Jack Cooper is an unhappy man - mind, body, and spirit. In the span of months, he has lost his longstanding job to the economy, his mother to illness, and his wife to her secret lover. Beaten, broken, and crippled by life, he has withdrawn totally from aspirations and passion, narrowing his life down to the simplest of routines to block out the pain, and prevent any in the future: wake up, go to the Bethesda Health Club—his personal oasis where his mind and body can be free—come back home, escape from reality with his books, go to bed. Nothing more, nothing less.

That is, until he meets the enigmatic Mike Parrish. Stolen from the hospital as a newborn and passed around from household to household, Parrish has no official identification—to the government and the world at large, he does not exist. He is a drifter, and the first person with whom Cooper has more than a superficial conversation. Cooper finds solace in Parrish, a man who understands his plight and is sympathetic to his pain.

Then Parrish disappears off the face of the Earth, leaving Cooper to search for a virtually invisible man. As Cooper chases leads as fleeting as shadows, and looks for clues as intangible as ghosts, his search leads him back to the one place that he called his refuge: the Bethesda Health Club.