Strangers

control of himself.
        Yesterday, Friday, he had finally gone to his physician, Dr. Paul Cobletz, in Newport Beach. Haltingly, he told Cobletz all about his sleepwalking, but he found himself unwilling and unable to express the true depth and seriousness of his concern. Dom had always been a very private person, made so by a childhood spent in a dozen foster homes and under the care of surrogate parents, some of whom were indifferent or even hostile, all of whom were dismayingly temporary presences in his life. He was reluctant to share his most important and personal thoughts except through the mouths of imaginary characters in his fiction.
        As a result, Cobletz was not unduly worried. After a full physical examination, he pronounced Dom exceptionally fit. He attributed the somnambulism to stress, to the upcoming publication of the novel.
        "You don't think we should do any tests?" Dom asked.
        Cobletz said, "You're a writer, so of course your imagination is running away with you. Brain tumor, you're thinking. Am I right?"
        "Well… yes."
        "Any headaches? Dizziness? Blurred vision?"
        "No."
        "I've examined your eyes. There's no change in your retinas, no indication of intracrania) pressure. Any inexplicable vomiting?"
        "No. Nothing like that."
        "Giddy spells? Giggling or periods of euphoria without apparent reason? Anything of that nature?"
        "No."
        "Then I see no reason for tests at this stage."
        "Do you think I need… psychotherapy?"
        "Good heavens, no! I'm sure this will pass soon."
        Finished dressing, Dom watched Cobletz close the file. He said, "I thought perhaps sleeping pills-"
        "No, no," Cobletz said. "Not yet. I don't believe in drugs as a treatment of first resort. Here's what you do, Dom. Get away from the writing for a few weeks. Don't do anything cerebral. Get plenty of physical exercise. Go to bed tired every night, so tired that you can't even bother to think about the book you've been working on. A few days of that, and you'll be cured. I'm convinced of it."
        

    ***
        
        Saturday, Dom began the treatment Dr. Cobletz prescribed, devoting himself to physical activity, though with more single-mindedness and flagellant persistence than the doctor had suggested. Consequently, he plummeted into a deep sleep the moment he put his head upon the pillow, and in the morning he did not wake in a closet.
        He did not wake in bed, either. This time, he was in the garage.
        He regained consciousness in a breathless state of terror, gasping, his heart hammering so hard it seemed capable of shattering his ribs with its furious blows. His mouth was dry, his hands curled into fists. He was cramped and sore, partly from Saturday's excess of exercise, but partly from the unnatural and uncomfortable position in which he had been sleeping. During the night he evidently had taken two folded canvas dropcloths from a shelf above the workbench, and had squirreled into a narrow service space behind the furnace. That was where he lay now, concealed beneath the tarps.
        "Concealed" was the right word. He had not dragged the tarpaulins over himself merely for warmth. He had taken refuge behind the furnace and beneath the canvas because he had been hiding from something.
        From what?
        Even now, as Dominick pushed the tarps aside and struggled to sit up, as sleep receded and as his bleary eyes adjusted to the shadow-filled garage, the intense anxiety that had accompanied him up from sleep still clung tenaciously. His pulse pounded.
        Fear of what?
        Dreaming. In his nightmare he must have been running and hiding from some monster. Yes. Of course. His peril in the nightmare caused him to sleepwalk, and when, in the dream, he sought a place to hide, he also hid in reality, creeping behind the furnace.
        His white Firebird loomed ghostlike in the light from the wall vents and the single window above the workbench. Shuffling across the garage, he felt as if he were a revenant himself.
        In the house, he went directly to his office. Morning light filled the room, making him squint. He sat at the desk in his filthy pajama bottoms, switched on the word processor, and studied the documents on the diskette that he had left in the machine. The diskette was as he had left it on Thursday; it contained no new material.
        Dom had hoped