Let me set the scene for you. A spa or watering place in a Southern state, where people come to sample the mineral waters to regain health. It's a beautiful, old hotel with a grand front porch, on which an army of green chairs face the street. Every winter for two hundred years, the town sleeps, waking in the spring when the fat and overindulgent make their annual pilgrimage to the spa. Among them is John Guest, who is 50, and David Saville who is half of his age.