Wasting Perfect Conditions

The sight of the new Buick almost makes Heyward Jennings physically ill.

At sixty years old, the prominent Atlanta banker can no longer oblige himself to drive another of the sensible gray Buicks that First Mercantile Security Bank provides its executives as company cars. At the twilight of his career-and the brink of old age-Heyward realizes his life, much like the dull gray cars, is guarded and boring.

On impulse, Heyward retires and moves, with his wife Elizabeth, to their beach house on the Atlantic coast. There, he begins to experience the kind of thrills he''s always avoided. Finished playing by the rules, he creates a new life, where Buicks and prudence are only a distant memory, and excitement and adventure occasionally take place on the wrong side of the law.

With the encouragement of a well-endowed lesbian and his redneck cousins, Heyward, in the face of a tragedy surrounding his best friend, steps so far out of his careful and cautious ways that he crosses a line-and soon realizes there''s no way back.