A hysterical phone call from Henry Archer's ex-wife and a familiar face in a photograph upend his well-ordered life and bring him back into contact with the child he adored, a short-term stepdaughter from a misbegotten marriage long ago.

Henry is a courtly lawyer, gay, successful, lonely. Thalia is now 29, an actress-hopeful, estranged from her newly widowed crackpot mother—Denise, Henry's ex. She agrees to pose as the girlfriend of an unsavory actor who is forlornly down on his romantic luck. When Thalia and her complicated social life move into the basement of Henry's Upper West Side townhouse,she finds a champion in her long-lost father, and he finds peace in the commotion.