A quartet of interconnected short pieces examining the nature of violence, and its relation to the psyche and the human body. A suicide bomber who speaks from beyond death, who killed only himself when he might have killed multitudes and who pulled the string on his belt just to make everything stop (When They Quiet Down, I Start) is followed by a the anguished conversation of a couple who have lost their only son in a war, and all that remains of him is a photograph of the lower half of his left leg (Clarisse and Larmon). The Rich Silk Of It tracks the last five seconds of the life of a young, beautiful woman about to be murdered by her ex-fiance; the final, eponymous piece finds the one woman who was the wife of the bomber, the mother of the dead girl and of the lost soldier lying joyously in a display bed in a department store, refusing to leave until the authoritarian Woman in Blazer lies down with her for a kiss.