50 year old Steven Goldman waits for Todd Holloway, a 15 year old student, to leave school, and beats him up in front of his friends. Afterwards Goldman calmly goes home to have dinner with his family while he waits for the police to arrest him. The key to his reprehensible behavior becomes apparent through a series of flashbacks to his childhood, when his family moved from a harsh Canada winter to the raw heat of Los Angeles in the early sixties.