Weldon Rising. Downtown New York. The temperature is soaring. In the meat-packing district, Natty Weldon's lover is casually butchered by a homicidal homophobe. The witnesses do not intervene. Natty flees in terror, two lesbians watch from their apartment window and a flamboyant transvestite prostitute cowers in the street below. But life changes for them all after the murder. Disappeared. Sarah Casey, a travel agent who has never been anywhere, meets the mysterious Elston Rupp in a bar in New York's Hell's Kitchen. They walk out together and she is never seen again. Was she murdered, has she escaped from the city of loners, or has she simply disappeared?