Thomas wants to meet his father’s girlfriend, Mimi, for the first time, so he uses the excuse of having to use her restroom when he drops his father off at her apartment. Thomas’s mother died of an aneurysm at age 53, and Mimi is the first of his father’s many mistresses and girlfriends that he has seen in person. Thomas’s father, Mr. P, is a broad-chested, muscular man who does not think of the narrator as a grown man because he does not have children at age 33. He was a paratrooper in the Vietnam war. Mimi, a middle-aged Vietnamese woman, is anxious to get to know Thomas, but Mr. P wants him to leave. He tells him to pick him up in the morning (Mr. P’s car was recently stolen), and he shuts the door in his son’s face.

Thomas calls his ex-wife, Sam, but gets her answering machine. Sam is a high school math teacher who is popular with her students. The narrator’s father is a guidance counselor and also popular. The narrator works as a customer service representative for a medical company by day and as a security guard at a high-rise building near UCLA by night.