It’s (1995), supposedly the year the future begins with the establishing of the world wide web, yet the past is what dominates for BILLIE, an unsuccessful and angry 38 year old Black actress, who has returned to New York City but can’t bear to face her mother and the low-income Fort Greene Brooklyn tenement building where she grew up. Instead Billie is living in a roach-infested shoebox room in a Chelsea rental-by-the-week rooming house in Manhattan.

Then at an old money Brooklyn Heights party where Billie is a reluctant server, she enjoys a high-spirited sparring moment with 41 year old wealthy white BENJAMIN.  He's the reluctant guest of honor, who is full of self-doubt after being recruited to become leader of a powerful organization.  Later Billie and Ben accidently run into each, kindling another sparring round that leaves both of them more alive.   A charged yet comforting relationship starts, as they both sense that, under all their disparities, there’s a sameness to the rawness of what each has buried inside. 

Ben opens a new world of possibility for Billie when he offers her rent-free use of an empty luxury Fort Greene apartment he moved from that still has six months on the lease.     Billie, now living close to her family home,  makes tentative approaches, each time ending up in arguments with MOMA, and  stumbling into confusing, unnerving encounters with three flamboyant local characters: PETEIE, a skinny homeless man who sometimes acts like he's got no brains; DADDY-O who's Black Power political --- but has little heart when it comes to Black women; and Dorothy, an older street performer who's desperate to give Billie a shoebox.

As Billie starts to wants more from Ben --- he wants to reveal less and starts pulling away.   Then a series of small accidental disclosures leads to Billie catching a glimpse of what's hidden behind Ben’s curtain of humbleness. Shock supersedes her depression as Billie realizes Ben is protecting corrupt forces that threaten the very family home that Billie’s not ready to face.   Billie gathers the motley crew of locals she has now bonded with and leads them to an all-out Thanksgiving Day confrontation with Benjamin and his world !