It all begins with Ramond Ramirez Townes, a Black and Latino American living in rural Ulster County, New York. He works at a lumber mill part-time and drives as a courier for a Edgar, of Precision Auto Body. Driving for Edgar pays better, because the purported auto parts aren’t auto parts. They’re oxycodone, fentanyl, heroin. It’s relatively low-risk compared to the runs he used to make to Queens and back, with Hank Delaney, in trucks loaded with stolen goods. Then he and Delaney and a few others did a Big Job some time back that netted them considerable cash. They had an inside man at a credit union. Raymond has been laying low since then, and living of the money, which is nearly gone. He’s at a decision point when Hank phones him.
Hank Delany is a former police officer, now on the wrong side of the law. He’s mostly unemployable, due to temperamental and reliability problems. At the moment, he can’t make rent, and can’t even get hired to lay tile, but a prospect has arisen. He’s noticed that across the street from his trailer home, at Segal Metalworks, a classic car restoration shop, owner John Segal hasn’t been around for a few days. And appearing daily each afternoon is a woman driving Segal’s work truck.
A little sniffing reveals the woman is Segal’s sister. Segal suffered a leg injury when his car lift failed. Segal is laid up in hospital, doing rehab on his mangled limb. The sister is collecting mail and keeping an eye on things. But that means that Segal’s 1968 Ford Mustang, Shelby edition, is not being as closely watched as usual. That’s right, Shelby was conceived in the car named after the designer, one Mr. Caroll Shelby. True fact! Acquired and cared for by their father, the car was inherited by John upon his passing.
Realizing he needs a partner to pull of the heist, hank phones Raymond Townes. This is an opportunity that cannot be passed up. Together, they formulate the plan. Townes will work what they call “the Headslapper.” He’ll chat up Shelby at her waitressing job, and whatever interest or hobby he can get her to mention, he’ll be involved in. Turns out it’s music. She sings part time, she tells him, occasional gigs at little clubs here and there. But she aspires to do more, even make a record. Head slap! Wouldn’t you know it, I’m in the music biz! Ray declares. Ray Toledo, nice to meet you. I’m on the production side, recording, booking, you know, management.
It’s not entirely untrue. Raymond is the son of a Baptist minister, and he played organ, drums, and bass in the church band, even spinning off and playing dances and parties back home in Philly. That is, until he turned 18 and moved to New York. Then Ray locked up all his equipment then, and a while later the old man passed. Now Raymond must get that keyboard out of storage, the amps and PA too. He’s gotta practice. He’s gotta play the part of Ray Toledo, get the keys to Segal Motorworks, and get the vintage rig out of there with an unpredictable and desperate known madman.
Point of view shifts, and we join a second set of characters. They all live 100 miles south of Ulster County, NY. They’re down in New York City, Brooklyn to be precise. Paul Boustrophedon is a Milwaukee transplant to New York, who can’t forget Midwest rent, feels abject about both his professional prospects and his impending marriage. Paul works in rights, around intellectual property and its licensing, mainly in the packaged foods space. On the night of a full moon in spring, he abandons dinner and friends to wander, disaffected but liberated, onto the set of “Love & Theft,” a streaming series being filmed in his Brooklyn neighborhood, Fort Greene. Under a buffet tent, a conversation over an éclair opens an unwinding dialogue about love and trust, truth and lies.
Sylvie Virgule, a loose cannon and the lead actress on the series, is lonely. An L.A. resident, shooting in New York is lonesome, noisy, and tiring business. She offers the funny, aloof guy hanging out in the food tent a position as her Spiritual Advisor. Of course that’s a euphemistic term. “Bou,” as Sylvie takes to calling him, will in fact keep her company, take her out drinking, help manage her social media, and support her assistant Karla in the effort to keep her clean from “Benzos,” her pills of choice, and all other hard drugs for that matter.
While serving in his new duties, Paul meets Nolan Pilcrow, a Brooklynite and academic who comes from Connecticut industrial money. He charges down to the set after reading about the series online—its story sounds to him a lot like his novel Burgled Heart, written and submitted to his agent just last year. The manuscript never sold, and Pilcrow is convinced the agent must have passed it on to Dale Chimister, the indie film-maker with a cult following who supposedly authored this much-hyped series. It was such a cheesy treatment anyway. Love and theft? Of course they’re two sides of the same coin!
Paul is ignorant of Pilcrow’s plans to sue the pants off Chimister. Wining and dining Paul, Pilcrow offers advice about the impending marriage that Paul dreads, about success, about New York women and New York life. Pilcrow’s takes are all crude, high-minded, neurotic, and kind of appealing. Eventually, Pilcrow lets Paul in on his plans. Paul’s access to Sylvie means access to the script, where Pilcrow says the evidence surely resides that the series derives from his intellectual property. They cut a 60/40 handshake deal.
The third and final point of view shift. We join Walter Charnaman, a five-year-old boy of Sri Lankan heritage living in Nova Scotia with his yoga teacher mother and ferry captain father. He’s a prodigy, excels at school, especially his language abilities. At the age of two he began reading, and at three began telling stories and writing them down. Now, at the reception desk of his mother’s yoga studio, he’s writing a novel in secret. No one else knows. It’s about a place that has been alive in his imagination since he was an infant, ever since he can remember. Alive and brought alive by a kind of second resident in Walter’s consciousness, a voice that is rarely quiet, tormenting the soft-spoken Walter with his obsessions about places and their attributes, people and their dimensions, events and their meaning. Inside-kick, Walter dubs him. His sidekick who lives inside him.
Walter enlists the help of an older friend to enroll him in an online writing workshop and get the tuition paid without his mother knowing. Iris, age 6, is the younger daughter of a yoga teacher at his mother’s studio, and Rene is the older daughter, 13 years old. Through this payment, the secret that Walter is writing a book gets out. The mother/yoga teacher informs a Buddhist monastery nearby, believing Walter may be the 15th Dalai Lama. The monks come calling and propose that Walter come reside with them. The family makes a visit, during which Inside-kick, this menacing phantom spirit who seems to share Walter’s own mind, isn’t having it, this move away from home to live under strict rule.
Walter realizes he needs a solution to his predicament. His own fate, he feels, lies in the fate of the Shelbys, and in what he writes. In his fictional world, there’s a battle over ownership, over rights, over belonging, over value and deservingness, fate and justice. The tale needs to be finished: it’s what Inside-kick won’t shut up about. Walter aims to settle the scores in the world of Paul, Sylvie, Hank, Raymond, and Chimister, right down to the every last, and he does so in a cosmic fashion. During one of his mother’s gong baths, a psychedelic sound-healing experience, he transcends his body and travels across dimensions, from the yoga studio to the back of the black ’68 Shelby owned by John Segal. But that’s a bit later.
Paul, meanwhile, has moved in with Pilcrow, leaving the apartment he shares with his fiancée. He’s gambling on Pilcrow’s legal suit, hoping to earn a settlement that could set him on a path out of Brooklyn and out of sub-licensing the Hamburger Helper glove character to spin-off product makers. Paul’s dream isn’t entirely clear to him. He wouldn’t mind setting up as a tennis instructor—a sport he’s always loved. But prospects once again look dire when Pilcrow can’t produce evidence to support his infringement claims. Pilcrow stalls, takes Paul out drinking, and often rants about his ex-wife and his new girlfriend. Pilcrow, it seems may be not only a lapsed Jew but a severe sexist, even a dangerous pathological liar.
Sylvie’s past is explored. So is Paul’s—in particular, the role of his fiancée’s bigoted, overbearing, insufferable father-in-law in Oregon. When filming of Season 1 of “Love & Theft” wraps, Sylvie will be going back to L.A. At a wrap party in Manhattan, a meeting of the minds settles things in the legal matter and in Pilcrow and Paul’s relationship: merely through intelligence conversation, Chimister, accused of being a poseur, proves to be the real deal—an artist, an auteur, an intellect, a craftsman, balanced, introspective, respectful. Pilcrow meanwhile lashes out, calling Chimister a phony. To what ends? Ultimately, to spite his ex-wife and prove to his father, through corrupt means, that he’s a real writer. Corrupt means are just the order of the day in Pilcrow’s New York. In Pilcrow’s world. (Just as they are with Hank.)
There’s a heated argument at the wrap party, and Paul bails from residing at Pilcrow’s Park Slope condo. He puts his things in storage, and is free. His fiancée, fed up with Paul’s vague schemes and absenteeism, ends their engagement. Sylvie has declared herself available for longer term commitments, but only if its true and pure. Then it comes time for the vintage muscle car, so central to it all, to be returned to its upstate owners. Sylvie wants to drive it herself. She only got to sit in it on set. Paul will go with, making sure he has a turn at the wheel.
Upstate, Raymond has made gains. He’s got Shelby Segal convinced that his alias, Ray Toledo, can take her places musically. He’s presents fake connections, and he’s even befriended the surly John, who is still in rehab. But Ray has also awakened his heart through his rehearsing of old spirituals, R&B love songs, gospel hymns, and pop standards too. He has reconnected with his old values, those of the church, and of his father’s strict teachings. Under Hank’s threats, though, he keeps their grift going. A chance to copy the key to Segal Motorworks presents itself, but instead Ray, who has learned the ride has been on lease to a filmmaker in the city and is due back soon, rather than copying a key, looks at Shelby’s phone and gets the number of the film person she’s been texting with. Acting as Segal’s second man, he speaks to Karla, telling them to drive the car to Precision Autobody in Kingston, not Segal Metalworks. At Precision, it’ll get inspected and cleaned up. Precision is of course Edgar’s shop, the mastermind of much small-time drug dealing and the big cash theft that Ray, Hank, and others pulled off some years back.
Hank meanwhile has lost what little judgement remained, and has stolen a brick of heroin he was delivering to the Accord Speedway for Edgar. He’s bagged it up in dime bags and plans to take the Shelby himself and set out for the West, where he can hock the dope for cash and figure out the rest as he goes. He’s got nothing left to lose.
Son of a bitch! I haven’t even mentioned that love is at the center of it all, in more ways than one. The reason Hank wants to steal Segal’s ride in the first place is because they went to high school together, and in high school, Segal stole Hank’s girl, plain and simple. He wasn’t even apologetic about it. Hank has hated the guy ever since then.
As for the dime bags, if Sylvie gets in the same room with heroin, her assistant Karla attests, there won’t be a “Love & Theft” Season 2. There won’t be a romance with Paul. There won’t be anything but carnage, upheaval and loss. She’s seen it happen. But now that Ray has phoned in the con, Sylvie is headed to the same place as the holder of said dime bags. Precision Autobody. In time, Edgar will be unconscious, thanks to Hank; and Paul and Sylvie will be none the wiser about any of this when they arrive to drop off the keys.
Everything is set to collide. That’s when Walter, who might be sent to a Buddhist abbey against his will, takes action. During one of his mother’s gong baths, a psychedelic sound-healing experience, he transcends his body and travels across dimensions, from the yoga studio to the back seat of the Shelby. The ride is rolling up to a little garage upstate when Walter pops into the back seat. Paul and Sylvie are driving; they park and go in the shop. Hank arrives and goes inside too. Breaking into Hank’s junky car is easy. Walter takes the shoebox full of dime bags, returns to the Shelby, and thus, by laying down in the back seat and tuning into the sound of gongs, he travels back across dimensions to his reality, the taped up shoebox of heroin dime bags in his clutches.
Back at Stillpoint Studio, he stashes the box, then takes it in his backpack aboard the ferry that is his father’s workplace, the Nova Star, crossing the Bay of Fundy from Digby to St. John. There, on the top deck, Rene and her sister Iris create a distraction that lets Walter throw the box overboard, into the swallowing sea.
Everyone’s denouements are unfolded in short order, all united by a solar eclipse over North America’s eastern seaboard.
Silvie is in good financial stead after the successful debut of “Love & Theft.” There’s talk of an Emmy—mostly her talk. The season is renewed by the streaming platform. She’ll be shooting in New York again. They all will be. She happily pitches some of her money to Paul. They’ll be together, while Paul opens a little tennis club in Westchester, where he’ll be the teaching pro. He orders a racquet stringing machine online and remarks, “You know, without the net, the game is meaningless.”
Raymond is with his new love, Shelby, but living a double life. Shelby doesn’t know he had anything to do with the theft of her brother’s car. Raymond is seen during a shift at the lumbermill, texting Shelby lies about what he’s up to, but he goes to her after work and is happy.
He is a changed man at the end. He was in the hospital room as John Segal tracked his prized possession sailing across northern Indiana. He had a transponder installed under the hood, and it was broadcasting its location via GPS. Segal, an iconoclast and renegade, had not alerted authorities, but had his own ideas for retribution. In his sick bed, he tracked the dot on the map. Ray, sympathizing with Hank and his stolen girl now because of the love for Shelby in his own heart, texts Hank that there’s a tracking device in the car. Find it and destroy it.
He stands there watching with Shelby on his arm as the dot vanishes on Segal’s laptop screen. This act of charity Raymond commits despite the fact that, at Precision, Hank had knocked Raymond out with a punch in order to get the Shelby key and vamoose after Ray refused his offer of absconding together.
Hank makes it to Arizona, where he is cooped up in a dump of a motel. After hiring someone to erase the VIN numbers, he sold the car in Omaha and lived high on the hog. But now he is broke. He’d be returning to a life of crime the next day, when the hotel would evict him, hungry. He walks up the street to case the gas station. In the same chapter, we cut to Sylvie Virgule, donning the black futuristic jumpsuit with buckles, hooks, and blandishments that aid her “Love & Theft” character’s glorified life of crime. For her, and people like her, morality, ownership, value, loyalty—it’s all a game. It’s just something you pretend to have to deal with, an interruption of your good time, but a good time in itself.