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Intermission
I slumped into sleep last night at about eight p.m. My wife slept until, oh, ten-thirty p.m., then got up and departed for work. I woke suddenly some time later in the dark and rolled across the bed, frantic, to see what time it was, certain I was late for work.
It was only 1:45 a.m.
I stared at the clock in disbelief for a moment, then threw back the covers and ran out of the bedroom and down the hall into the kitchen, convinced that the bedside clock was wrong. But the clock in the kitchen said 1:43 a.m. One of them was wrong, but not as badly as I'd feared.
I went back to bed but couldn't sleep, so I sat up with Empire Falls for awhile before conducting business at my computer for an hour or so. Later I went back to bed and sat there, reading some more, waiting for sleep to revisit me.
Taking an intermission in the midst of a good night's sleep is interesting. Something to do with the way the world reacts to you, like you've caught it thieving jewelry from your wife's bureau. The night is cold and dark, but things are happening. On the street there's a rush of air from a large city truck as it begins to sweep clean the streets, a loud siren beeping in a slow pattern. My neighbor's alarm clock goes off; I've never heard it before, and it sounds like six children screaming "Fire! Fire! Just kidding!" (Come on, it was three a.m.) When I finally slept and woke again, it was 6:30, and the sun still wasn't quite up. Things felt like they should. The intermission felt like a dream I was fortunate enough to remember clearly.
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