Chapter Two
From somewhere inside the house, someone shouts, “Just a second!” There’s a muffled thump, followed by a string of curse words,
and then footsteps tromping closer.
The door flies open. In front of us is a tall, harried-looking woman with wild gray hair and broad shoulders, bright red plastic
eyeglasses sliding down her long nose, dressed in a lime-green caftan printed with yellow bananas.
She holds up a finger. “Can you wait one moment? I need to contain a demonic force.”
“Um.” I blink. “Sure?”
“Thank you.” She steps back, but before she can close the door, a blur of gray fur shoots past her out of the house. We jump
back as the woman charges after it, running down the brick path in her bare feet. “Duke! Get back here!”
She disappears around the side of the house. Silence sinks back in, except for the rush of waves and the distant cry of a
seagull.
Then the woman reappears, climbing the brick path again, looking annoyed.
“Damn cat. Thinks he’s a hellish fiend who has every right to go outside and eat birds.
Environmental destruction on four legs. It’s like trying to contain the apocalypse.
” She reaches the front porch and puts her hands on her hips, frowning at us. “Is one of you Harlowe?”
“Yeah, I am.” I hold out a hand. “Harlowe Truett.”
The woman clasps my hand firmly. “I’m Dina. Dina Daley.”
Now that she’s standing still, I recognize her. I googled her, back when I first found the listing for the cottage, because
it was so cheap that I was half convinced it had to be a scam, and I’d show up only to discover I’d been cottage-fished and
my new summer home was actually a leaky, ant-infested tent in someone’s backyard.
The only hit was a three-year-old article from a local newspaper, but there was a picture, along with a caption: Dina Daley, 62, is a local trans woman who owns and manages Queer Punx on Commercial Street.
And that was what convinced me. She was real, and she was trans. And a cheap rental, hosted by a trans person, that promised
to be “about thirty minutes” from Provincetown, a town with a lot of queer tourism? It felt like a minor miracle. The universe
throwing me a bone. Or at least showing me an escape hatch.
“The cottage is all ready for you,” Dina says. She turns to Rika and Yasmin, her eyebrows rising above her bright glasses.
“Didn’t realize you were bringing friends.”
“We’re just helping Harlowe move,” Rika says with a quick smile. “We’re catching the ferry from Provincetown back to Boston
in a few hours.”
“Well, let me get your key,” Dina says. She goes past us into the house, returning a minute later with a small gold key on
a key ring, a silver sailboat charm attached to it. “Here you go. Cottage is that way.” She waves a hand at a flagstone path
that leads away into a grove of skinny birch trees on the far side of the house. “Can’t miss it.”
I take the key, glancing into the trees. I can’t see anything except . . . trees. “Okay, thanks. Is there anything else I
should know? Like a Wi-Fi password or . . . ?”
“All in the cottage.” Dina leans down and grabs a pair of red rain boots from inside her entryway.
“There’s a notebook on the coffee table with everything you need.
” She pulls on the boots. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go chase the devil.
If you see him, don’t let him into the little house. He scratches the furniture!”
And she marches past us again, clomping down the brick path in her rain boots, gray hair and banana caftan flying behind her.
In another moment, she’s disappeared around the edge of her house.
We stare after her.
Finally, Yasmin clears their throat. “So . . . should we go find this cottage?”
The flagstone path is half overgrown with long grass and trailing plants, and the hum of insects and rush of waves follows
us as we climb farther up the hill, into the grove of birch trees. And there, sort of suddenly, is the cottage. It’s only
about fifty feet from Dina’s house, but its weathered gray shingles blend in with the mottled bark of the birch trees around
it. No wonder I didn’t see it from Dina’s porch.
It looks just like the rental listing. Deep blue shutters framing a picture window, with a few steps leading up to a matching
blue front door. It’s an actual structure. Not an ant-infested tent.
My breath rushes out in relief.
The key turns easily in the lock, and the door opens to reveal a small living room. It looked cozy in the pictures online,
but in person it’s practically tiny, barely big enough for a couch, a lamp, and a coffee table, all perched on a striped rug
that’s faded to a wash of pastels. On the coffee table is a notebook, just like Dina promised.
The whole room is a little worn and everything smells kind of musty, like the windows haven’t been opened in weeks, but otherwise . . .
it’s nice. I don’t care if it’s small; I only need room for me.
Which is a thought I still can’t seem to get used to.
“This is adorable,” Rika says. She’s already opening a door on the far side of the living room. “Oh my god, and you have a separate dining room?”
“Didn’t I send you the listing?” I trail after her, Yasmin behind me.
“Well, yeah, but it’s hard to tell the layout from pictures online.” Rika walks around a table that’s only big enough for
two mismatched chairs, past a skinny wooden hutch stuffed into one corner, and pulls open a slatted, bifold door that leads
to a tiny L-shaped kitchen.
“Wow.” Yasmin goes past her, peering through the window above the sink, which looks out into the grove of birch trees. “This
definitely beats our fire escape view.”
The rest of the kitchen is nothing fancy—the stove is extremely narrow and the refrigerator is probably half the width of
my old one—but the cabinets hold a decent selection of dishes and pots and pans. Which makes me feel a little better about
leaving all of mine behind.
Around the corner of the L is a stacked washer and dryer and a pocket door that leads into a short hallway. There’s a cramped
bathroom with a tub that doesn’t look quite full-size, and at the end of the hall is the bedroom. It’s also smaller than it
looked online—the bed takes up most of the floor space—but there’s a narrow dresser and a tiny bedside table squeezed in.
I heave open the window and squint through the screen at the ocean.
“Okay, I’m officially jealous,” Rika says, coming into the bedroom behind me. “This cottage deserves its own Pinterest board.”
“Yeah, you’re gonna have to send us pictures,” Yasmin says, sitting down on the patchwork quilt that covers the bed. “Or make,
like, sound therapy videos out of those ocean waves.”
That almost makes me smile. I lean my face into the cool breeze that drifts through the open window. In this moment, at least, Boston feels very far away.
“Let’s unload the car,” I say.
It takes some awkward pushing and pulling to get everything out of the trunk, and the suitcases don’t exactly roll on the
gravel. By the time we’ve carried it all up the brick path, across Dina’s porch, up the flagstone path, and into the little
cottage, I’m sweating, and I’m really glad I finally threw out those three banker boxes full of my various thesis drafts.
It was close. I thought about trying to stuff them into the car. But in the end, they went in the recycling bin. I know I’m
not going to get a job in academia. There’s no reason to keep hanging on to the physical reminders of just how little I’ve
done with an American history PhD.
Rika and Yasmin unpack the boxes of books and the tchotchkes I couldn’t part with, while I fling clothes into the narrow dresser.
The boxes get broken down and shoved under the bed, since I’ll need them again in about three months. Finally, the three of
us collapse on the couch. The cushions are saggy, the springs worn out, and I sink in until my knees are practically as high
as my chest, but I don’t care. It’s soft and comfortable.
“Ugh, I don’t want to move,” Yasmin groans. “I can’t believe I have a full shift tomorrow.”
“We definitely need to come back and visit at some point,” Rika says, digging out her phone. “I just have to find the weekend
with the most gay shit going on in Provincetown. And someplace for us to stay, because we won’t fit here.”
“We could just come visit and sit on the beach,” Yasmin says hopefully. Yasmin is peak introvert—they’d spend all their spare
time reading books and adopting cats if they could.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll sit on the beach too,” Rika says, waving a hand. “But if we’re near P-town, we need to do gay shit.” She looks at me. “We’re kind of near P-town, right?”
“I mean . . . It’s supposed to be half an hour away.” I pull out my own phone, typing Provincetown into Google Maps. The route pops up as a thin orange line along Route 6, turning red as it nears the little circle marked
Provincetown. “Oh, shit. It actually looks like about forty minutes right now. I guess we should probably go if we’re going to make your
ferry.”
I was starting to think maybe Dina overhyped the traffic—but by the time we get back to Route 6, heading for Provincetown
at the farthest tip of Cape Cod, where the land curls back toward the rest of Massachusetts like a beckoning finger, we’re
joining a long line of cars, all going the same direction. The groves of trees and stretches of beaches disappear and we crawl
past shingled cottages and white-sided houses with little fishing boats and old pickup trucks parked out front. Bed-and-breakfasts
crowd in with small hotels, all packing in closer and closer together as we near the ocean. Pretty soon we’re surrounded by
throngs of people, spilling over from the sidewalks into the narrow streets.
The ferry that runs between Provincetown and Boston sits at the end of a long pier that juts out into the ocean, packed with
vendors selling hats and sunglasses and postcards. It’s a big boat—not big enough to carry cars, but still with multiple decks,
an American flag whipping in the sharp breeze.
We join the line of people waiting to board just as it starts to move, everyone drifting toward the boat. A couple guys in
shorts and fleece sweatshirts are setting up a ramp to act as a bridge between the pier and the ferry.
Rika turns to me. “I guess this is it.”
There’s suddenly something stuck in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow. I tell myself this is silly—they’re only going to be a few hours away.
But I know it’s not really about the driving distance.
I pull Rika and Yasmin into a hug. “Thanks for helping with everything.”
“Of course,” Rika says into my shoulder.
“You’ll be okay?” Yasmin asks.
“Yeah.” I let them both go, doing my best to summon something like a smile. “I’ll be fine.”
Rika and Yasmin cross onto the ferry, and I wave when they turn to wave at me. But I feel almost like I’m watching myself.
Like I’m somewhere far away, watching someone else wave at his friends, trying to look fine, while my own heart is crumbling and my head is pounding and my mind is full of bees.
The ferry motor rumbles to life, churning the water to frothing white. The horn blasts and the boat turns, leaving the harbor
with a roar that rattles my bones. I stand there until the late afternoon sun feels as if it’s burning the back of my neck
and the boat is well out into the ocean. And then my stomach rumbles.
I need to go grocery shopping.
It hits me with a kind of dull surprise. I need to stock up the cottage. I mean, I knew—in the back of my mind—that I would
need to stock up the cottage, but now it’s real.
I live by myself. I need to learn how to cook for one. I need to buy all the basics, like salt and pepper. I need to remember
what the hell the basics even are.
The thought of trying to make an actual grocery list makes me want to fold up on the pier and cry, so instead I head for what looks like the main drag of Provincetown and walk until I find a restaurant that has decently cheap chicken wings and fries, order to go, and carry the box back to my car.
The wings are only okay and the fries are greasy, but I eat them all anyway, staring through the windshield and wondering why I’m sitting in my car instead of sitting on the pier or on the beach or somewhere you’re supposed to sit when you go to a place like Cape Cod.
I don’t bother finding a trash can to ditch the box, just toss it into the back seat and turn the car out of the parking lot.
Provincetown itself is still crowded, but once I leave it, the traffic disappears, and within half an hour, I’m rumbling up
Spyglass Beach Way to the top of the hill.
The sun is low in the sky as I walk back up the brick path, past Dina’s house, and on to the cottage, fishing the gold key
out of my pocket. The hum of insects has grown louder, and when I glance through the trees, I can see more of the beach at
the bottom of the hill. The tide must be receding.
I left the windows open in the cottage, and the living room doesn’t smell nearly as musty when I go inside. The breeze sweeping
in is cool and salty. I slip out of my shoes, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, and head for the kitchen. I need
a glass of water to wash down the wings and the fries.
But when I reach the dining room, I stop, as abruptly as though I walked into a brick wall. Because sitting in one of the
two chairs at the small dining table, in the middle of paging through a book, a pencil in one hand, rectangular reading glasses
slipping down her nose, wearing a sweater set that’s so familiar I can practically hear the faint buzz of those fluorescent
lights in her office, is someone I haven’t seen since I finished my PhD program. Since I turned in the thesis that never got
me a job—the one that’s currently sitting in a recycling bin behind my old apartment in Boston.
My mouth falls open. “Professor MacAndrew?”