Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0375706658, Paperback)

One of America's most provocative dramatists conquers new territory with this droll comedy of errors set in a Victorian drawing room.

Anna and Claire are two bantering, scheming "women of fashion" who live together on the fringes of society.  Anna has just become the mistress of a wealthy man, from whom she has received an enormous emerald.  Claire, meanwhile, is infatuated with a young girl and wants to enlist the jealous Anna's help for an assignation.  As the two women exchange barbs and taunt their hapless maid, Claire's inamorata arrives and sets off a crisis that puts both the valuable emerald and the women's future at risk.  Mamet brings his trademark tart dialogue and impeccable plotting, spiced with Wildean wit, to this wickedly funny comedy.