Plot summary

Larry Mann, Phil Cooper and Bob Walker of Chicago-based Lodestar Laboratories, which manufactures industrial lubricants, are attending a convention in Wichita, they doing most of their big business at the hospitality suite they are hosting. Marketing reps and friends Larry and Phil, who are company veterans, are old hands at the convention shtick. While married Larry, who nonetheless has a wandering eye, is outwardly the typical salesman in doing whatever he feel needs to be done to make sales, divorced Phil has a new sense of calm to him, whether that be because he no longer cares or of something else bigger in his life. This convention is Bob's first, he only having worked for the company in research straight out of school. Newlywed Bob is conservative, a bit naive and earnest to a fault, he leading a life following the scripture as literally as he can. Bob's role in the threesome is to add an air of knowledge in the scientific aspects of what they are selling, regardless of if he has any of that knowledge. According to Larry, the success or failure of the trip can be measured solely on if they land the account of Dick Fuller, the president of the largest manufacturing company in the Midwest, he who they have never met. As they await Fuller's arrival, not a guarantee that he will actually grace their suite of those at the convention, the three colleagues get into larger discussions of their work in relation to their lives, especially in the area of organized religion.—Huggo