The Corkscrew Letter

**Friday night, home, in bed**

Dear diary, except this is just the notes app on my phone and I'm thirty-two years old and a grown man writing about his feelings before bed. Here it is anyway.

Three years. That's how long it's been since anything real happened. There was a Tinder thing when I was twenty-nine that I don't count, because we met at a bar, talked about her landlord problems for two hours, and split an order of garlic bread. She hugged me goodbye at the curb like I was her dentist. Since then, work, work, a couple of second dates that never made it to thirds, and one very committed relationship with a rice cooker.

So I booked a cabin. Well, a container. Murphy's Hinterland, some organic farm out in the hills, and the listing showed these retired shipping containers turned into guest cabins, each one painted a different color. Mine is grey-green. There's solar power and a hot shower and a little deck, and the whole point is that nobody can text me about Q4 projections because the wifi is deliberately bad.

I'm leaving Saturday morning. Two nights. The plan is nothing. Read, walk, stare at a field, cook actual food like someone who cooks. Maybe drink a bottle of something decent, which is why I checked my bag has a corkscrew. It doesn't, actually, I just remembered. Noted.

Anyway. Recharge. That's the word I keep using with people. Recharge.

---

**Email, Friday, 9:12 a.m.**

To: bookings@murphyshinterland.co.nz Subject: Booking confirmation, container cabin, this weekend

Hi, just confirming I arrive tomorrow (Saturday) around two. Name's Skylar, booking under the grey-green container, two nights. Let me know if I need anything. Looking forward to it.

Skylar

**Reply, 11:40 a.m.**

Hi Skylar,

Oh no, I'm so sorry. I have some bad news. The grey-green container was double-listed by accident. One of our staff, Max, put it up on a second site months back when he was testing the listing system, and it never got taken down. Max lives in it during the week anyway when he's on duty, and with the second listing live he never moved out for your weekend.

I know that's not what you paid for. Max has offered to sort something out with you directly. Again, I'm really sorry. This is entirely our mess.

Alexia Office manager, Murphy's Hinterland

---

**Texts, Friday, 1:15 p.m.**

Unknown number: Hi Skylar, this is Max from Murphy's. Alexia gave me your number. I'm the idiot who double-listed the container. I'm really sorry.

Me: Well. That's a new one.

Max: I know. Believe me. The cabin you're owed is still yours. Problem is it's the only cabin and I'm in it.

Me: Are you asking me to cancel?

Max: No. I'm asking if you'd be willing to share it. I'm barely there, I'm on the farm most of the day. There are two beds. I'd stay out of your way. And I'd cook for you both nights to make up for it. I do the cooking for the crew here anyway.

Me: This is a weird pitch.

Max: It's the weirdest pitch I've ever made.

Me: Full use of the space then. Deck, shower, kitchen, all of it, like it's mine. And dinner both nights. And you change the listing so this never happens to the next person.

Max: Done, done and done. See you tomorrow at two. I'll leave the gate code for you.

---

**Voicemail to Dev, Friday, 9:48 p.m.**

"Hey, it's me. So the cabin thing turned into a thing. Double-booked, and now I'm sharing a shipping container with a stranger for the weekend. And here's the part you'll enjoy. Alexia sent a photo of the farm crew for some reason, for context, whatever, and the stranger is hot. Like, tall, dark hair, forearms situation. He's thirty-four and he fixes their computers and also apparently does farm work, which, sure, fine. But I'm telling you right now, I am here to recharge. That is the entire purpose of the weekend. No hookups, no flirting, no scanning the situation. I'm going to stare at a field and sleep nine hours. Don't text back anything stupid. Okay, text back something stupid, but not until Monday."

---

**Voicemail to Dev, Saturday, 6:03 p.m.**

"Okay, so, update, and I need you to not be a jerk about this. The container is actually great. He cooked tonight, some lamb thing with vegetables from the actual farm, and we ate early on the deck and it was, ugh, nice. He's easy to talk to. And listen, no wait, different words. This afternoon there was a note under my door. His handwriting is weirdly good. It said, 'Heading into town after dinner, need anything?' That's it. That's the note. And I have been standing in this kitchen for ten minutes thinking about what I could possibly say back. Dev. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it and you know exactly what that means. Say nothing."

---

**Note, left on the kitchen counter, Saturday, 6:20 p.m.**

Max.

Town sounds good, actually. But you should know the corkscrew you lent me earlier is the only thing we have in common, so let's fix that. Want to split a bottle tonight? My pick from the shelf, your kitchen, that deck.

Skylar

---

The answer came back by text while I was still standing there holding the pen, which felt unfair somehow, like he'd been watching the door. The text said: "Your place or mine? I mean the container. Same container. Yes to the bottle, I'll be back by seven."

I read it three times. Then I put the phone down on the counter, picked it back up, read it a fourth time, and told the kitchen, out loud, "Okay."

I want to be fair to myself here and say I wasn't planning anything when I drove out. That was true at the time I said it to Dev in the first voicemail, and it was less true every hour after I met the man. He met me at the gate at two with dirt on his hands from fixing a fence line, said "You must be Skylar, I'm the disaster," and shook my hand as a normal person would, and I stood there in the gravel with my duffel bag thinking, oh no.

He's thirty-four. I checked, in a roundabout way, over dinner, the way you do. He's been at Murphy's for four years, he does the network admin work half the week and farm work the other half because he likes being outside, and he rebuilt the container cabin himself with a mate. There's a eucalyptus windbreak along the north side and he pointed it out as a tour guide would, and I said something dumb about koalas and he laughed anyway.

The dinner thing started as an apology for the mix-up, and he said plainly that the apology was just the apology, nothing else attached, and whatever else might happen would be its own separate question. But tonight he cooked like he wanted to, not like he had to. Lamb, kumara, greens off the bench outside. We split the dishes. Then he went into town, and now I've written a note about a corkscrew like it's a hostage negotiation, and he answered yes.

The bottle is a pinot noir from the farm's own honesty shelf, twelve dollars, and I've been reading the back label twice. There is no corkscrew in the container, obviously, that was the entire joke of the note, he lent me his this morning and took it back to town with him, so I'm standing here with a bottle of wine and no way into it, waiting for the man with the tool to come home.

The light out the little window is going orange over the fields. Somewhere down the hill