“I felt tame compared to him”: An excerpt from ‘Deliverywoman’, Eva Wyles’ debut book

“By Drift’s standards, I was a clean boy.”

The following extract is taken from ‘Good Boy’, a story featured in Eva Wyles’ new book, Deliverywoman (Influx Press). Find a copy here.

I arrived in Drift as I did each Winter – a little unsure of myself, a bit careless, barely curious. The narrow overhead compartments of the bus were full when I’d boarded in Vancouver, and so I’d spent the majority of the journey with my sports bag at my feet, backpack on my knees, same as the person next to me – like a can of seat 42A and seat 42B sardines.

When we pulled into the outskirts of Drift, I got that familiar tingle in my chest at the sight of all the excitable tourists standing outside the equipment rental stores, local kids let loose on Glen Street, weary old women pushing trolleys around the Driftside Market car park. The two populations of the town amused me. You don’t get those extremes mingling much place else. Bigger the city, easier the separation.

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But here you had the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, and they all acted as if they owned the place. I liked playing poor when I got there. To be fair, I was doing a poor man’s job, slopping food into bowls, washing down industrial sized trays, but I was getting paid twice as much as any local in the township, simply because I was higher up on the mountain.

Back home, I often spent my days alone. Kept this old job my stepmother sorted me in secondary school where I listened to recordings of therapy sessions and wrote notes for the psychiatrist. Horrible stuff. Sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, domestic abuse, as well as the regular complaints about work or relationships or both, revelations on the way they were going to start living their life now that they had cracked the latest life motto! Et cetera, et cetera.

My boyfriend, Xavier, often told people I was a freelancer when they asked him what I did for work. I don’t blame him – I often made it sound a lot more consuming than it was. We lived together, but he worked in an office full time as some kind of executive assistant. I never did know exactly what he did on an hourly basis, just that he was always stressed.

Anyway, by the time I surfaced in the morning he’d have left long before me, leaving behind small traces of his carefully spent morning – tucking the sheets in on his side of the bed, a half pot of coffee for me (I never did tell him it was cold by the time I got to it), tidying the cushions on the sofa, and sometimes even a small note wishing me some kind of good day. It was normally midday by the time I got in the shower. Depending on my mood I’d either microwave the cold coffee or make another pot. Shower and the rest, eventually slump into the couch to do three or four hours of listening and typing, then start making dinner. Tell Xavier I went to the library, what a big day I just had.

Drift was my time to really live. It was the only place I enjoyed being forced to get up early, shaken alive by the orchestra of other people’s alarms and being thrust into minimum -21°C temperatures for my 5:00am shift. Something in the icy air molecules made it feel like I was being pumped with cocaine. And then there was the actual cocaine. Work hard, play hard. Et cetera, et cetera.

Xavier and I had been dating for eight years by the time I arrived in Drift this time around. During our first year in love, I hadn’t yet discovered my need to go away. It wasn’t till the third year of our relationship that a new friend of mine, Toad, suggested I join him for a season in Drift. God, we had fun together that Winter. Toad knew how to party more than anyone I’d ever met. His thin wiry body was filled with electricity and an immense need for booze.

We’d party all night, like all night, collecting friends and ridiculous stories along the way, getting home so drunk that we’d vomit out the window, pass out fully clothed, droplets of spew dotting our shirts, sleep for fifteen minutes, twenty if we were lucky, to find the vomit puddles were already frozen and our alarms hammering away because work was about to start. Then we’d head straight out the door, pausing every so often to keel over in the snow and puke some more.

At the buffet kitchen we’d hang our aprons around our necks and giggle like school children while we exchanged whatever remember whens we had from the previous night, then start slicing up legs of ham as the sun began to rise over the mountain caps. The remainder of the shift would be a blur. Come 4:00pm, we’d steal what was left of the ham and munch it quickly out in the snow, then head up the chairlift and catch the last of the ski day, our bodies miraculously intact and ready to do it all again.

At that point, Xavier’s and my honeymoon stage was well and truly over, and we were nestling into the ordinary parts of the relationship – criticising one another’s cleaning, only ever having sex when one of us wanted to, sharing a bank account, splitting that bank account into various sub-accounts (hopeful-house, maybe-holiday, insurance, et cetera, et cetera). So, Drift was my haven. By Drift’s standards, I was a clean boy. I was a nice boy. I was a good boy. Although, I will disclose that Toad and I had, one particularly coked up night, wound up fucking each other up the arse in the toilet of Dusty’s, the local bar all the seasonal workers congregated at.

The following Winter, I joined Toad in Drift again, and well, the same again. It became a thing. We blitzed our way through the season with an unruly amount of substances and sex. We often talked about stopping. There were a few semi-earnest conversations right before the end of our shifts where we said things like ‘this isn’t fair’ and ‘I really like Xavier’ but there was always a lack of conviction and a look beneath our presented expressions that meant whenever alcohol or drugs entered our bodies both our dicks went ping!

Xavier thought it was all very good of me to go off and make the amount of money I was earning, plus he said it gave him ‘time to re-centre’. After the second-year fuck-fest, Toad didn’t come back. He’d emailed me an uncharacteristically earnest plea for me to tell Xavier, and I told him I couldn’t and wouldn’t. I still wonder what his motive was for asking. Whether it was because he wanted to rid himself of the guilt or begin dating, I’m unsure. I’d still half-expected him to turn up – counting on that same lack of conviction – but it turned out he’d had some in reserve after all.

That first season without Toad, whenever I was particularly drunk, I often went to the bathroom at Dusty’s with the faint feeling that he was behind me, on his way to the cubicle with me. I’m not sure what Toad does now – he almost certainly still parties, and probably spends his Winters in the opposite hemisphere, somewhere sunny, perhaps surfing. Only a guess. He doesn’t respond to my messages anymore. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll just turn up back in Drift; not that that’s why I keep coming back. It’s much larger than that.

With my sports bag slung over my shoulder, I deboarded the bus, touching down in the snow and chucking a hand in the air to say thanks to the driver. I’m nothing special in the looks department – a little taller than average, brown hair, features neither captivating nor obtrusive – but I fancied myself a catch whenever I set foot in Drift.

Something about the snow brought out a roguish charm in me. In the city I came off as reserved and a little antisocial, someone that spends too much time indoors. But here, a new kind of energy found its way into my bloodstream.

First thing I did was head to my accommodation. It’s the same place every year, a shitty little chalet a fifteen-minute drive up the mountain. Unlike Xavier’s and my apartment, it has no ulterior motive. The rooms are rooms – five of them, only two with windows. Every seat is a seat; every bed is a bed. Nothing about the sheets or the whiteware tries to impress. If the owners ever decided to sell the workers lodge, nothing inside would be sold. Everything would be given to charity so that the goodwill box could be ticked, where it would likely gather dust before heading for the dump a few years later.

When I entered, I was pleased to see one of the other kitchen hands, Joey, kneeling over a pile of scrunched up newspaper and kindling in the fireplace with a lit match. I’m pretty sure Joey was always stoned. There wasn’t a lot of variation in his reactions. He had the same cackle for everything, no matter the degree of actual hilarity. ‘Liam,’ he greeted me with a nod, as he always did. I made my way to my usual room – two bunk beds, except my usual bottom left was frustratingly already occupied by another – their territory marked by sheets they’d clearly brought from home, a phone charger plugged in, the cord hanging lazily, and a pair of ski gloves left near the pillow.

There’s very little to do in Drift other than work, eat, drink, or head up the mountain. There’s none of the usual town suspects – no library, swimming pool, community centre, or school. On my days off, I usually slept in. Then, eventually, once I’d run out of sleep to be had, I’d rug up and wander down to the shops.

For lunch I would have either a bowl of fries and a burger from Dusty’s, or a footlong Subway. I liked to eat outside if I got Subway, standing on the corner of Glen and Elk. I’d stand and watch or stand and be watched while lettuce shreds fell out the bottom and landed in the slush. Most of the time someone would wander up to me, a worker I knew from the chalet or the mountain or the bars, and tell me I was a brave eater. Other times strangers would trudge past and tell me I ought to think about going inside, didn’t I know it was -19°C? But there was something about the habit I took great pride in, and there wasn’t a lot I took pride in. I was freezing and I was eating outside when I could be eating inside, a fool’s choice.

I’d arrived with one day and one night to spare before my shifts started up, and so I dumped my bags in the bottom right bunk, where Toad used to sleep before Camille from France arrived the first season he didn’t show for and took his place. Camille had tattoos from Bali and gemstone necklaces and came back three years in a row before eventually amassing enough money for a year-long meditation retreat. Then came Alex from Seattle – he didn’t talk much but boy did he snore. Now it was me. I didn’t bother making the bed and headed out for a Sub.

It was later that night, at Dusty’s, that I first met Gabriel. There were six different televisions showing all kinds of extreme sports – snowboarders falling down vertical mountains, skiers gliding enormous zigzags just shy of snowed in craters, alpine climbers at Everest-equivalent altitudes. Everyone at the bar was either getting drunk because they didn’t know anyone or getting drunk because they knew everyone. Gabriel seemed to be the former. He was sitting at the bar studying one of the televisions when I walked in. I intended to ignore him and head over to a group of more familiar faces, but he struck up a conversation while I was waiting to order my drink.

He was handsome in that kind of innocent way, a bit pretty, almost too much so, with long eyelashes. He was clearly intelligent, well-kept, but timid about it all. I let him keep asking me questions and I asked some myself. I forgot about the friends I’d wanted to favour and slipped onto the stool next to him. We took turns buying rounds and his speech and smile eventually got looser.

He told me he was from Vancouver Island, that he went to art school, that he struggled with the desire to make art but also the realisation that art could only offer so much, and with some negative comments about his own talent, talked about how he’d recently decided it was time he applied himself to something more practical, like nursing, or teaching. Drift was his first season. He wanted to make some extra money before going back to school. He’d grown up outdoors. He wasn’t usually a big drinker.

I’m still not sure why I spent so much time with Gabriel at the bar that night. He was conventionally attractive, but I wasn’t that attracted to him. I only said hello to my old friends once or twice on my way to and from the bathroom. Something about him needing me was appealing – the way he looked at me gave me permission to think highly of myself. When I took him to the bathroom, it felt like I was taking his virginity. I liked the way his small bottom hung in the air, waiting for me, when I unbuckled his pants from behind. His hair was curly and smelt freshly washed.

He dressed in clothes that neither intrigued nor bored me – I can’t remember exactly what he wore, only that he had blue woollen socks on beneath his boots, and that when I came, he got up on his tippy-toes. Afterwards, he said ‘thank you’ with flushed cheeks and I told him not to worry and immediately rebuckled my own pants. I let him give me a kiss before we left the cubicle and returned to the bar.

I wasn’t so keen on sitting together just the two of us anymore and so I brought him over to my regular friends and introduced him, let him be swallowed by the introductions, then went out to smoke a cigarette, watching as the exhaled smoke ballooned in the freezing air as if my mouth were a volcano erupting. Then, I Irish-goodbyed and walked home. It wasn’t until later that night, when Gabriel stumbled into the bedroom, that I realised he was the one who had occupied the bottom left bunk bed. ‘Goodnight,’ he said into the darkness, and I almost said it back, before deciding to pretend I was asleep, and turned my attention to Joey snoring from the bed above.

The next morning, I felt all kinds of things. One, I did not enjoy waking up. I was hungover and our room smelt of booze and, dare I say it, I missed the smell of Xavier’s and my life – expensive musky perfumes and scented candles. I half expected to wake up to someone cracking a joke, as was the usual, but then I remembered who I was rooming with. My stomach felt light and heavy at the same time. Joey leant over the bars of his bunk to yank the stiff curtain back and white light poured in. ‘Jesus,’ he mumbled, then burped.

I went to the kitchen and made myself a coffee. Thought about what I was feeling. Was I pissed off? Not quite. Was I tired? Not only. Too hungover? Perhaps. Feeling guilty? Maybe. I considered whether there was such a thing as a diminishing return in Drift. Was there a cap on its promise to you? Or was I just being sensitive? Or was I just not settled in yet? Or was I getting old, and this is what hangovers started doing to you? I sipped my coffee. I had a hot shower. I left.

My first shift went by fine. We were employed by the lodge, so we only encountered people either about to head up the mountain or about to spend their days waiting for their family members to return from the mountain. I was with Frankie and Joey and neither of them had anything funny to say. Frankie told me about her latest relationship and Joey told me about his investment plan in a local paragliding company. We carved the ham. We scooped the roast potatoes. We poured the gravy. Lodgers came by with their plates, staring at the brightly lit trays, sometimes looking up to smile, sometimes chatting away to one another – questions of which peak to head to that day, will they take their Quest or PowderPro gloves? Et cetera, et cetera.

Once upon a time, it had been Toad who got everyone giggling. He was bouncy and jokes just zinged out of him like extra energy he needed to release – otherwise he might have just compounded. I’m not sure where his neuroticism came from. During shifts, once the drunk feeling from the hangover wore off and things dipped out of the silly and into the cumbersome, he’d fish out whatever small bottle of spirit he had on him and pour it into cans of Coke. Then everything became hilarious again. He’d look at me with big wide eyes and giggle manically. I felt tame compared to him. Which made me feel good. I felt like a loose end when I was with Xavier. With Toad, he became me and I became Xavier. But Toad wasn’t me, he was Toad. And Toad was life.

Find more from Eva here.