Inhibited, self-conscious Trimble DeFeet is singularly unsuccessful as sole US representative for Laguiole Knife Company; he is also lead singer for Scapegoat, a band that plays Seventies hits by black artists in funky nightspots. Ahman Relinquiche is the personally magnetic, spiritually astute daughter of a sadistic mid-eastern despot. When Trimble saves Ahman"s life by performing an emergency tracheotomy with an heirloom knife on the grubby dance floor of Chubby Silk"s Nocturnal Experience, he does not expect to get his first massage--or his first lessons in self-redemption and universal love. In presenting a rigorous, reasonable case for the logic of love, she raises issues that lead Trimble far beyond his familiar hesitations to an exotic country where he finds unexpected redemption.