Mercy

In a neighborhood that looks unremarkable apart from the steady demolition of modest houses to make room for oversized new ones, a striking young woman waits for her husband to return from prison. Arthur Baladino is being released through a humanitarian leave arrangement, on the reasoning that he is now too frail to pose a threat to anyone.

Next door, a little boy in a baseball uniform asks his father what happens to a person after death. The father is about to face that question in a way he never expected. Down the street, a young woman is trying to rebuild her life after her husband has squandered their savings, her own money included, and finally their house, through day trading carried out in the basement.

Elsewhere in the neighborhood, several women and a pair of men look back on a past that survives only in memory and imagine how things might have turned out had they been more prudent, more patient, or more fortunate. Two of the men are skilled fire-setters who have at times worked for Arthur Baladino.

The people in this world live among circumstances that offer them little comfort. They look for mercy, if love cannot provide it, in the imperfect and temporary bonds they form with others who are searching as well.