Scooper, a successful but emotionally insecure man edging reluctantly into his forties, discovers that his aged, blind mother, Henny, has been hiding the fact that she is suffering from cancer. With some difficulty he persuades her to undergo surgery, and then turns his attention to Deirdre, a beautiful but extremely neurotic girl whom he picks up in the waiting room of their shared psychiatrist. Their conversation, which is alternately funny, caustic, outlandish and filled with sharp observations of jet-set foibles, centers on their nervous anxiety about the impending vacation of their "shrink," a man without whose services neither can function. Their fears lead to an altercation in which Scooper injures Deirdre's foot and she stabs him in the spleen, with the result that both end up in the hospital with Scooper's mother—where, in a revealing monologue by the now recovering Henny, the play's sad-funny conclusions about life in our perilous times are made eloquently clear.