Margaret, raised with ever-changing names in a series of foster homes, assumes various names in her career as an "escort" for women. As Tamara, she supplies sexual favors for a minister's wife; as Melanie, she is hired to be "gorgeous" for an unattractive lesbian; and as Ursula, she dates - and provides cover for - the heterosexual female director of a gay and lesbian organization.

Her most desperate identity, though, is law student Margaret Smyth, the name she hopes will rescue her from the others when she graduates.

BJ, short for Beverly Jane, came to New York to model but found instead a lucrative career as a soap opera actress. For almost twenty years, BJ has performed, under her stage name, Jill Willis, as a do-good lawyer on a daytime serial. Her private life resembles too closely the role she plays - especially after the sperm donor for Malcolm, the child she has raised with her mentally ill lover, shows up.

The two women are initially strangers to each other, but as their identities unravel, bringing them close to disaster and death, and their carefully constructed lives decay, they find themselves drawn by events to each other and to the possibility of salvation.