John and Alice are struggling, both financially and romantically. John works long hours as a shipping clerk for little pay and Alice is waiting impatiently for them to have enough money for in vitro. They have their secrets, their indiscretions, but they are in love.

     When Alice buys a brass teapot at an antique store, at first it bothers John. He has been preaching spending caps, nothing frivolous. However, the little pot soon comes in handy when their coffemaker quits working, joining the ranks of most of the appliances in their rundown home. They use the teapot to make coffee only once before they realize the brass antique has a much more valuable function.

     Throuch accidents and some basic reasoning, Alice and John soon realize that the teapot provides them with money anytime they phisically injure themselves. A burned wrist is worth a two dollar bill. A hand slammed in the trunk of their car...A handful of quarters.

     It is Alice who first sees this as a gift, a solution to their money problems. She knock herself unconscious with a shovel trying to provide for their little family. John sees the teapot as a threat to their established way of life, albiet humble. It is through an arguent about the very usefulness of the teapot that the two ironically discover a previously unknown aspect. When John tells Alice that she wouldn't be a good mother and she calls him a loser, bigger bills appear in the pot. Emotional pain pays more, and the stress of their situation causes them to begin telling all. Confessions that would end most marriages on the spot are only precursors to rattling disclosures that all but fill the teapot.

     The brass teapot quickly takes over their lives. They become reliant on the spoils of pinpricks and insults until they find themselves growing tolerant to the various pains. Soon, Alice is unable to have normal relationships with people unaffected by the pot. She sees them as undamaged goods, as money not yet yarvested. It is Alice, in the end, who begins to wonder just how much money a human life would be worth.