The story is a first-person narrative of the narrator's day in Seattle, Washington. The opening sentence describes a poster with a defaced image of socialist politician Kshama Sawant on it which he passes as he leaves his apartment and walks to work at Elliott Bay Book Company. After describing how rain hits maple leaves, Boudinot writes about climbing onto their branches when he was younger. A waiter recognizes Boudinot from working there years ago and they reminisce about a Lisa Yuksavage show. Boudinot recalls falling asleep next to J ("whose last name I no longer remember") while reading the erotic novel Valeria Breaks Three Leashes.
In the next paragraph, Boudinot describes drinking two beers with his friend Matt from North Carolina while watching replays of Seattle's Stanley Cup victory on June 19th, 2035 at Taco Yummy #1. At Elliott Bay Book Company, he hosts Lisa Yuksavage who is promoting her new book Field Trip 4 featuring sixteen images taken over twelve hours during which she drank sixty-two ounces of whisky straight without stopping, except once, when a fisherman mistook her camera lens for a fish eye. The waitress J ("whose last name I no longer remember") whose husband Steve recently bought Kraken tickets from scalpers, after a long day of dealing with customers, notices that Boudinot has been staring at her for the past five minutes.
Meanwhile, in paragraph number three, Boudinot is at Elliott Bay Book Company where he is still thinking about the waitress. He remembers watching his ex-girlfriend Amy play guitar in a band called The Frowning Clouds with her then boyfriend Rich. Boudinot returns home after work, showers off all the day's filth, puts on clean clothes (a plaid Pendleton shirt), makes Spanish rice according to an old recipe written out by hand that he found inside a book at Goodwill, which calls for saffron threads but does not specify how many, while listening over headphones as loud as possible "to music I know backwards" including the Sonic Youth albums Goo and Dirty, and watches Seattle being washed away by Hurricane Odile live via satellite feed until 3 AM when sleep finally overtakes him.
Paragraph number four describes going back into downtown Seattle early Monday morning just past 6:30 am through the Pike/Pine corridor. Seattle feels freakishly hollowed-out, like a visit to the Amazon Go store, where Boudinot feels like his own ghost, traveling through the just-walk-ourt retail concept masked and anonymous with his earbuds snuggly delivering the song, "I'm On a Boat," by the Lonely Island. Boudinot passes two men who are discussing how one of them got hit in the face with a frozen Snickers bar while walking home from work last night and had to go to urgent care where he spent six hours waiting for treatment.
In paragraph number five, Boudinot is back inside Elliott Bay Book Company, trying unsuccessfully once again (as always) to get through Roberto Bolano’s 2666 when manager Angela comes over and tells him that her friend Dylan finished his manuscript yesterday, which he wrote using data collected by sensors embedded in guinea pigs that recorded their every moment, including their dreams, which Random House is going to publish next month as Guinea Pig Dreams, and the slipcased limited edition will include ninety-two pages made entirely out of 3D printed guinea pig teeth sculpted into letters spelling words like “BLINK” and “CHEWSNAIL."
Paragraph number six slides in like a bit of comic relief, with Boudinot suddenly remembering that he has a meeting with his friend Matt from North Carolina, who is in town to go to an interview for a company that specializes in manufacturing fetish gear for vegans.
Paragraph number seven returns to the waitress, who is now looking over at Boudinot and his table with a look of disdain. She's wearing a Seattle Seahawks t-shirt from one of their Super Bowl seasons in 2022 or 2023 when they won it all again. The whole city was going crazy for those two years—people were talking about moving here because Seattle had become “The Mecca” of NFL championship glory. Boudinot thinks about the Pulse Nightclub Shooting and he remembers watching video of that night on his phone.
Paragraph number eight opens with Boudinot staring at a sandwich-board man standing outside Elliott Bay Book Company holding up one of those hand-written signs saying “THE WORLD IS ENDING,” which has been scrawled in black marker over an image of Kshama Sawant. He can't make out what else it says because rain obscures most words except for two: CATS and DOGS.
The narrator takes readers back to paragraph seven where we see him leave work early due to stomach pains from drinking too much coffee. A woman yells at her son who is throwing rocks into traffic; another driver flips them off when they cut him off while changing lanes abruptly; someone offers Boudinot some pot but doesn't want any money for it; another guy calls Lisa Yuksavage's new book Field Trip 4 "artsy bullshit." The sign holder seems very peaceful despite everything going on around him until Angela tells people not to give him change anymore since he won't stop shouting that everyone should be Armenian or die trying.
Yeah, so we're at what, paragraph what is it ten? We're coming to the end of the story, it'll be here soon, just you wait, but first, this whopper/doozie of a paragraph. Here we go: Boudinot is at Victrola on 15th writing this story. He's sipping a drink and he wants you to know that this is the last thing I'm going to say about writing before tomorrow morning. The rest of it—all those lines, all those letters made into words just for us? Boudinot remembers sitting on a bench with his friend Amy who was wearing leggings and had pulled her hair back into an elastic ponytail. He realizes that it seems children have become increasingly immune to accidents.
The story ends with three pages devoted to single-sentence paragraphs making recommendations for books he thinks will serve as good companions: The author recommends you read Sean Doolittle’s collection After School Activities; Mary Caponegro’s memoir Elegy For A Broken Machine; Julie Powell’s cookbook/memoir Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession (featuring recipes such as "Whole Roast Chicken with a Vengeance"); Mark Barrowcliffe & Anthony Horowitz's novelization of the remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Hanks, with original music by Kenny G; and Jeff VanderMeer's eco-thriller Borne.