Harper Ketch has a delicious little system for picking up girls, eliciting their sympathy via the old "dead wife" routine. Nothing required save a complete lack of shame and a couple of basic props: his old wedding ring (never tell 'em you're actually divorced) and a picture of the tragic young wife in question, never mind that it's just an old photograph of a complete stranger that he fished out of the trash. Except... someone does mind - the girl in that photograph. She's onto him; and before long he'll wish he'd never met Samantha Martin, and never heard of The Philip Phenomenon.