You've called in sick. For a change, you are actually ill, as opposed to sick of work. Your head is aching, your skin is clammy, the pillow seems to alternate damply hot and glacial.
You call your baby sister; ask her to pick up some Panadol, soda water, and (your secret vice) condensed milk that you'll suck straight from the tube. Just enough willpower to feed the cat, leave the keys in the letterbox, and tumble back into bed.
While you're waiting, you drift into and out of sleep. You hear the aimless chatter from the crèche across the street; smell the wattle through the open window. The room is getting very hot, so you peel off your sticky pyjamas and wrap the sheet around you. You've relaxed, started to enjoy doing nothing, when you hear they keys in to door.
You don't expect your sister to even come into the room, you told her you'd be sleeping. You don't call out, don't even turn your head towards the hallway, you just enjoy the feeling of the sheets against your skin, the motes of dust in the morning light.
You hear the refrigerator open, the clanking of bottles as she puts away the soda water. Her footsteps are soft in the hallway; she must have left her usual clacking heels at home today. The door to your bedroom swings open, and the house falls strangely silent, as is expectation were roused.
"What is she doing?" you think. You really are too tired to talk, so you let your eyes slide fully closed. There is the click and hiss of a bottle opening, the soft gurgle as she pours you a drink. Perhaps she is putting the tablets by the bed as well?
The quiet stretches out... you can feel her standing at the end of the bed, looking at you. You are suddenly aware of your nakedness, the thinness of your sheets. Of course she's seen you nude a thousand times, clothes were optional when you were kids. But somehow, your body feels as if is on a stage, a platform, designed for viewing. You want to open your eyes, tell her your tired, go away, but then she'll know you were faking.
"How do I pretend to still be asleep?" you think to yourself, "what do I look like when I am sleeping?" You try to breath slowly, evenly, to be calm. "Like the resting pose in yoga...except naked," you murmur.
Oh, did you say that under your breath? She must have heard you, for you feel her come to the head of the bed, her shadow falls across your face as she leans over you. Then, you feel her sitting on the edge of the bed, very lightly. You can smell her skin, with a crisp mown grass to it. She must have left her YSL perfume at home with the heels.
Then you feel the sheet pulled aside, very slowly. Your head swims, the fever that you had forgotten you had rushes to your temples as you feel your skin exposed.
