25-year old Ivy League transplant, Tal, ventured West wide-eyed and earnest in his desire to write. Instead, he found a real job, lost the real job, and is now adrift on floes of temp jobs. A shadow at the mercy of his stuntwoman-girlfriend, who looks to L. Ron Hubbard for her own answers, he steals a week to escape from L.A. to New Orleans where out of the serendipitous chaos of Mardi Gras his best friend from college appears. Land Morales is brilliantly mad, but despite a once inseparable friendship with Tal, the two have careened into altogether different orbits. The empty space between...