Twenty-nine-year-old Tommy Castelli, whose original name was Tony, once had dreams of escaping the poverty and chaos of his dead-end neighborhood, but he quit school at age 16 to hobnob with small-time criminals and soon made the mistake of joining them in holding up a liquor store. To get him out of trouble, his father and others arranged his marriage to Rosa, a “plain” and “lank” girl whose father gave them a candy store in Greenwich Village to run. For protection, he was told to change his name from Tony to Tommy. His life now under the thumb of Rosa’s family is one of unrelenting boredom and drudgery, and every day, he curses the store, his wife, and his past mistakes.

A regular customer at the store is a 10-year-old girl who comes in every Monday to buy colored tissue paper for her “rock-faced” mother. One day, while fetching the paper for the girl, Tommy uses the vantage point of a surveillance mirror that his wife installed and sees the girl shoplift two candy bars. His first impulse to grab and punish her is checked by memories of his own youthful mistakes and of his beloved Uncle Dom, who was hassled by police, eventually went to jail, and then disappeared.