![]() ![]() A man I knew vaguely from the office told me in passing that his and his boyfriend’s Sleeps kicked at one another incessantly and flicked pieces of rolled-up paper at the neighbour’s Bengal cat. A rumour persisted in my building that the husband and wife in the penthouse had locked their Sleeps in separate bathrooms to prevent them wrestling violently on the carpet. Couples and cohabiters were the worst off – the Sleeps seemed more prone to behaving badly in numbers, as though they were egging one another on. Experiences varied – a girl I knew complained that her Sleep sat ceaselessly atop her chest of drawers, swinging its heels and humming, while another confided that her Sleep trailed its fingers down her calves, demanding cones of mint ice cream. ![]() Sleep was always tall and slender but beyond that there were few common traits. People rang one another, apologising for the lateness, asking friends if they too were playing host to uninvited guests. In those days, it was still surprising to sit up and see the silver lean of Sleep, its casual elbows. This was before they became so familiar, the shadow-forms of Sleep in halls and kitchens, before the mass displacement left so many people wakeful at uncertain hours of the night. When I was twenty-seven, my Sleep stepped out of me like a passenger from a train carriage, looked around my room for several seconds, then sat down in the chair beside my bed. ![]()
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