New York City. March 1986. The world is made of junk: junk bonds, junk food, junk powder. At least, that's how it seems to a woman in a downtown walkup, where every day for five years she's been opening her door to people engaged in the culture of the moment. Some of them are getting famous, some are changing their sex, while others are dying. But all of them are buying her heroin, and one of them is a rat: one morning she opens the door to a drug-enforcement agent - Dick.