Jody, a gay man in his 40s, owns a small map store on the oldest street in an American city, and is seemingly worldly and knowledgeable. Carl, another gay man in his early thirties, is a frequent visitor to the store, is a friend of Jody, and seems to lie a lot about his life and occupation. Despite this, the two seemingly know very little about each other. The play begins with Jody explaining how he found a chair placed in his store one day, without notice, by Carl. Pretty soon, the store is littered with chairs, and after some argument between the two, it is revealed that every chair was owned by someone they knew in their community, who had died from the epidemic.