wife, then Grace again, until the sense of self fractures under the weight of affluence and a talent neglected.
In a delirious moment, he sees a vanity splattered with blood and a razor blade, and a startling realization dawns: he had dialed the right number but in the wrong area code. The Monument exchange on the Upper West Side should have connected him to a hospital in Mount Kisco, Westchester County. The call sets off a brutal reappraisal: Grace had really slashed her wrists, and she lies near death.
He begs to see her. He reaches for her lifeless arm, calls her name, and feels the breath of life slipping away. Then her hand stirs, and with that minuscule, stubborn gesture, a spark returns to him. He clasps her hand, and in that quiet, unspoken touch, he finds a return to life—an ethic of connection and a fragile, rediscovered hope.
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