Second Person Singular

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The moment the lawyer opened his eyes he knew he’d be tired for the rest of the day. He wasn’t sure whether he’d heard it on the radio or read it in the newspaper, but he’d come across a specialist who described sleep in terms of cycles. Often the reason people are tired, the specialist explained, was not due to insufficient sleep but rather a sudden awakening before the cycle had run its course. The lawyer did not know anything about these cycles — their duration, their starting point, their ending point — but he did know that this morning, in essence almost every morning, he rose right in the middle of one. Had he ever experienced what must be the wonderful sensation of waking up naturally, at the tail end of a cycle? He wasn’t sure. He imagined sleep cycles like the waves of the sea and himself as a surfer upon them, gliding toward shore and then suddenly, violently, being tossed into the water, waking up with a terror he did not fully understand.

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