Fleeing a troubled marriage, a thirty-something punk rocker takes a seemingly benign grant-writing position at a psychiatric hospital in Southern California. Soon, the narrator is enmeshed in a struggle between Dr. Bishop, a brilliant but batty research psychologist, and Frank Walters, a dapper, blind advertising executive who believes that Dr. Bishop's research has lucrative implications. It is up to the narrator to make sure that Frank Walters is unable to harness the findings for questionable ends, as he begins a metaphysical journey that may lead him to murder.