 On the 24th morning after the decampment of his wife, Patty Lareine (Debra Sandlund), Tim Madden (Ryan O'Neal), a former bartender and ex-con who was imprisoned for dealing cocaine, currently struggling to make a living as a writer and who is prone to blackouts, awakens from a two-week bender to discover a tattoo reading "Madeline" on his arm, and a bloodbath in his car.He shortly finds a woman's severed head in his marijuana stash in the woods, and the new Provincetown police chief Luther Regency (Wings Hauser) shacked up with his former girlfriend Madeleine (Isabella Rossellini).Flashing back, Madden remembers the time when he encouraged Madeleine to go swinging with a Li'l Abnerish couple from down South, the fundamentalist preacher Big Stoop and his Daisy Mae-ish wife, Patty Lareine, whose ad Tim had come across in "Screw" magazine.