By Lucy

The wine was a mistake.

Which is a curious feeling in itself. There’s been lots of scenarios where I had alcohol and shouldn’t have, or when I was just drinking out of habit, and I thought that I shouldn’t have without really feeling it. But this time, even though nothing exciting happened, I just woke up with a feeling of regret. Compared to my peerless sleep and lack of pain the night before, having disturbed sleep and waking up not really feeling up for anything just seemed like a waste of an otherwise good day.

This is my last day of a 3 hour shift. For the next 5 days I am scheduled for 6 hour days, which I find annoying. I had plans for a hike or 2 that I wanted to do with my last day or 2 off. I suppose I could ask for a day off to do something, but I can’t really think of something I want to do badly enough to request time off for it.

It seems, since every male staff member has left besides Dan, I’ve become the handyman again. Which is doubly annoying now that I’ve emotionally checked out of the job and want to just do my 3 hour of changing beds and go back to the house to watch Youtube and play Rimworld, they’ve given me critical thinking work.

Dan perks up as I enter the cafe. “Hey Lucy! Long time no see!”

Has it been? I suppose we didn’t cross paths a lot while I was on kitchen duty. Still, I’m not sure I understand the depth of the reaction. I shuffle my feet awkwardly and look for something to take my attention, which is probably the wrong thing to do.

Ti gives me a list of odd jobs that I struggle to stretch out into a 3 hour workday.

When I’m done for the day, I ask John if I could have some parmesan. He frowns, then recalls there’s some at the house and invites me to use that. I go back to the house and make a carbonara for me and the girls, who are struggling with food still. Carbonara is one of those funny dishes that you can’t really make one serving of, and it doesn’t keep well (I mean, you can put it in the fridge and reheat it, but it’s much, much better fresh). I offer him some, and he says he’ll have some later if there is any left. Gah! Nichola comes in, exhausted from the Ben Lomond hike, and she has the rest.

The girls want to go swimming. They invite me, but I’m not in the mood. I’m still struggling with the wine thing.

Ti asks me if I can come in at 6 and help with dinner and do some more sandwiches for the cafe. Sure, why not.

I have to clean the bike chain still. Hanuman sent me a video on it, but it’s a fairly straightforward task as long as your bike has a centre stand and you have a bit of flat pavement. Put the bike up on the centre stand, clean the old grease and metal shavings off the chain, put more oil on the chain. With the bike up on the centre stand, the rear wheel and thus the chain spin easily. The bottle of oil that they have laying around here has no dropper, just a screw cap, so I’m spare with the oil rather than use a lot of someone else’s. The guide I consulted (just in case) says to wait 15 minutes and then wipe off the “extra” oil so it doesn’t paint the back of your leg, but I don’t think that’s a problem I’ll have.

As I admire the bike in the full sun, my heart twists at the idea of selling it soon. It makes no sense to ship it to Canada. It would cost more than just buying one there, plus I would have to drive it from Vancouver, and I have nowhere to put it in Thunder Bay. But I daydream about it anyway.

I also dream about just selling my car and buying a bike. Especially if I’m going to be travelling to other countries. If I go to New Zealand for another year, and then Italy and maybe Germany, what do I do with the car? Put it on blocks? Lease it to Emily? Sell it? If I sell it, what do I do when I get back? Buy a motorcycle.

Actually, if I did go the “sell my car” route, I’d probably just fly into Toronto, buy a Honda Civic and drive it back to Thunder Bay. Thunder Bay is a ghost town for good used cars and all I need are 4 wheels that roll.

Still! With the Vagabond not a guarantee and me not having the funds for a bike, once I sell my Honda I will be bikeless for a while. The more time I spend on a bike, the less I want to give it up, even temporarily. Rewatching ‘Bikeriders’ will be hard, I already didn’t get Cathy.

It’s tempting to get a job as a motorcycle mechanic. I wanted millwright when I ended up in carpentry. I’ve debated being a car mechanic, but… actually, I’m not sure why I wrote it off. Lack of a shop I really respected, I suppose. But I could get a job at the shop who’s sweater I wear every day….

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Dinner service is slow, but then I wasn’t really called in for dinner service, just to make sandwiches. Henry isn’t not chatty, but he is very serious and focused, unlike me and John’s easy conversational ebb and flow. Saffron mentions Dan is doing a meditation class at 8PM. Henry is rostered ’til 8 only, but he offers to stay and clean up so I can go to the class, which is nice of him. I’m on the fence, feeling isolated and annoyed at everyone, but I decide I aught to go.

The class is ostensibly only half an hour. but we all spend so much time joking around and chatting before the class that it stretches to 8:40, not that anyone is arguing.

Saturday I start off in the kitchen with Kam. Things are quiet to start, not that’s she’s very chatty or we expected a lot of people for lunch. After all the breakfast dishes are done, I start cleaning the kitchen top to bottom; removing dishes from the shelves and wiping them down.

Shortly before noon, John comes in; since he’s free from the kitchen, he’s been working on the spa, which is apparently his pet project. He comes in with pictures and a video of what he’s working on, which he excitedly shows me, and my heart is both elevated and falls when I realize –

He reminds me of Rich.

I don’t know why it took me so long to clue in. The Kiwi accent is mostly British to start with, he looks sort of like him, being a larger man with short hair, the way he says cool all the time and the slight hitch when he says “Lu-cy”….

I wonder what Rich is doing now. He must have finished schooling in December. If he decided to stick to our original plan of roadtrip to Venice, he’ll have rented a car and be on the road by now. Did he bring the rubber ducky with him? When he was coming to visit me in Canada, I had a scrapbook and a rubber ducky sent to him because of an inside joke we had, so we brought the rubber ducky with us everywhere and took pictures with it. Which also spawned all the trips to rubber ducky stores and other such things.

I’m filled with sadness now. I always knew I wouldn’t see Chatham the same way again. Even if we stayed friends, he was moving to Nottingham. But now it just reminds me that I’ll never stay at his apartment, never walk down the cobbled main street to the grocery store, or up to the park or the Norman fort.

My melancholy is broken by John asking Kam if she’s ok. Turns out she’s sick, but was trying to work through it because she didn’t want to take an unpaid day off. It’s the first person I’ve seen have a cold since I get here; thus it begins. I physically recoil. I don’t want to be sick just before I head out again! John convinces her to go back to the house and rest.

Henry comes in a little while later for his scheduled shift. He’s a little more animated today. He’s from the southwest corner of England, near Exeter. We have a good chat about whether or not we like Margaret Thatcher. Short cut for interacting with a British person; if they hate Margaret Thatcher, they grew up poor or working class, and if they like her they were upper class.

Once I’m done scrubbing the kitchen, John puts me on making cookies and then sandwiches again.

As I work, I think. I’ve decided I should just sell the bike as soon as I can and start booking my tickets back to Canada. Which means I’ll probably have some extra cash and some time for another tattoo. What do I want?

It’s hard to decide. I want to get a picture this time. My first choice is a watercolour flower on my right shoulder, but I don’t think Lizzy has the skill for it, no offence to her. So I can’t plan anything else on my right bicep/ shoulder until that’s done. My second choice is the Majora’s Mask, which has always been near and dear to me, but I’m conflicted about it. Do I just get the mask? How big? And where?

The problem is that I’m running out of real estate, ironically. Shirah suggests the front of my thighs, but I don’t really wear shorts so no one will see it, although it’s probably a pretty painless location. Perhaps my bicep. I want to be able to see it, but there isn’t any space left on my forearms. Or maybe there is, if it’s small. I also want the Triforce and I have to think of where I could place that, that would compliment the Mask. The back of the hand is where it is in the game, but the back of the hand is both extremely painful and seriously encroaching on my hire-ability.

“Your friends, what kind of people are they? I wonder, do those people think of you as a friend?”

“What makes you happy? I wonder, what makes you happy, does it make others happy too?”

“The right thing, what is it? I wonder, if you do the ‘right’ thing… Does it make everybody happy?”

“Your true face, what kind of face is it? I wonder, the face under the mask, is that your true face?”

(I know everyone likes the “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you” quote, but these are my favourite)

On my way back to the house, before I can rescue it, a pillow case blows off the line and gets mulched by the robot lawn mower. Oops.

Last day of “easy” jogs with 30 second intervals. My resting heart rate and heart rate variability have fallen and risen outside of my 30 day averages, respectively, which is actually really good for my cardio and general health. I feel kind of silly for never getting into jogging before. I guess I put it in the mental basket with other WASPy things, PTA meetings and soccer moms with perfect high ponytails and branded running gear. Exercise for people who don’t have the wherewithal to do anything real. Shame on me, I guess. If I can keep this up, I’ll be in really good shape to start scaffolding again. I’ve let the other aspects of my work-outs slide; I don’t have space in the cabin to do sit ups, and I don’t want to do them in the main house with everyone around, but if I can jog and do sit-ups with the rest of my time at the estate, I should be doing pretty good.

I watch Bikeriders again, then some “Ride with Norman Reedus”. He did 2 episodes in New Zealand, but the first episode is North Island, and the second episode is just from Picton to Christchurch. Curiously, the opening reel for the South Island episode includes footage of the road from Queenstown to Glenorchy (and I even asked James to confirm) but they come nowhere near this way. Was there more footage filmed of them further south that wasn’t included, or did someone just grab B roll of the road because it’s scenic? Truly, I do believe the road from Queenstown is the definitive example of a perfect New Zealand road.

I’m too tired later in the evening to do anything exciting and I can’t think of a movie I want to watch, so I just work on the blog. I put together a collection of all my New Zealand posts. I read them as I go. I was kind of wondering if how long it took me to get settled here, compared to how long it took me to get settled at the estate. It seems like I got settled at the estate and attached to Simo within two weeks, which is definitive. I’m not relaxed here, but I was at the estate. So it’s no longer just “it took me a while to settle in”. I just don’t like it here.

Sunday morning we have another yoga class, this time lead by Ti. Ti is not the go-with-the-flow instructor Dan is; she comes over and nudges my feet to make me widen my stance and push my stretch. We both laugh about it, I don’t mind. I keep thinking that I do need a proper instructor, because stretching is new to me and I struggle with understanding how to activate certain muscles.

Ti grabs me for Ecoscapes again. We have to turn over all of them, plus a deep clean on one, which includes vacuuming the ceiling and polishing the wood. It takes us the better part of 3 hours to do all of them. As we work, we talk about customer service and all the ways you can easily manipulate customers and how it wears you out from interacting with people. She tells me she’ll miss me and I believe it.

I actually like the ecoscapes, the more time I spend in them. With a few modifications, like adding a galley kitchen, it could easily be a small, self-contained cabin for someone who lives simply, like me.

After work, I do my usual jog-shower-hot tub cycle, which I realized takes about 2 hours when all’s said and done. No wonder I’m time-poor. This jog is minute intervals and is starting to actually test my stamina.

When I come back from the jog, one of the dogs (probably Wilburt, since he’s bigger than Holly) has left a giant log on the carpet. I suppose morally I should clean it up, but they aren’t my dogs, I’m not being paid to, and I have stuff to do. I have to cook dinner before my theoretical dinner service shift, so I leave it. A few people drift through and I point it out to them, but no one else wants to clean it either. I do feel bad when the person who finally does stop to clean it is Toni, who’s been on the road for a couple days and is probably exhausted.

Dan sticks his head in, holding a knife. “Don’t mind the man with the knife.” He says. He’s gardening, why does he have a knife?

“Yeah, a slow day for me.” I joke.

He laughs, then realizes I’m not being entirely sarcastic. I quickly tell him the story about Kev-2 telling me that a machete reminded him of me (because a machete is used sub-tropically, like New Zealand’s climate) to defuse the situation, but Dan is observant and, I doubt, completely fooled.

He’s looking for a place to grow some plants. They need full sun. Since I’m the only one who keeps track of where the sun is at all times, I’m best positioned to help him.

At 6, I go down to the cafe. They don’t need me today. Why couldn’t they just tell me that earlier? I go back to the house and watch as the robot lawnmower fires up and tries in vain to cross through the closed gate into the other yard, ramming it multiple times.

We have a new person, Matt. He’s from Boston; as in, he’s been in New Zealand less than 24 hours. He’s also basically never left the US before and knows nothing. However, he does manage to wrangle everyone into playing party games and invites me, what a curious twist. We play some version of Charades, including one where you have to verbally describe the card you draw. I got alien abduction and describe it as “anal probing”, which makes everyone laugh and steal it for jokes the entire evening. Everyone agrees the Cook Strait is rough on a boat, so probably justified in not wanting to take my bike on a ferry across it without good straps.

Monday morning, I don’t feel sore but I do have cramps. Ti and Bianca take off on an overnight hike, leaving me with the new guy and Sierra for housekeeping. Sierra can barely pretend to tolerate me and leaves me to do the hostel section all by myself, which is fine cuz I’m faster than everyone except Ti. Except whoever did laundry the day before didn’t portion out the sheets correctly. One room is entirely missing pillow cases. Another room, the guest tells me with sincerity that they left a bunch of inflated balloons behind “for you to enjoy”.

Whatever, I’m over it. This is my last day of housekeeping; Tuesday and Wednesday are kitchen hand.

A guest left behind the better part of a 2 litre jug of milk, so I make more rice pudding. I also drop a bowl on my foot and cut it, not that anyone cares. Matt, Kam and Shirah drift through, eat and leave a bunch of dirty dishes behind, then go out kayaking. Shirah finally got her visitors visa (her working holiday expired) and has made plans to do the Routeburn hike with Nichola. Yeah, it’s just me who failed to integrate.

Feeling sorry for myself, I text Simo to ask her if she ever goes to Chemist Warehouse. Sometimes when she goes to town she gives me the day off, maybe I could tag along… She asks me to send her what I need and I send it to her absent mindedly. She tells me she put it on her card and she’ll pick it up next time she’s there.

I could have started crying if I wasn’t sitting at the table in the main room. Now I feel dreadful that I have no liquidity to send her the money right away. She misses me! She cares! She bought things for me!

I go down to the cafe having not eaten dinner, fully expecting to be told they don’t need me again since they have the same number of guests. John surprises me, “No, we absolutely need you today!”

I cock my head, still skeptical.

“We needed you yesterday, to be honest, but….”

But Toni was the one who told me they didn’t need me. And this is when I get labelled “homewrecker”.

Ok. I run back up to the house to clean up my stuff. Toni says she doubts John needs help when I tell her where I am running off to. I do not get paid enough to step into these situations.

Dinner is chaotic. The largest group, of 6 people, is half an hour late, and John doesn’t want to serve one group at a time. Also, they forget to order a vegan meal, so he has to scramble to make something vegan for them (which means their extra non-vegan meal becomes mine because it can’t go back in the freezer, yay!). We also have another group that wander from the campsite looking for a bottle shop and settle in with a bunch of cocktails and orders of nachos and fries. A bottle of canola oil gets knocked into the bag of nacho chips and John asks me to run to the stockroom and grab a new one.

On my way out of the stockroom, I pause. There’s a baby bird, so young it had no feathers and is just pink with little dark blotches where its organs are, crushed on the step. I stepped on it. It’s dead.

No no nononono!

No time for a meltdown. I run back to the kitchen and hand John the chips and try to avoid sniffling too much.

A guy comes in to complain that it’s a shared bathroom and he wants to be upgraded to a room with a private one for free. Jokes on him, because the only rooms with a private bathroom are the ecoscapes, and he is not getting one of those for the price of a hostel room. I facepalm as he tries to imply the bathroom wasn’t cleaned today and Sierra primly informs him she knows it is because she cleaned it. Nice de-escalation technique.

John is grumpy, complaining about this and that. I can’t say I disagree with him. Just me doing my usual thing, being paid ostensibly to wash dishes but in actuality, he just wants me here so he can vent to me. I’m not complaining, it’s nice to feel wanted and be social.

It is a good night for food though, and Sierra quickly leaves and is replaced by Nichola. We get another cheesecake slice when a guest doesn’t touch theirs. John also offers me a slice of fresh bread to mop up the gravy left in the pan after he’s cooked the steaks. Enjoy the little things!

When John is done for the night, he gives me the end of a load of bread. “Use some of the jam at the house.” He says with a wink. I put it in my pocket.

After dinner is finally over, I go to grab the baby bird. I’m 99 percent certain I killed it. I wish I had some tobacco, but I could light a candle and offer my apologies. I freeze.

There’s another baby bird.

What is happening here? It’s still moving, wheeling its tiny pink wings and mewling. There’s nests around, but none within easy falling distance of the door. Where did it come from?

I go to ask Nichola and Toni what to do, but they both shrug. I decide to try and put it back in its nest, but there are three within eyesight; which one is it? I pick one at random and head back to the house, with the body of the other folded in a napkin. I put it in the compost bin.

I tell everyone the story at the house, and they all blink at me like I’m mad. When did people stop caring about baby birds? I put my head down on the table, eyes watering, as they all turn back to whatever movies they are watching.

“Lucy? Are you ok?” John asks from the kitchen, voice heavy with concern.

“I’m fine.” I say, unable to muster a cheery tone. I go back to my cabin to cry in peace.

I find the bread he gave me and something clicks in my mind, for all the odd timing in the world. When they remove the tumors in my jaw, I won’t be able to eat for a bit, I bet. Two months seems like a good bet, but my thoughts spiral. What if they have to take out a lot of bone or tissue? What if I need a graft? What if….

This bread is suddenly precious to me. I’m counting down the days ’til I can’t eat solid food again, just like those dreadful days when I was on chemo and I could just about choke soup down. The tears come harder. I’m so tired of being alone, and sick.

In the morning, John is the only one in the kitchen again. He asks me if I’m ok again. Not dodging it this time.

“The bird…” I say, lost for words. “The rest looked at me, like… like…”

After a moment, he says, “There’s nothing wrong with being sensitive.”

I nod. That sounds just like something Rich would say. Except I always get punished for being sensitive. And you’re just some random hotel owner who won’t remember me inside a week. Maybe.

Toni is sad that four of us are leaving within the space of 24 hours. After work, she declares happy hour for employees. Free fries for 2 hours. However, I should go for my last jog here, because tomorrow I should save my strength for the ride. I go for my jog and come back to the kitchen halfway through happy hour. There’s nachos as well, and free sparking imitation wine. I kind of want alcohol for my anxiety, but my anxiety is firmly rooted in how broke I am, which buying cocktails will not help. Not to mention alcohol is no good for building muscle. John is cooking and puts a bowl of nachos right in front of me; he knows how much I love my food! I am in heaven for a little while.

We overhear Luna speaking in German to a guest. Luna is German, only Dan is British. Someone asks him if he is learning German for her and he says, “But she speaks English so well…”

Then I shower and hop in the spa. Despite the fact multiple people mention going to the spa that evening, no one was there when I was. Is that a pity at this point? I have an idea for a book and write a little 2-page concept, which everyone really likes. Check it out!

Ti comes by and offers me some microwave popcorn she made.

I can’t sleep. I’m broke, I’m anxious about riding again. How much food could I feasibly take with me? I hope to be able to cook 2 meals a day and keep my costs down that way. I have to pay back Andrej. I have to pay for my early bird tickets to the Soroptimist conference. I manage to nod off, but I wake up again when Nichola goes to bed, and it takes me hours to fall asleep again. I’m up at 7 when her alarm goes off. I won’t miss that.

Toni has decided to give those of us leaving a free breakfast. I was told 8, but I get to the cafe and am told it was actually 8:30. Both the girls and Shirah sleep in. I get a flat white, and eggs Benedict, which are oddly spicey – lots of mustard.

I make chocolate cookies in the morning again. Me and Henry chat about our most hated portrayal of chefs – Henry’s is Monica from Friends – as I discuss how I made the main character of my new book a chef. I might watch The Bear to put myself in the characters headspace. We’ll see when I’m settled back at the estate again. John sets me to make the toppings for the vegan nachos, but I’m too tired and can’t focus. I admit my anxiety about the jaw surgery, which I’m still on the fence about confessing to people who are effectively strangers.

Henry mentions there are some puteketeke’s in the area, the bird from John Oliver messing around with New Zealand. There’s less than a thousand left in the wild and I honestly forgot to look for them.

“Hey James, you drive to the coast and back a lot. Recommendations?”

He seriously considers it. “Stop at any lookouts you see. You won’t regret it. Lot’s of twisties. It’s a scenic drive.”

Something sparks my memory. “There was a storm that washed out the road a couple months back.”

He nods. “It was the same storm that destroyed our road.”

What a storm. I kind of wish I had been there to see it.

Time to take the road less travelled by.