It’s the first night, so we can’t help but laugh. 

‘Typical,’ I say as she turns into me.

The cough is both dry and wet. It sounds awfully painful. And long. And right outside the window. Then we realise that it’s a sinister cough, not something caught in the throat, but something trying to get out, something growing.

I get up and close the window, muffling the noise. She watches me in this strange, silent disbelief. Her fatigue is like awe.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I tell her. ‘We won’t notice it.’

She exhales into my neck, points out the cracks in the ceiling and chipped paint on the window seal, then moves her pale, little body closer. My hand runs a fingernail along her spine, scratching in places and only glossing over others. At one stage she squirms, says it hurts, and I stop and roll over. 

***

The following day I ask how Issy slept and she turns to me with these heavy, bruised looking eyes.

‘Are you kidding?’ She exhales. ‘All night it sounded like a fucking dog was being whipped.’  

I say, ‘Oh, same,’ with my head down, fingering a scab on my thigh that I can’t remember getting.

Truthfully, I slept okay. I stay quiet.

The next night she moves to the couch to be further away. 

She says, ‘I feel dirty, listening to that. It makes my skin feel dirty.’

I decide not to leave. It took long enough to find the place – I deserve to enjoy it, to relax in my own bedroom. But I don’t sleep either. At times, the cough sounds like it’s in the room with me: under the bed, in the armoire, down the crane of my neck—my nape, for god’s sake! In the morning Issy is all upset. 

‘We can’t live like this!’ she says.

I say, ‘I know.’ 

But what am I supposed to do? It’s not like it’s some dog or rock music, or people having loud sex. No, it’s a person’s cough. A sick person’s cough, for God’s sake.

I tell her it’ll stop soon – he’ll either get better or die. By the sound of its increasing strain, I’d wager on the latter. In the meantime, I suggest, let’s try earplugs. Issy says they give her headaches when she wakes up, and I say, ‘Issy? Is it better than no sleep?’ She scowls at me, but she’s so tired that the tears in her eyes make it look like pity. 

***

Two weeks pass without sleep and we end up at the doctor’s office. Issy’s got an ear infection. Suppose she didn’t clean her plugs enough. I told her: ‘Replace or clean. Replace or clean.’ She doesn’t listen. 

The doctor asks why she wears them.

‘Loud neighbour,’ Issy says, ‘no sleep.’ She’s got her hand on my thigh, right beside the scab. The doctor looks at me like it’s my fault or something.

Issy is prescribed sleeping tablets and takes them as soon as we get home. Soon enough, she’s horizontal on the couch, facing downward, head buried in a pillow.

‘How many did you take,’ I ask. 

‘Enough,’ she replies, muffled. 

‘Okay. Where’d you put the rest?’ I get close to her ear so she can hear me.

She’s drowsy, her face is melting.

‘You can’t take them,’ she mumbles, ‘they’re prescribed for me. The doctor said they’ll interfere with your–’ 

‘No,’ I say. ‘They are for both of us.’ I don’t raise my voice or anything. ‘That’s why Dr Yang looked at me when he said to take them.’ 

She doesn’t reply, so I shake her a little. Nothing rough. 

‘Where the fuck are the tablets? Issy?’ 

And she’s gone. 

I search the house. I’m in her underwear drawer and expect to find, I don’t know, another man’s underwear, but I don’t. Just lingerie that I’ve never seen her wear before, still with the tag on, and no pills. I search thoroughly, emptying the drawer, spreading knickers all over the bedroom floor. 

Soon after, I’m in the vegetable crisper and it’s all rotten and I say, ‘We need to clean this out soon, the rot has gone black and liquified everything. I can’t tell celery from broccoli.’ 

Of course, she doesn’t reply. 

I rifle through the sludge with the tips of my fingers. Gagging a bit. No pills. 

From down the hallway this thundering wet grunt, the sound of a car backfiring in mud, crashes right into my chest.

I check my watch and see that it’s one in the afternoon. ‘Don’t you have a job? You bum!’ I yell, regret, repent. The neighbour doesn’t need abuse as well as illness.

The last place I figure she’d stash the pills is her makeup drawer in the bathroom – and I’m searching respectfully, not breaking anything, when another cough blares, sounding as if it’s in the shower beside me. Right fucking beside me. I know it isn’t. I know it’s just us. But I get spooked, and I accidently rip out the entire drawer. Blush, eyeliner, concealer, everything smashes on the tiles. So I’m on my knees rifling through the debris for these fucking pills and I get to thinking, if Issy just told me where they were in the first place, she’d still have an intact draw of cosmetics. If she just told me I wouldn’t be covered in goop and glass. Typical that her lipstick is the exact shade of my blood. 

Still no pills. I figure my retribution will be her waking up to find the makeup trashed and scattered. Lex talionis. I’m pretty sure she’d do the same.

***

It’s night and I’m in bed and I bury the earplugs deep with earmuffs over the top, the mattress soaked deep with sweat, the pillows growing mould on the underside from the damp – and clear as ever I hear it, stretched and phlegmy, a scream for air. Lifting up the window, I yell out a couple of times: ‘Just fucking die! Shut up and die! You fuck!’ stuff like that. Then the window jars, and for some reason I’m not strong enough to close it. Now the cough is even louder and it snaps from ear to ear, mauling me. What a piece of shit this house is. I get back into bed and roll over. The mattress squelches like a sponge and I tuck my knees to my chest and my head to my knees, letting out little audible exhales, little quivers that I didn’t know I could do.

It’s not long before I find myself standing beside the white metal bed frame, flipping the mattress to check beneath for the pills. But all I find are receipts: doctor’s bills, prescriptions, chemist payments, a baggie of what looks like marijuana. Am I in pain? To check, to audit, you must hold your breath, reverse your eyes, and go inward. But I force the throbs, I force the pulse in my fingers, I control them.

‘Issy!’ I yell, thinking she’ll wake. ‘Issy! I’ve found the pills!’ 

I wait for a response.

A cough attacks from the opposite direction. 

I run to the lounge, expecting Issy to be sitting upright, refreshed. She’s in the same position. I worry that she’s not receiving sufficient airflow.

My arms are strong, CrossFit strong – I can see the vein on my right bicep – but I just can’t lift her torso. 

‘Jesus,’ I say, but gently because she’s sleeping right there. ‘You’re stiff.’ 

I figure Issy’s having one of those nightmares she used to have. Waking cold with sweats, her body rigid like forgotten bread. 

The house is cold and I feel it first on my arse cheeks, then on the tip of my penis. ‘Put pants on,’ I tell myself. And feeling Issy’s body, she’s the same, maybe worse. Certainly worse.

‘Why didn’t you put a blanket on?’ I demand. Contrition plays its role and I say, softer, ‘A blanket, sweets, you need a blanket this time of the year.’ I rub her bare back, even scratch it a little, but the goose bumps are tall and craggy, and between them are valleys and canyons. She’s so cold.

I sit beside her until six, stroking her hair. The cough increases in frequency and duration, sounding once every five minutes. A chugging wheeze that’s trying to expel the phlegm, then a gasp of air, and a booming bark to conclude the interval. Sometimes, if the cough catches phlegm and you listen closely, you can hear the thwack of a loogie being spat. 

It’s still dark outside, so I put on the news to validate my assumption of a winter solstice, but the TV doesn’t work. The red light is off. I look behind the set and there’s no cord. 

Buy television cord, is what I write on the back of my hand with black texta.  

My head angles to peek out from the curtains because I suspect an eclipse – it’s still dark. The phone rings at seven. 

‘Yes, hello, what?’ I say. 

My mother breathes into the receiver. 

‘I hear your breath, Mum.’ 

She’s about to say something when the next cough is fired off, and it’s so loud and close that it interrupts the static on the phone, producing a high-pitched scream out the speaker. 

‘That was it! That was the cough! Did you hear it?’ 

She keeps breathing, maybe even sniffling – it’s flu season, so that makes sense.

‘Mum? Did you fucking hear it this time? Mum!’ I’m pissed now, because she must be getting deaf or something if she didn’t hear that one. Before I know it, I’ll be showing her nursing homes and watching her try on cochlear implants.

I look to Issy and she’s almost purple.

‘Do you know something about a solstice, or eclipse, Mum? Why is it still dark outside?’ 

‘No, sweets,’ she says, all soft and considered. I figure she must be really ill if she’s this subdued. 

I hang up before another cough comes; the static is too much.

I’m putting a blanket over Issy when I hear the next interval begin, and this one is right in the nook of my neck. It’s so loud that I accidently vomit a bit. Not a kid in year 3, put-sand-on-the-carpet vomit, but like a dog-on-a-car-trip vomit, down my chest and into my pubes. I think: fucking gross, why didn’t I just put underwear on when I got up? I’m a twat. An idiot!

So I go to the shower and the tap doesn’t turn on, only dust puffs out. The make-up is still strewn over the ground. The weight of guilt in my blood. The basin sink isn’t working either, the taps are rusted, so I use my forearm to sweep the mess under the bathmat. 

***

My hair is stiff and cold, held tight with this American pomade Issy bought me from her trip to the States. I’ve got a baby-blue striped shirt on, and a double-breasted blazer, navy with gold-coin buttons, so shiny you could unwrap them and eat the chocolate inside. My trousers match; they’re high waisted and tailored perfectly to sit at my ankles  just long enough to reveal these jet-black, wide-fit, leather, French calfskin, moccasin, raised loafers. Never in my life have I dressed so flawlessly. I am packaged clean and tight. 

I ring the doorbell. The paint job on the woodwork looks fresh. I swivel my neck and a raised garden bed of herbs runs at hip height, another runs adjacent with flowers instead. Beside the door is a shoe rack and three distinctive sizes are evident – Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and Baby. 

The door opens. It’s a small girl. Her hair is slightly damp and messy as if she’s been running around after a bath. She looks up at me with eyes so big I can’t believe they’re not weighing her head down.

‘Hello there,’ I say. 

I can tell she’s nervous. 

‘What’s your name? I’m your neighbour.’ 

The parents approach. Mum in a dressing-gown, Dad in a sweatshirt.

Mum guides the girl to stand back, and bends to let the girl whisper something into her ear. The girl points at me, and Mum gently pushes her arm down.

Now Dad is in the doorway. I try to assess his face, see if he’s the sick one, but it’s hard to tell because he’s putting on this pursed lip frown, and his jaw is so strong, and his hair is so thick and neat. 

‘How have you been feeling?’ he goes.

I say, ‘Fine, and what about you?’ 

He looks slightly bewildered, tilts his head and says, ‘Oh, we are just fine,’ as if he’s surprised to be answering. ‘A little tired. But we understand that you can’t help it. My daughter actually said it’s not like you are playing loud music or have a barking dog, it’s your health, for God’s sake.’