The Austrian architect, Sebastian Winter, flies to San Diego from Vienna to attend a conference, filled with apprehension about returning to the city where he had once lived, until the love of his life, Claudia, without warning, stepped out of their car and out of his life, never to return.

At the final banquet Winter is seized by the fear that his wife could suddenly appear among the guests. He gets drunk and in driving home kills a pedestrian and is arrested. While in jail awaiting bail from Vienna, he relives the past that has led up to this point in his life. A young murderer placed in the cell with him becomes a catalyst for Winter's life.

He views the young man as the personification of a statue of Saint Sebastian which Claudia had admired in a village church in Tuscany but which had made him feel inferior. The bail money arrives, and Winter expects to forget the entire episode like a bad dream. But the experience will not leave him, the trauma will not end. The aesthete who had always considered himself superior to others and in control of his life has learned by being thrust into reality that he too is vulnerable.