Recovering alcoholic John Hemingway takes the job of night manager in a seedy bus station, where a robbery and a missing bus test his resolve to stay sober.

John tries to make amends to ex-wife Carol and son Tony he ran out on.

John's son tries to form a father-son relationship; Chester disappears and is found dead; John must deal with a battle to the death between Mahalia and her sister Linda, who stole Mahalia's first husband.

At a drag show, John runs into his old college roommate, who's playing Marlene Dietrich; Mahalia is targeted anew by a blackmailer she thought she'd paid off.

It happened one night, nearly a decade ago. Or so says John, who recalls a visit he made to the bus station in 1987, when he first encountered Catherine and had a profound impact on his current friends.

John's order to train his boss's harebrained nephew, who been in AA for a year but is still a basketcase.

Officer Eggers develops a crush on John after he rescues her from a gunman; Dexter's business languishes after a customer puts a curse on the diner.

John goes 30 days without alcohol, and wants to get back together with his wife. Before he can reach her, she serves him with divorce papers.

Hemingway and Dexter get stuck together in a crummy motel with a cage full of chickens; when a baby is abandoned in the station dumpster, Officer Eggers kidnaps it.

A young woman informs John that he's one of three men who could be her biological father.

Dexter accompanies John on a visit to his boyhood home in Chicago -- where John learns his departed father never departed. Meanwhile, Hampton gets flowers from his male doctor.

John tells Catherine that she would love him if she could forget about their past together. Later, he logs onto an computer on-line service as ""Fitzgerald"" and types flirtatious messages to a user named ""Ella."" The two seem perfect for each other and arrange a date -- only to discover that ""Ella"" is of course Catherine. Meanwhile, Dexter tries to convince filmmaker Spike Lee to let him cater the meals for Spike and his film crew while they are in St. Louis. When the overzealous Dexter accidentally injures Spike, who ends up in the hospital, the film company hires Dexter to impersonate Spike in the film until he recovers. Also, John represents Mahalia during a deposition with an opposing lawyer in her custody battle for her children but does more damage than good, while Mahalia almost ruins her case by dating the lawyer.

John's mother, an inveterate con artist, begs him to bail her out of jail, and then becomes the obvious suspect when a batch of credit card slips goes missing from the bus station.

A startled John begins questioning his sexuality after another male alcoholic visits to make amends -- by apologizing for seducing him.

Hemingway is feeling suicidal on his birthday, but discovers new meaning when the entire bus station is held host age by a gun-toting lunatic.

Good fortune follows the appearance of a faint image of Christ on the bus station's wall.

John eagerly accepts when Catherine asks him to father her child, but it's a problematic plan. Meanwhile, Dexter is a housemate in a project similar to MTV's The Real World, a reality-based television show called ""Reality House."" He moves into a rent-free loft with six roommates that he has never met, and their actions are all recorded by an ever-present camera crew. However, Dexter violates the group's cardinal rule --always be ""real"" -- by repeatedly advertising his lunch counter.

Now that they're both free and clear, Carly and John agree to a date, but advice from Dexter keeps them apart -- at first. Later on, nothing can. No longer a bum, Oscar opens a shoeshine stand in the bus station. Unfortunately, no one is brave enough to sit under the giant shoe sign hanging menacingly overhead. Meanwhile, John's landlord, Mr. Soulaymanulo comes to the station to berate John for causing a high electricity bill with his electric car. Mr. Soulaymanulo and Mahalia are immediately attracted and begin dating. Later, John gets a huge rebate from the government for driving the electric car, and he pays his landlord extra. When John announces that he and Carly are getting married, everyone expects that some sort of disaster will prevent it. At the wedding, Hampton accidentally reveals that he is a homosexual. Then, after John and Carly exchange vows, Catherine arrives and tells Dexter that she is pregnant with John's child...

John takes stock of himself while helping a runaway teen realize that she can go home.

John's given food for thought when an old writer friend bases his first book on John's bacchanalian past, a neo-Nazi named Steve Hitler demands to charter a bus, with support from the ACLU, and a sleazy health inspector threatens Dexter with blackmail.

John is upset when his son joins a religious cult, and enlists Dexter's help; Egger's embarassing parents visit.

John's daughter appears topless in a skin magazine, Officer Eggers holds an attractive stranger hostage unless he agrees to impregnate her.

Catherine breaks up with John because ""things are too good"", Dexter discovers that his new love Annie has a surprising past, Mahalia loses her new dog, and John's suspicions are aroused by the kindly gentleman who returns it.

After he discovers a collection of short stories he wrote as a young man, earnest John Hemingway enters a writing contest that could send him to Paris, and Catherine hints that she'd like to accompany him. Unfortunately, the story is from John's alcoholic period, and he actually may not have written it: acerbic newspaper chief editor Otto Friedling accuses John of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway. In a black-and-white fantasy sequence, John's autobiographical story comes to life, with the fantasy John Hemingway (Miller) a would-be writer for whose love both Catherine and Carly vie.

Is it destiny that hooks up John with a pretty yoga instructor for a health spa vacation that he planned with Catherine? If so, why is Catherine on their train? Alone at first, Catherine meets her former high school boyfriend, Todd; and John, who has dumped the annoying Penelope, now does everything he can to keep Catherine from reuniting with Todd.