Against the backdrop of a lavish costume party, the reader is introduced to the novel’s first-person narrator, who claims that his name doesn’t matter and describes himself only as “a phantom, a figment” (1). He retells the party’s events, hosted at the extravagant house of Octavia Whitmore, the narrator’s boss at the law firm of Seasons, Ustis & Malveaux. Including the narrator, Seasons has only three Black employees. The narrator is dressed as a Roman centurion, but the other Black lawyers, Franklin and Riley, have come as a prisoner and a busboy respectively. Riley informs the narrator that the party is in fact a competition between the three of them: Whoever wins will be promoted to shareholder, and the losers will be fired. The narrator badly needs a promotion because he is saving up for a cosmetic procedure to give his son, Nigel, “a normal face” (5). Realizing that his costume will work against him—because shareholders don’t like “angry black men” (6)—he goes to Octavia for help. Out of the several alternate costumes she offers him, the narrator selects a Zulu chief outfit consisting of a feathered headdress and a loincloth.