ASYMMETRIC

June had agreed to meet with Nick, as she had said to Mark Tuello she would do. He seemed to be the only one left in Gilead, remotely recruitable. Lawrence on the other hand, he was hopeless.

So, guess what they talked about? Did June ask how it was that Nick could seamlessly cross the border? Did June ask Nick why he didn't just bring Rose north? Did June scold Nick for smoking, a truly disgusting habit?

What June wanted to know was now that their situations were equal, both with a spouse, both with a country, June now caring for Nichole in Canada on Nick's behalf - why was it that Nick still wanted her to say 'yes' to New Bethlehem? Demand that she say yes, when Nick had said 'no' to Tuello and Canada?

Now that June was in Canada, the asymmetry of her relationship with Nichole's father stuck out badly. Nick had simply expected her to come south, but he was 'too stuck' in Gilead to consider the opposite for himself.

Nick used Rose as an excuse, "Gilead's her home, she's happy there." Geez, Nick!

Whoop-de-do. The gaping hole in that logic? One day The Blaines would be assigned a Handmaid, June said, and Rose would have to hold her down so that Nick could rape her. How does one 'improve' on that, if Nick's goal is to improve the place? Small things like that - they contributed to the asymmetry of it all.

Nick's leveler? "Rose is pregnant."

June's answer to that? Surprise, with the words, "Oh. Right." Upon considering Nick's words, June wondered why it was she who considered that that information was a 'showstopper'. She knew that there was something else going on with her - in relation to Nick. Stockholm syndrome?

Nick then talked about Gilead, that it was changing, that he and Lawrence were having an impact for the good. June thought, 'yeah, a 'good' that so far did not cut down on the institutional raping!'

He then followed with a non sequitur, at least for the argument he was trying to make with June about New Bethlehem - he was now a long way from trying to coax her into a new home with a picket fence, in a new and improved Gilead.

As June summarized, it seemed that both of them wanted what was best for both their families, and it was that that would keep them apart. Nick, he said he wanted to protect his from the choices he blindly saw himself stuck in.

June seemed always to cave in when it came to Nick. His record of earning trust was spotty at best. After the handmaids had defied Aunt Lydia over Janine's stoning, Nick had told June to go with the Guardians. Then they had led her to a mock hanging of the lot of them. Thank. You. Nick.

Nick had orchestrated June's first escape from the Waterford's, she had spent those weeks in the now closed old Boston Globe publishing offices and plant. That had not worked out, Nick had never told her why. Was Nick Mayday or was he a gaslighter, playing the long game?

Yet it had been Nick, Nick had taken those women's postcards to Canada during Waterford's trade mission. Pure Mayday, more effective than a strap-on, explosive vest. Nick had given them to Luke, more importantly had told Luke that he was looking out for June. The postcards once published in Canada had crashed the trade mission. That treasonous act on his part just made him seem contrary! That simply could not have been part of a gaslighting long game, could it?

Then Nick tried to get June and Nichole out of Gilead all together. June had bailed on that one, but not after handing Nichole to Emily Malek, who was similarly being exfiltrated by Joseph Lawrence. (There it was, the two of them - Blaine and Lawrence. How long had they been conspiring together? Did June ever ask if they were?)

In considering who Nick Blaine might be, at this point in the summary all seems even, stuck in a middle with a mystery about the guy.

Yet when the Waterford's engaged the international community to get Nichole returned from Canada, where was Nick? He could have talked with the Swiss, but didn't. Instead, he'd accepted a posting - a dangerous military command - in Chicago, one of the most perilous pieces of Gilead real estate, not counting being irradiated in The Colonies. At that point, Nick seemed to have had a death wish, one he was acting out on, rather than helping June.

Both the Swiss as well as Serena Joy had warned June off Nick. "Do you know who you're dealing with?" they'd asked. 'No,' June had thought, 'I probably don't'. But at that point, she was all in.

Yet now that she was once again standing with him, complaining about the asymmetry of his expectations, all she could now manage was, "well, this is a fine mess, isn't it?"

(Nick, glance back at the hook as June lowers you off of it. Again.)

WE SHOULD HAVE JUST RUN AWAY

June then actually wished that the world would just, 'go away'. Years ago it had been Nick, he'd been the one who had told the Waterford handmaid, "I should have just left with you when I had the chance."

Oh? When had that chance presented itself? When between June's first day as Offred, all the way to this moment had the world not been a mess? Were June and Nick going to run away from it all, right from this point? It was as good as any!

Nick, not yet having given up on June agreeing to New Bethlehem, he said, "it will be hard for us to see each other." When after this were they going to see each other? June then assured Nick that she would not make trouble for him - restoring the asymmetry, which always leaned his way. He can make trouble for you, but not the other way around. Yet he also continued with resignation, asking that he be remembered to Nichole. So maybe he was sensitive to the asymmetry of it, after all.

Then the last gasp, something that could have been anything really. Manipulative? Sincere? One last hook to sell New Bethlehem? Resignation, capitulation to a breakup?

When at the end of their meeting, Nick told June, "I love you," it was a sentiment which she, predictably, returned. After all of the above. All of it, starting from her plea as a new handmaid in the Waterford house - Emily having freshly warned her that Nick was probably an Eye, therefore someone to be feared.

A status he did not lie about. June, she was in love with Nick. Despite all the asymmetric gobbledegook talk you've just read, it was what it was.

June's epilogue with Nick? "Children look to their fathers." The point being that in Gilead, the Commanders of the Faithful - Fred, Kyle, Cushing, Putnam, Guthrie, and most of the rest - they were horrible role models for their daughters, and perhaps worse for their sons. Even Lawrence.

One of those Commanders was poised to take 12-year old Hannah, Agnes Mackenzie, as his wife. Hannah, she was being trained as Nick and June spoke, trained to hold down handmaids while her husband raped them.

"Nick, be a good role model. Set an example." Given that Nick was choosing Gilead, he was going to need more than good luck to accomplish that. She may as well have told him, "don't rape anyone, okay, Nick? Teach your sons not to rape, okay?"

But if Nick could avoid that and live, he'd be more dangerous to Gilead, far far more than any intrigue he was planning with Joseph Lawrence. Improving the place, that was nothing.

Through it all? Her love for him, it was genuine. Damn, fuck, shit. It was what it was.

But June could tell. Despite her love, she was over him. Because of the bottom line - she had to report to Tuello, that Nick was unrecruitable. Honestly, she did not want him in Canada.

THE LAWRENCE HOME

Joseph Lawrence looked at his clock, shining in the dark at him, a bright-red set of numerals. They said, "4:30" which must have been in the 'a.m.' because it was still dark outside.

Commander Blaine, he had left - more than an hour ago, spitting bullets about Toronto and the attack on that American memorial service. Spitting bullets that June Osborne, she had been shot at - that Kyle Mackenzie was out of control, that he was going to start a war that no one would win.

A war that if nothing else would end Lawrence's charm offensive with the rest of the world. Good-bye U.N. seat at its Security Council.

Lawrence wasn't drifting off anyway, just lying there looking at the clock. It was now 4:31. Presumably still in the 'a.m.'.

His phone, it was surprisingly calm. Given that he'd been asked to be 'kept apprised' about Toronto, he had no way of interpreting the silence.

His phone was calm, but there was a quiet knock on his bedroom door. Obviously a female one. His Guardian had done that many times before, and the guy had always been through the door before Lawrence could acknowledge anything.

Okay, was this Aunt Lydia? He'd had a few rounds arguing with her, threatening and being threatened by her. But never this early. Fearing that Lydia had heard everything with him and Blaine, Lawrence said, "Come!"

Instead, the widow, Mrs. Warren Putnam, she stuck her head around the door. She said, "I know that you're awake. I didn't live with a High Commander all that time, not to realize when you were burning the midnight oil."

Lawrence's penchant for a witty come-back failed. All he had at that hour was a sour, "Naomi, what do you want?"

Not waiting for an invitation, she came in, shut the door behind her and leaned against it, closing her robe.

"I saw Commander Blaine. I don't like that man. Seeing him sends me into a panic. He's the one….." she couldn't finish her sentence.

"Can this wait for the morning," Lawrence asked, pulling the covers up to his chin. Immediately he knew that it probably couldn't. In a few hours his phone was really going to be going mad, and he'd probably be at Chancery for the duration of whatever crisis was looming. Damn those Canadian populists!

"Joseph," Naomi said, walking a few feet into his room and sitting on a chair near the door, "we need to talk. I need to know what I'm getting into."

"What about Aunt Lydia? She couldn't have slept through all the ruckus. Say what you want, but chaperones are going to chaperone!"

"She's asleep. Dead asleep in the chair downstairs. Looks like she's done it before," Naomi assured.

Joseph sat up and leaned against the bedframe behind him, "Okay, Naomi, let's talk. I'm surprised you're talking to me, at all!"

"I would have shot you, myself, Joseph, I still might," she said to a vacant space in front of her.

"Joseph," she continued, now looking at him, "you ran an apostate group of marthas from this house once. If I'm here, that will stop."

"I promise," Lawrence conceded. "Can I ask you a question, Naomi? Knowing what you know, why are you even considering…" he looked around his room, "….. this?"

When she didn't answer, he continued, "didn't you join in with Serena Waterford in that plan to educate girls, to teach them to read - read the Bible? Wasn't that a plan hatched at one of your Wives' hen parties? C'mon, girl, you were a little apostate-ish yourself!"

"Serena, she went too far," Naomi said.

"Well, you and me, Naomi, we're not much different. We seem to have the same goals." He paused, then added, "that lady snoring like a Pamplona bull downstairs has them, too."

Naomi risked, "there's been stories of you and handmaids. All us Wives, we knew Eleanor's views on that. Were those stories true?"

"If they were that both Eleanor and I abhorred the practise, then you are in the right ballpark."

She sat silently for the longest time.

"I'm relieved that you could resist the urge to possess a slut." She continued, "You're an apostate, Joseph Lawrence, you really are. Eleanor, God rest her soul, she was too." She stood and went back to the door, put her hand on the doorknob.

She turned in place and said, "the Commanders, they're perverts, all of them. Maybe not you. But my Warren, he was the worst. It was a sickness." She stared at a blank spot on the door as she opened it. "He always had it. I thought that his faith would change it. I thought my prayers would change it. God's answer to a prayer sometimes is, 'no'."

As she opened the door and slowly pointed herself back to the handmaid's room, she said, "I may not get Angela back. But I will now not need to worry about her with Warren."

She said as the door closed, "I should thank you for that."