CHAPTER 4
Finding the Two Queens Guest House was easy. Even without Ryan’s directions, Josh would have been hard-pressed to get lost in Provincetown. Its two main streets, Commercial and Bradford, formed the sides of what was essentially a ladder of smaller streets running between them. It was simply a matter of driving until he saw the sign for Oyster Lane and then making a left.
Number 37 was halfway up the block, a brightly painted Victorian that stood out next to the more traditional white Cape Cod–style houses that flanked it. Josh turned into the driveway and pulled the car into the small parking area beside the house. As he got out, the front door opened and a man came out. He stood on the steps leading up to the house and gave a wave. Tall and heavily built, he had short-cropped silver hair and was dressed in faded khaki pants and a pale green shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“I take it that you’re Josh,” the man said as Josh got out of the car.
“And I take it you’re either Ted or Ben,” Josh replied, walking over and shaking the man’s extended hand.
“Ted,” said the man. “Ben’s out back playing in what passes for the garden. Come on in.”
Josh followed Ted through the door and into the front hall, where he was immediately greeted by a large black Lab, who thrust a stuffed toy into his hand and looked up at him with enormous brown eyes, his tail beating furiously against the floor.
“Thanks,” Josh said to the dog.
Ted laughed. “This is Brewer,” he told Josh. “He’s our resident mascot, guard dog, and garbage disposal. And that thing you’re holding used to be a stuffed hedgehog named Rupert.”
Josh looked at the hedgehog, which appeared to have suffered much abuse, not to mention applications of slobber. He tossed it down the hallway and Brewer scrambled after it, his paws clicking on the polished wood floor.
“How old is he?” Josh asked Ted.
“Five,” Ted replied. “We got him at the same time that we bought this place. We like to tell people that every house sold on the cape comes with a Lab thrown in.”
Ted followed Brewer down the hall, and Josh trailed after him, admiring the way the house was decorated with a mix of what appeared to be expensive antiques and more casual furnishings, the overall result of which was an atmosphere of hominess, like a summer house crossed with the gleanings from a particularly refined estate sale.
“I know, it’s sort of a strange combination,” Ted told him, noting Josh’s attention to the decor. “Ben and I have very different tastes. His run to what I call the dowager empress school of design, while I’m slightly less formal. We argued for a long time about which look would win out, and in the end we decided to compromise.”
“I like it,” Josh told him. “It looks like two different people had a hand in it. I suppose that’s where the name came from—Two Queens.”
“Actually,” said Ted, “that was a happy accident. We bought this place from two old spinster sisters, Abigail and Mary Queen. They’d lived here for about a thousand years after inheriting it from their father. When we were going through the purchasing process Ben started joking that at least the house would still belong to two queens. Once we thought of it, there really wasn’t any other choice for a name.”
They had come to the kitchen. Brewer, having retrieved his toy, was lying on the floor beneath a large table, happily gnawing on what was left of Rupert’s head. Ted indicated a chair and said, “I’ll get us something to drink.”
Josh sat down, relieved to be out of the car. When Ted set a glass of iced tea in front of him, he drank deeply and leaned back in his chair. Ted pulled out another chair and sat across from him.
“So, Ryan said you needed to get out of Boston for a while,” he said.
Josh nodded. “The city can get on your nerves sometimes,” he answered. He didn’t know if Ryan had mentioned his personal troubles to his hosts, and he felt almost as if he was lying to Ted by not telling him the full story. But he just wasn’t in the mood to discuss the situation with a man he’d just met, even if he did seem like a nice guy and was letting him stay at his guest house.
Ted nodded, not pushing the issue. Josh waited for him to ask more questions, but Ted just took another sip of his tea. Before he could say anything else, another door opened and a second man came in, wiping dirt from his hands onto the shorts he was wearing. Shorter and slighter than Ted, he wore small round gold glasses and had brown hair. His shirt was pink.
“Did I hear a car pull up?” he asked. Then he saw Josh sitting at the table. “Oh, you’re here!” he exclaimed, as if Josh were a much-anticipated guest and not some stranger whose existence he’d only learned of a few hours earlier. Rushing over, he gave Josh an enthusiastic hug. “I’m so sorry to hear about your lover,” he said consolingly.
So much for that little secret, Josh thought as he returned Ben’s hug. I should have known Ryan wouldn’t be able to keep that to himself.
“Thanks,” he told Ben.
“Now don’t you worry about a thing,” Ben told him. “You can stay here as long as you need to.”
“Oh, it will just be for the weekend,” said Josh.
Ben ignored him. “Did you tell him about the work?” he asked Ted.
Ted shook his head. “You didn’t give me time,” he told his partner.
Ben turned back to Josh. “We’re having work done on the cottage,” he said. “But don’t worry, everything works. You still have a bathroom and a kitchen and all of that. Well, part of a kitchen anyway.”
Josh looked at him, not quite understanding.
“Didn’t you tell him anything?” Ben scolded Ted. “Honestly, I swear you’ve got early Alzheimer’s. Josh, you’re going to be staying in the cottage out back. It’s more private. But we’re having some work done on it, so I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with a little construction.”
“That’s no problem,” Josh said quickly. He hadn’t noticed a cottage when he’d arrived, and had just assumed he’d be staying in one of the regular rooms.
“Now back to this boyfriend of yours,” Ben said, sitting down and fixing Josh with a concerned look. “What are you going to do about him?”
“Honey, leave him alone,” Ted said. He looked at Josh. “I apologize for my other half. I’m afraid he hasn’t had anyone’s life to meddle in since our last guests left. You have the unfortunate good luck of being the first new victim he’s had in several months.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ben said, rolling his eyes. “I can’t help it. I used to teach seventh grade,” he told Ben. “All day long kids would come to me with their problems. Why doesn’t this girl like me? Why haven’t my breasts gotten any bigger? I haven’t been able to shake the habit. Now go on, tell me everything.”
“You know what, I think I need to think about it some more before I can talk about it,” Josh said.
“Good boy,” Ted said, nodding approvingly.
“I knew I should have gotten to him before you did,” Ben said to his lover. “Well, okay. But when you’re ready, you come to your ancient aunty and tell her everything.”
“Ancient my ass,” Ted said. “You’re younger than I am.”
“That’s right,” said Ben. “And you’re ancient too, at least in gay years.” He turned back to Josh. “He’s fifty-seven,” he said. “Can you even stand it?”
Josh smiled despite himself. He was enjoying the playful banter between the two partners, and he had a feeling they were playing it up for his benefit.
“I’m only fifty-two,” Ben said, as if confiding the most closely held of secrets. “But if you tell anyone I’ll only admit to forty-eight. Now come out back and I’ll show you the cottage.”
Josh stood up as Brewer, sensing an outing, raced to the door and looked expectantly at the doorknob.
“Are you sure you can handle him?” Ted asked Josh. “I’m happy to be your bodyguard.”
“I think I’ll be okay,” Josh said as Ben sighed dramatically.
Ben let Brewer out and he and Josh walked into the backyard. As the dog tore off to sniff some flowers, Ben pointed to a small cottage that sat at the rear of the property.
“There’s your home away from home,” he said.
Josh couldn’t help but laugh. The cottage resembled a smaller version of the main house, right down to the elaborate paint job.
“It looks like someone built an oversize dollhouse based on the big house,” remarked Josh.
“Close,” said Ben. “It was originally built for the Queen sisters to play in when they were little girls. Weird, isn’t it?”
“A little,” Josh said as they reached the door and Ben opened it.
“As you can see, only the outside is the same,” said Ben as they went inside.
Indeed, inside the cottage looked like any other summer cottage. It was basically two spacious rooms, one a living room and one a bedroom. Each was furnished with comfortable-looking furniture, and a multitude of windows let in the bright summer sun.
“It was in pretty bad shape when we bought the place,” Ben said as he gave Josh a quick tour. “We only just renovated it last year, and we’re still not done. As you can see, the kitchen is in bits and pieces. We have a local carpenter working on it, but since we weren’t planning on renting it out this season we haven’t been in any big hurry to get it done.”
Josh looked at the cabinets and fixtures scattered around the kitchen. “It’s great,” he said. “I really appreciate you letting me use it.”
“It’s our pleasure,” Ben told him. “I know how it is to have a cheater for a lover,” he added.
“Ted?” Ben said, genuinely surprised. Although he’d only known the men for half an hour, Ted didn’t strike him as the type to stray.
“Oh, no,” said Ben. “Ted’s as monogamous as one of those swans who mate for life. No, before him I was with someone else, this absolutely gorgeous man who had the nasty habit of spending more time in other people’s beds than he did in ours. But I was young and in love, and I thought I could change him. I put up with it for a long time, until finally he gave me crabs one time too many and I kicked him out.”
Josh shrugged. “Doug’s not like that,” he said. “In fact, until this morning I would have said that he and I were like you and Ted. Now, though, I don’t know.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of peace and quiet to think it all over,” said Ben when it was clear that Josh wasn’t going to say anything else. “In the meantime, I’ll leave you to get settled. I’m afraid you can’t do too much cooking in this place, but the good news is that I happen to be a fabulous cook. So come on over around eight o’clock and we’ll have ourselves some dinner.”
Josh smiled at Ben. Despite his nosiness, he seemed like a genuinely kind person. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”
Ben left Josh alone. After another, more thorough, inspection of his living quarters, Josh went to the car to retrieve his luggage. When he returned, he deposited his bag in the bedroom. His laptop he placed on the coffee table in the living room. It was then that he realized that the place had neither a television nor a phone. At first this made him feel lonely, as if without e-mail and the mindless chatter of must-see TV he was somehow cut off from the rest of the world.
Then he remembered his cell phone. Somehow he’d had the presence of mind to pack the recharger, so at least he had that. Besides, whom was he going to call? He didn’t even want Doug to know where he was. Ryan could always reach him through Ben and Ted. There was no one else he needed to talk to, at least not immediately. Suddenly, being unreachable took on a pleasant new dimension. He had, for all intents and purposes, successfully run away from home.
This realization brought with it another, less pleasant, one: He smelled bad. In his haste to get away from Doug and his revelation of infidelity, he hadn’t showered. He had simply changed out of his running clothes into jeans and a T-shirt. Now, after several hours of sitting in the car, the sweat from his morning run was making itself known.
To make matters worse, nothing in his bag was going to smell much better. He’d basically packed straight from the hamper, as Saturday was laundry day and everything he wore most frequently was dirty. Unless he wanted to arrive at dinner wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a smile, he was going to have to do laundry.
He imagined that Ben and Ted probably had a washer and dryer in the house, but he felt he’d imposed on them enough for one day. Surely there was a Laundromat in town. He picked up his bag, returned to the car, and made the short drive to Commercial Street. After trolling for several blocks, he spied what he was looking for and parked in front of it.
The Bucket of Suds was surprisingly busy. Most of the washers were in use, but Josh found the two he needed and loaded them up. As his clothes washed he went out for a coffee and a quick stroll up and down the street. Oddly enough for someone who had lived in fairly close proximity for many years, he had never been to P-Town before. Although he would have preferred to have made his first visit under different circumstances, that didn’t stop him from being curious about what the place was like.
After wandering through the shops for a while, he returned to put his wash in to dry. But when he wheeled his laundry-filled cart over to the wall of dryers, he found them all occupied. Most were on, the clothes inside falling over themselves as the dryers turned. Several, however, were sitting still, their finished loads taking up valuable real estate.
Josh looked at the dryers. He hated it when people were rude like this. How long, he wondered, would the clothes sit there before their owner came to claim them? Was it worth waiting for another dryer to finish, one whose user was more conscientious about things like wasting other people’s time? He looked at his watch. It was six-thirty. He still needed to shower.
Deciding that there wasn’t time to wait for the other dryers to finish, he opened the ones that had already stopped and pulled their contents into an empty cart. The clothes were barely warm, suggesting that they’d been there for some time. This made Josh even more irritated, and as he threw his own wash in he thought of all the things he’d like to say to the owner of the laundry.
Almost immediately after putting his quarters in, however, he began to feel guilty. He looked at the clean clothes, jumbled in the cart, and he suddenly felt a sense of responsibility toward them. It was stupid, he knew. They weren’t his clothes. Their careless owner deserved to have them taken from the warm belly of the dryer by a stranger. But seeing them thrown together in a wrinkled pile upset Josh’s sense of order. Sloppiness had always been something he despised, and somehow the untended laundry reminded him that his own life was currently very much not in order.
With a sigh of resignation he wheeled the cart over to a folding table and picked up the first garment. It was a T-shirt, white, Hanes size large, he noted as he turned it right-side-to with a faint sense of irritation that its wearer had compounded his carelessness by leaving the shirt inside out. He spread it out and folded the sides over, lining up the sleeves and smoothing them out of habit.
Not surprisingly, the whites and colors had been mixed together. Josh tried not to think about it as he folded the clothes, mainly T-shirts. But when he reached in and came up with a pair of boxer shorts, white like the T-shirts, he felt a sense of embarrassment. He was holding a stranger’s underwear in his hands. He stared at them for a moment, then glanced around, oddly fearful that someone would think he was engaged in some kind of strange sexual act.
He folded the boxers quickly, first in thirds and then once over, like he did his own. There were more of them in the cart, most white but some red plaid and one pair with small blue polka dots. They were all waist size 34, a detail Josh found amusing for a silly personal reason. Someone had once told him that 32 was the most common waist size in menswear. He himself was a 34, and whenever he bought underwear or pants he reminded himself that although he might not be the size 32 he’d been in his twenties, he was at least above average. A 34 waist, he’d decided, was a sign of having grown into himself.
He continued folding, moving from boxers to socks, then more T-shirts and finally onto jeans and what appeared to be the world’s largest collection of blue work shirts. He folded all of them with careful attention to detail, and before long he had a pile of clean clothes in front of him, each item neat enough to have been plucked from a display at Banana Republic. Despite the fact that they weren’t his, he took some measure of satisfaction from looking at his handiwork. At least there’s one thing I have control over, he thought.
As he looked at the pile as a whole, he began to wonder more about whom they belonged to. Clearly, it was a man. But what was he like? Who was he? Josh easily fell into one of his favorite games—trying to guess something about a person he’d never met simply by looking at his belongings. He did it in airports sometimes, and on the T while riding around Boston. Sometimes he created whole lives for people he found particularly interesting. Once, after seeing a man in a business suit walking down Newbury Street eating Twinkie after Twinkie from a box he carried, Josh had spent several delicious hours imaging what could possibly drive someone to such behavior.
Now he turned his attention to the person behind the laundry. Who was the man who preferred white boxers? Single, probably, since there were no women’s clothes mixed in with his. But what else could Josh tell? Not much, he decided after staring at the clothes for some time. All of it—the T-shirts, the jeans, the work shirts—was impersonal, without any hint of style or character. It could belong to anyone.
He’s probably just some stupid eighteen-year-old college kid, Josh thought, annoyed that the clothing wasn’t more interesting.
“Did you do this?”
Josh turned around, startled by the voice. Behind him was a man, and he was staring at the pile of laundry.
“Um, yeah,” Josh replied. “Is it yours?”
The man nodded.
He wasn’t eighteen. He was closer to Josh’s own age, and he was incredibly handsome. Slightly taller than Josh, he had short reddish brown hair, blue eyes, and the faint shadow of a two-day beard. His skin was tanned, and he appeared to have a well-built body beneath the jeans and blue work shirt he was wearing. Looking at the shirt, Josh almost laughed at its exact resemblance to the others in the pile, but his surprise at meeting the clothes’ owner quickly erased any possibility of making a joke.
“I’m sorry,” Josh said finally. “I needed to use a dryer, and they were all full.”
The man examined his laundry, as if checking to make sure everything was there. This annoyed Josh, who half expected the guy to accuse him of stealing his underwear or losing one of his T-shirts.
“This is amazing,” the man said. “You fold clothes better than my mother.”
The comment took Josh by surprise. “Oh,” he said dully, all of the comebacks he’d mentally been preparing being inappropriate for the moment. “Thanks.”
The man picked up his clothing and turned to Josh. “I’m sorry I left it here,” he said. “I was working on a job and lost track of time. I owe you one.”
He smiled, revealing white teeth and, even more distracting to Josh, a dimple in his chin. Then, before Josh could reply, he turned and left, the folded laundry cradled in his arms.
“Any time,” Josh said to his retreating back. He continued to watch the man as he got into a red pickup truck and pulled away. Then another voice brought him back to the moment.
“Excuse me.”
Josh turned around. A woman with a cart full of wet clothes was looking at his dryers, which had just stopped. “Are you going to take this stuff out or what?” she asked accusingly.