Chase Insteadman is a former child star whose current fame stems from tragedy: his fiancee Janice is trapped indefinitely on the International Space Station by a layer of low-orbit mines. They are both adrift, she in the stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctured both adrift, she in the stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctured by Upper Eastside dinner parties. Into Chase's world enters Perkus Tooth, a pop critic whose countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shaterring urgency.