MARK CHASEN HAS ALL BUT FORGOTTEN HIS ROOTS since he took a teaching post at the University of Georgia. A downtown revitalization meeting at Columbia University brings him back to the Lower East Side of Manhattan to learn the success of businesses that have withstood the changes of time. On a walking tour of once familiar streets, he realizes that he had forgotten hondling, 'bargaining tactic' the manner in which the local venders conduct business. The disparity of his slow-paced life in the South as compared to his former hectic lifestyle becomes blatantly clear in this unforgettable visit. He never anticipated the unexpected return of an unrequited love, or the joy, anguish, intrigue, and danger it would bring. It all comes back to him when the celebrated, incomparable Gabrielle Tourneau, for whom hondling is as natural as breathing, inexplicably, and with hurricane force, enters his world and turns it upside down.