Tender Branson is a hijacker who, upon mutineering the aircraft, now tells his life's story to the indestructible black box for people to find later. He tells of his cult involvement in the Creedish cult. Ten years prior, he and several others missed a mass suicide, having been spread abroad to earn money which they send back to the cult. The cult has slowly disbanding by suicide ever since.
His cell phone number is very similar to the suicide prevention hotline phone number, and because of a typo on a flyer, he gets calls from suicidal people. He mentions Trevor Hollis, who is driven to suicidal despair because he can't stop having full-blown apocalyptic episodes about catastrophes. His life has always been death-themed, he mentions. At a grave, he once randomly encountered his own sister, Fertility. He checks in with his Federal watch guards who try to keep him from killing himself.
One day, Fertility herself calls Tender, thinking it is the suicide hotline. She invites him to meet up with her for sex, but Tender hangs up on her, knowing by her voice that she is his sister. He later receives a call from the Creedish cult. Someone is making fun of him at a bus stop once, and it ends up being his twin brother, either for real or in a vivid hallucination. When Adam poisons the caseworker, Tender believes he was the intended target. The police try and pin him to the murder, but he escapes.
He rises to fame, being the last remaining suicidal cult survivor from the Creedish church. Some influential people find him and give him a full Hollywood-styled makeover to make him more appealing. He becomes a star, and everyone waits for the day he will kill himself. Tender miraculously predicts the Super Bowl turnout. In a manic scene, he crashes his car with Adam in the front seat, and Adam is impaled through the eye. He begs for a coup de grace from Tender, so Tender beats him to death, escaping to Oregon with Fertility. She turns up pregnant and leaves him behind. He "reads about a hijacking" before deciding to hijack her plane, but then it occurs to him that he must be insane. The novel ends mid-sentence, where it started, leaving the reader to guess whether he escaped the falling plane or dies.
