Three young boys pool their money and pay V, a kindhearted prostitute, to strip for them. Afterward, she drives them home to the suburbs -- but then her car breaks down. It's just as well, though, because a mobster named Waltzer is after her, and V realizes the suburbs are the perfect place to hide. But things get a lot more complicated when V falls in love with Tom, a single father who is unaware of her real profession.

On a hot sunny day in Kansas, 1973, Mike Kinross's parents tell him he's going on holiday to his Uncle Dan's house. But instead they drop him off at the juvenile unit of the local mental institution.