Laguna Beach, California, is the coastal setting for a stretch of Dominick Corvaisis’s life in which outward success coexists with increasingly troubling sleepwalking. The place appears through both the confines of Dom’s house and its open view toward the sea, grounding his private disorientation in a landscape of everyday calm.

Setting and First Appearance

The narrative places Dom in Laguna Beach during a period marked by the dates November 7 to December 2. At home, he wakes in the darkness at the back of a large foyer closet, curled behind coats and jackets rather than in the bed where he went to sleep. The episode establishes the house as the immediate setting of his unexplained nocturnal wandering: he has experienced similar nights before, but cannot recall leaving his bed.

The surrounding geography offers a striking contrast to that enclosed, disordered awakening. From his patio, Dom looks across the pleasant slopes of Laguna Beach as they descend toward the sea. The setting is not merely a backdrop to the episode; its daylight openness stands opposite the hidden, dark interior in which he finds himself after sleepwalking.

Dom’s Home and Growing Unease

After checking his feet, Dom concludes that he has not left the house during the night. He has awakened in closets twice before, and the absence of cuts, scratches, or dirt supports his sense that his apparent journey has taken place within the boundaries of his own home. He imagines having traveled miles, only to recognize that any such distance must have been made through repeated circuits of the small house.

A long shower eases the muscular discomfort left by the night, and by breakfast Dom feels nearly recovered. On the patio, with the coastal view before him, he turns to his work and suspects that the pressure of his success is contributing to the sleepwalking. His first novel, Twilight in Babylon, has brought an unusually large advance from Random House, a sale of the movie rights that helped provide the down payment on his house, and selection by the Literary Guild as a main selection. The acclaim follows months of demanding work and years of preparation, yet Dom experiences the change in fortune as abrupt and difficult to feel he has earned. In Laguna Beach, the house purchased in part through that success becomes both a mark of achievement and the setting of his private loss of control.

Las Brisas and Confiding in Parker

On the first Sunday in December, Dom meets Parker Faine for lunch on the terrace at Las Brisas, overlooking the sea. The weather is holding, and the terrace is shaded by an umbrella table; gull calls, the tang of the sea, and nearby star jasmine give the scene a sensuous ease. Against this calm setting, Dom tells Parker every embarrassing and distressing detail of his worsening somnambulism.

The conversation makes Laguna Beach a place of disclosure as well as disturbance. Parker is Dom’s best friend and perhaps the one person with whom he can speak so openly, despite their marked differences in build, habits, temperament, and age. Parker is fifteen years older, long accustomed to wealth and fame, and unable to understand Dom’s uneasiness about the money and notoriety arriving with Twilight in Babylon. Their contrasting clothes even make them look as if they had arrived for different engagements. The terrace lunch brings those differences into view while giving Dom the chance to name, to another person, the condition that has been unfolding inside his home.