Strangers

powerful claim on her attention. At ten o'clock, when she could at last gracefully withdraw without offending anyone, she cast out and gathered in a final series of Christmas wishes for happiness and health, then returned to her room.
        She began reading where she had left off, and with a minimum of interruptions to scrutinize the author's photograph again, she finished the book at three-forty-five A. M. In the deep post-midnight silence that had settled over Baywatch, Ginger sat with the book in her lap, the jacket photo turned up, her eyes fixed on Dominick Corvaisis' hauntingly familiar face. Minute by minute, as she sat in her strange, silent, one-sided communion with the writer's image, Ginger became increasingly convinced that she had met the man somewhere and that he was, in some unimaginable fashion, part of her recent troubles. Although her steadily growing conviction was tempered by the realization that this intuition might be part of the same mental disturbance that generated her fugues, and might therefore be unreliable, her agitation and excitement increased until, shaky and distraught, she was finally driven to action.
        Leaving her room with exaggerated stealth, she went downstairs, through the dark and untenanted rooms of the great slumbering house, into the kitchen. She switched on the light and used the wall phone to call information in Laguna Beach. It was one o'clock in the morning in California, too rude an hour to wake Corvaisis. But if she could get a number for him, she would sleep better, knowing that she could get in touch with him in the morning. To her dismay, though not to her surprise, his number was unlisted.
        Switching off the kitchen light and creeping quietly back to her room, Ginger made up her mind to write Corvaisis in the morning, care of his publisher. She would dispatch the message by express mail, with an urgent plea to the publisher to forward the letter immediately.
        Perhaps attempting to contact him was precipitate and irrational. Perhaps she had never met him, and perhaps he had nothing to do with her bizarre affliction. Perhaps he'd think she was a crackpot. But if this million-to-one shot proved a good bet, the payoff might be her very salvation, which was sufficient reward to risk making a fool of herself.
        
        Laguna Beach, California.
        As yet unaware that an advance review copy of his book had made a vital link between himself and a deeply troubled woman in Boston, Dom remained at Parker Faine's house until midnight, discussing the possible nature of the conspiracy that he had theorized. Neither he nor Parker had enough information to put together a detailed or even slightly useful picture of the conspirators, but the very process of sharing and exploring the mystery with a friend made it less frightening.
        They agreed that Dom should not fly to Portland and begin his odyssey until he saw how bad his sleepwalking became now that he had thrown away the Valium and Dalmane. Maybe somnambulism would not recur, as he expected it would, in which case he could travel without fear of losing control of himself in a distant place. But if he resumed his night rambling, he would need a couple weeks to decide on the best way of restraining himself during sleep, before heading to Portland.
        Besides, by waiting awhile, he might receive additional letters from his unknown correspondent. Those clues might make the trek from Portland to Mountainview unnecessary or might target a specific area along that route as the place where Dom would encounter some sight or experience that would free his imprisoned memories.
        By midnight, when Dom rose to leave Parker's hillside house, the artist had become so intrigued by the situation that he looked as if he would be up for hours yet, his mind spinning. "You're sure it's wise to be alone tonight?" he asked at the front door.
        Dom stepped outside onto a walkway patterned with spikey geometric forms of darkness and wedge-shaped slices of yellow light, which were formed by the beams of a decorative iron lantern half obscured by shadow-casting palm fronds. Looking back at his friend, he said, "We've been through this before. It might not be wise, but it's the only way."
        "You'll call if you need help?"
        "I'll call," Dom said.
        "And take those precautions we talked about."
        Dom attended to those precautions a short while later at home.