The lives and romantic entanglements of a group of young adults who have achieved “overnight” success in Los Angeles.

Ray meets Helen during a random collision of altered fates. They are strangers, over sixty, lonely, luckless. He hit rock bottom in the big city, she on a small farm. It’s a struggle not to give up or in. But then separately and without warning, each becomes overwhelmed by unrelated and extraordinary events.

A loathsome man ends up dead, but it’s not clear who’s to blame. If ever a person got what he deserved, it’s James Urbanksi, an abusive drunk who steals from his wife, Joyce, and promises her close friend Cynthia Kellogg that she’ll be the next target of his rage. At a group outing, James bleeds to death after someone cuts his throat. But because he’s such a terrible human being, police aren’t sure which of his acquaintances decided to kill him.

A young Texas good ol’ boy has a knack with electronic equipment, and that talent gets him a job as a roadie with a raucous traveling rock-and-roll show.

Doc Jenkins is a singer/songwriter who tries to leave his singer/songwriter roots to be a music “mogul”, and gets tangled up in a bad publishing deal. He enlists a team of cronies, including a young singer and his former singing partner, Blackie Buck, and together they execute his plan to get out of the deal. He gets help from a stereotypical small-time concert promoter. Honey Carder is the love interest/ex-wife.

The lives of an ex-con, a coffee-shop owner, and a young couple looking to make it rich intersect in the fictional and hypnotic Rain City.

Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.