In New York in the mid-1980s, Prior Walter learns he has AIDS and his lover Louis, unable to cope, walks out; Joe Pitt, a closeted Mormon law clerk, is courted by the ruthless lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn while his wife Harper drifts into pill-fed fantasies. Their lives cross over two long plays, with ghosts, a nurse and former drag queen named Belize, and an angel who names Prior a prophet.