Leaf Blower Man’s a spry old bugger in his mid 70s who stands six foot in his slip-on shoes. He lives across the road in a second floor apartment with his wife, who’s the splitting image of Joan Didion in her late 60s, with a pixie face and steel grey page boy bob. Penny waves at them from our third floor balcony and they wave back. My wife is friendlier than me. I’d wave if they waved first but I’m not a wave initiator.

Every Monday and Thursday morning at 7:05 am, Leaf Blower Man – I call him LBM – fires up his machine and attacks the ground floor bricks outside his apartment and the doctor’s surgery next door. If he’s got the leaf blower on maximum power, it sounds like a Harrier Jump jet taking off. He drops the power to an oscillating scream for light dust as he moves it from side to side, like a metal detector. There are no leaves. Then he blows the drive which leads to the underground carport and goes over the same ground with a broom. Then he gets on his hands and knees and scrubs the muck out of the grout between the bricks. It takes him 90 minutes per morning.

For a long time I wanted to kill LBM. I’m up at 5.00 am and writing by 6.00. I write speeches from home and I’d have 400 words down just as LBM fires up. I’d stand on the front balcony in the dark, ram an imaginary bullet in the chamber of a high calibre rifle, pull back the bolt and wait until the back of his balding head fell in to the telescopic sights. Then I’d squeeze the trigger.

When we first moved in to the apartment, I left a note on the doctor’s surgery which said the old codger was disturbing the peace and could someone have a word with him. Of course, like many of my generation born in the 60s, I lack the spine to tell LBM to politely stick his leaf blower up his arse. The note was ignored. LBM prevailed. I complained to the council but they wrote – quoting extensively from their urban noise policy- he was allowed to use a leafblower at 7.05am. Any noise from petrol or electrical tools before 7.00am was not allowed.

Many years ago I worked for psychopaths, elected to powerful positions in government. You needed allies working for narcissists. If that meant befriending one’s political enemies to survive, so be it. Graham was a retired builder with a beer gut and lived with Nancy next door. In my younger days, I would have gone for Nancy. Long legs, high cheek bones and a laugh that lights up a room. Graham didn’t like me. Didn’t think writing speeches was a proper job. Not manly. When I broached the subject of LBM on the stairwell, he said in a clipped, curt tone, the old bastard also woke Nancy up. He’d talk to her. See what could be done. That’s where we left it.

Penny gets her hair done once a month and in a seaside country town, the real news is curled and blow dried at the hairdressers. When she says, ‘what do you think?’ about a new style, I can’t always tell the difference but I say, ‘nice’ or ‘real good’. Carmel also cuts Joan Didion’s hair and she told Penny the inside story of Joan and LBM.

They retired five years ago and moved down from the big smoke. She was a fashion buyer and he was a factory manager, which made mining machinery. LBM was bored witless so Joan told him for Christ’s sake, find something to do. He joined a men’s walking group, played bowls once a week and makes bookcases at the Men’s Shed, which he sells on Gumtree. He got permission from his apartment strata title committee to do minor repairs and keep the grounds clean. Carmel reckons Joan is real nice. Not like some of the slags who think the sun shines out of their arse.

Consider the leaf blower. While it expends considerable energy moving dust from point A to point B, unless one stoops down and picks it up, nature soon blows the dust back to point A. It’s a Sisyphean task. LBM finds comfort in the absurdity of the routine. He’s conducting his own Beckett play, where meaning has disintegrated and by mindlessly blowing dust here and there, he reconstructs meaning out of nothing. The performance is everything.

It’s dark when I get up. I look out the kitchen window as I fill the kettle and LBM’s doing the same. He puts three scoops of tea in his tea pot and I do the same. Then the milk in the cups. I’ve lost count how many times we’ve performed this silent choreography together. He sees me and I see him. He doesn’t wave so I don’t wave. Penny says I’ll be like LBM one day, pottering around, getting under her feet. I might have forgotten how to write or won’t know that I’m sitting in my own shit. Who knows what small sidings we pull in to until the final stop?

Why would a woman like Joan hook up with a man who worked in factories? She dealt in haute couture, in fashion parades, in glitz and glamour while he built mining crushers, conveyor belts and bulldozers. Penny said, “what a man does isn’t that important. You write speeches and most are forgotten. I don’t think less of you. He’s handy around the house, unlike you, so there’s that. A woman appreciates a man who’s good with his hands.”

Every afternoon around 3.00pm, Joan and LBM sit on their balcony, enjoying tea and biscuits. I can see their lips moving through the binoculars. I sometimes wish we’d do the same but Penny is busy with yoga, the gym and she’s a member of a women’s walking group. She flies interstate to see friends every month. I cook and we watch TV together. We’ve been married for 30 years. They say it’s the small things that keeps a marriage alive. I say it’s a million dollars in superannuation and two investment properties.

Of late, and don’t ask me why, I’ve appreciated the synchronicity of LBM and our routines. A while ago I was making curry for dinner. I make a secret paste using chilli, cumin and turmeric with ground fresh ginger. I see LMB through the binoculars doing the same. Unbelievable. He chops and fries the garlic and onions like I do and cubes the lamb. We’re in a culinary ballet together. I put it in a large pot with a cup of stock and let it simmer with the lid off. Next I make the raita and I’ll be damned if he’s not doing the same thing: fresh yoghurt, finely chopped cucumber and a squeeze of lemon. Too weird.

I was sitting at my desk on a Monday morning, staring at a blank computer screen. A bank CEO wanted a dinner speech for a group of senior financial advisers, on how to leverage client ignorance for their mutual benefit. I’d rather be supervising the manufacturing of mining machinery. 7.05am ticked over and no LMB. No Harrier Jump jet. I walked out on to our balcony and all was quiet. I ignored Mrs Ohwell tending her Aspidistra in the apartment balcony to the right of ours. A Groodle was taking a dump outside the doctor’s surgery, which it’s owner ignored. Was LBM sick?

Tanya had contacted the council and said LMB’s noise constituted a public nuisance and unless he desisted on Monday mornings, she would get her lawyers to writ the council for doing bugger all to stop him. Then she’d set the attack dogs of the environmental pollution movement on them. The council acted. I could see LBM wandering around his flat. He vacuumed the floor, wiped the kitchen bench then sat in his lounge chair and read a newspaper. All was quiet except for the sound of kettles whistling and toasters popping.

Later that week I saw LMB and Joan walking hand-in-hand to Woolworths. LBM had shrunk a couple of inches. On the way back, Joan carried the shopping. That was LBM’s job. He’d done it ever since we moved in to the apartment. I use a Woolworth’s trolley and dump it in the carpark out the back. Way easier. Penny has to take it back.

A month passed and autumn bought leaves. While LBM was allowed to blow on Thursday mornings, it became obvious leaves were gathering on the carpark driveway and along the walls of the doctor’s surgery. Nature’s detritus was mounting and although he attacked them with a broom, he was like Napoleon without cavalry. He was losing the war without the Monday leaf blower. He shrunk another two inches and lost weight.

Joan fell sick. Carmel told Penny she’d got Covid and was bed ridden. Through our kitchen window I saw him making her hot lemon and honey drinks. He’d put the china cup on a small silver tray with some throat lozenges. He had to quarantine so Penny cooked a big pot of pea and ham soup and left it outside their apartment door, along with a bag of fruit. Even Mrs Ohwell, who rarely left her apartment, dropped a freshly made carrot cake outside their door. I wonder why men don’t do this stuff.

I shouldn’t have done it. Back when LMB was really pissing me off, I left a false Google review for the Tetra Holiday Apartments, which is next to where Joan and LBM live. Holiday makers pay top dollar.

“While I the apartments are great, I’m less impressed with the old man who destroyed my families sleep with his early morning leaf blowing. I pay good money for this room and I expect quiet enjoyment. I won’t be back” Daniel Lewis

The Tetra Apartments manager finally contacted the strata title committee and said that while he appreciated the need for clean pavements, the profit motive overrode all other considerations and if it didn’t stop LBM – he called him Clive because they bowled together but on different teams – he’d contact his lawyer and seek damages from the committee due to lost revenue, which he calculated on the back of an envelope was about $25,000. He went one step further and said he’d also call the local newspaper and say LBM was driving tourists from the town and was destroying the local economy.

LBM stopped blowing on Thursday mornings and the committee stopped him doing maintenance work on the apartments. I don’t know why.

Joan took a long while to recover. I didn’t see her in the lounge or kitchen for weeks. When she did, she needed a walking frame, which was awkward because their apartment was small with lots of furniture. LBM plumped her pillows, got her a lap rug and made her cups of tea with buttered sultana cake. They’d sit together and watch DVD’s in the afternoon before he made dinner. They watched, ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘The Shawshack Redemption’ and heaps of movies with Katherine Hepburn in them, like ‘The African Queen’ and ‘The Philadelphia Story’. Some of my favourites.

When LBM came out on his balcony, he was stooped over like a man trying to pick up a 20 cent piece. He was small and hang dog. It was just before dinner when I saw Joan fall. LBM got his arms under her shoulders but wasn’t strong enough to pick her up. She tried to turn over on to her hands and knees but couldn’t. He hobbled to the phone and in a panic, decided against it and returned to Joan with the walking frame but all strength had drained from her. Then he looked through his apartment window directly at me. I put the binoculars down and told Penny Joan had fallen. She belted out the door, across the road and LBM let her in. She put one arm around Joan’s shoulders and lifted her on to the settee and stayed for 20 minutes to make sure they were alright.

The plants on their balcony wilted and died. A cold easternly breeze blew more leaves and dust outside the apartment. One morning the automatic underground car park door seized and the tenants were late for work.

I know nothing about pot plants but a young woman in the garden centre said Japanese Peace Lillies were popular. I asked her to put some nice paper around the bottom of it because it was a present. She didn’t charge me extra. I didn’t tell Penny because she always makes a fuss. I walked up the stairs to LBM’s apartment and knocked on the door. There were shuffling sounds, like marsupials make when leaving their burrows. I could see an eye in the spy hole and LBM opened the door and ushered me in. Joan Didion was having a nap. The apartment was bright and tastefully decorated. A woman’s touch. An Aboriginal dot painting hung in the corrodor, which I couldn’t see from our kitchen. I passed on having a cup of tea and said I could only stay a minute. I handed over the Japanese Peace Lily and said it would it would look good on the balcony.

LBM’s skinny arms hung by his side like strips of veal. He would have been a handsome man in his younger days with a strong jaw, deep blue eyes and large hands. He took the plant and placed it on the kitchen bench next to the webster pack of pills.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had visitors,” he said, “who aren’t doctors or nurses. Appreciate it”

I handed him a second present which I took from my book collection. I didn’t bother wrapping it. He ran his fingers over the cover of ‘I, Robot’ and kept staring at it.

“I figured as you know a lot about machines, you might be interested”

LBM pulled his shoulders back and extended his hand.

“Appreciate it”

I took a last look around their apartment before I headed for the door. Love lives here, I thought and saw Penny, clear as day, smiling from the kitchen.