The Hannabys' Baywatch mansion is the setting for a Christmas that first draws Ginger Weiss into a crowded household and then leaves her acutely alone within it. The huge house offers children, family rituals, a view of the bay, books, and a telephone; in the course of one day, those domestic comforts become the backdrop to Ginger's recognition of a stranger whose image seems bound to her missing memories.

A House Full of Hannaby Traditions

George Hannaby and Rita Hannaby welcome Ginger into their Christmas celebration, which fills the mansion for several days with their three sons and their families. The scale of the gathering is conveyed through its children and their laughter: the house is not merely a place to stay, but the center of an extended family assembled for the holiday. George and Rita make a concerted effort to include their guest in traditions such as stringing popcorn and caroling around the neighborhood. On Christmas morning, Ginger joins the children around the mountain of presents. She crawls across the floor with the other adults, helping the children put together and play with their new toys. For a couple of hours, participation brings a reprieve from her despair; she feels, despite herself, assimilated into the Hannaby family. The change is temporary. At lunch, conversation turns to earlier holidays Ginger did not share with the family, and the same gathering that had offered inclusion reminds her of the history she lacks with them.

Retreat to the Bedroom

After lunch, Ginger pleads a headache and withdraws to her room. The room gives her privacy, while its splendid view of the bay briefly calms her. The view cannot stop her depression from deepening, and she hopes that Pablo Jackson will call the next day with news that he has studied memory blocks and is ready to hypnotize her again. Her retreat shows the limits of the mansion's hospitality: George and Rita can make room for her in their rituals, but they cannot supply the missing past she is trying to recover. The Hannabys' concern about Ginger's previous visit to Pablo is practical rather than condemnatory. They object that she went alone and risked an amnesic seizure without anyone there to help. They ask her to promise that Rita or a servant will drive her to and from Pablo's apartment in future, but do not try to forbid the unconventional treatment. In the mansion, care thus takes a concrete form—company and transportation—without resolving the uncertainty that makes Ginger seek treatment.

The Books and the Photograph

Beside the bedroom's familiar library books, Ginger discovers two new arrivals on her nightstand. One is a fantasy by Tim Powers, an author whose work she already knows and whose story of time-traveling trolls and British goblins during the American Revolution seems likely to appeal to her. A slip identifies it as a review copy. Rita has a friend who reviews books for the Globe and sometimes passes along titles before publication; knowing Ginger's taste, Rita has evidently placed these books in her room within the last day or two. The other book, Twilight in Babylon, is by Dominick Corvaisis, a writer Ginger has never heard of. Its brief description intrigues her, and the opening page absorbs her. Before she continues, she moves from the bed to a comfortable chair and looks at the author's photograph on the jacket. The change of position does not dispel her reaction: Corvaisis's commanding eyes and dark good looks stir an uneasiness bordering on fear, along with the peculiar sense that she knows him. A room intended as a quiet retreat has acquired a new focus, the image of a man she cannot place.

The Nighttime Call

Ginger reads Twilight in Babylon through Christmas afternoon, resenting the interruption when dinner with the Hannaby family calls her downstairs. Even during the meal, her attention remains drawn to the author. At ten o'clock she can withdraw without offending her hosts and return to her room. There, with only minimal pauses to look again at the photograph, she finishes the book at 3:45 in the morning. In the deep silence of the sleeping mansion, Ginger sits with the book in her lap and the jacket photograph turned up. Her growing belief that she has met Corvaisis—and that he is somehow part of her recent troubles—is tempered by her awareness that the intuition may be unreliable, like the mental disturbance associated with her fugue episodes. Still, uncertainty does not keep her passive. Shaky and distraught, she slips through the dark, empty rooms to the kitchen and uses the wall telephone to seek Corvaisis's number through Laguna Beach information. She considers the hour too late to wake him, but hopes that having a number will let her contact him in the morning. His number is unlisted. The silent telephone marks the mansion as a point of near-contact rather than reunion. A call, if the number had been available, might have radically changed the next few weeks and might have saved lives. Instead, the house holds Ginger at the threshold of action: its nighttime quiet permits her to make the attempt, while the unlisted number leaves the connection she senses unconfirmed. The mansion's role in the story rests on that contrast between intimate shelter and consequential distance.