Harold Jamieson, a sixty-eight-year-old retired Chief Engineer of New York City's Sanitation Department and a widower, enjoys a quiet morning routine of reading the print Times on his favorite Central Park bench. One mid-May morning, a nondescript middle-aged man in Yankee gear sits on his bench and asks for a favor, even offering twenty dollars. Initially put off, Harold agrees to listen when the stranger claims he could be saving his life.

The man introduces himself as Jack, says he is four months sober, and explains the structure of AA's Steps and his relationship with his sponsor, Randy. He recounts being told to do the Fifth Step—admitting the exact nature of his wrongs to another human being—by approaching a complete stranger in a park. Harold, charmed by Jack's earnestness and looking forward to telling his friend Alex about it, agrees to listen.

Jack reads from a list, confessing a fourth-grade fight he provoked through a lie, stealing vodka from his mother, paying a wino he called Wretched Ralph to buy him alcohol, lying and cheating through Brown, smuggling a kilo of cocaine from Canada to bribe a coke-addicted advisor for recommendations, and sabotaging successive sales jobs through deceit. He describes a failed marriage in San Diego ruined by his lies and drinking, ending with a midnight argument in which his wife's truthful accusations made him want to beat her like he had beaten the boy in fourth grade.

Jack says he left and tried AA for the first time. As he wraps up and shakes Harold's hand with a strong grip, he calmly adds that he actually cut his wife's throat before leaving, beat the wino badly, and that violence makes him feel good the way drinking does. While holding Harold fast, he drives an icepick from his hoodie pocket between Harold's ribs. Harold cannot breathe and gropes for his newspaper as Jack thanks him for helping with his Fifth Step, admits killing people is his chief character defect, and walks away promising to keep Harold in his prayers.