Two twenty-something women dream of the ideal man and slowly realize that reality is very different from their fantasies.

A female Neuroscience Researcher develops a rare form of melophobia after receiving an unsolicited portable media player loaded with music for testing in her laboratory and experiencing a musical Stendhal Syndrome. Witnessing her colleagues' strangely changing behavior over repeated exposure to the same piece of music, she flees to find shelter from the pervasive sounds of music in her environment and an increasingly frightening world.

The folks who populate the rundown hotel in this story have all come there from someplace which offered a modicum of hope. Gloria, who runs the place, earns most of her money as a stripper. She lives there with her two daughters and a son with an untreated brain tumor. Charlie, who is forever in and out of jail, is Gloria's sometime lover. A recent check-in is there hoping she can work up the courage to commit suicide, since her rich doctor husband ran off and left her. Another resident is Tim, who keeps company with his dog and his booze in equal measure. A schoolteacher comes by from time to time, hoping to do these people some good, but in choosing this lot to work with, she proves to be just as much of a loser as the rest of them.