Janine fidgeted with the car door handle. So easy, she thought, just to pull it open and let herself fall onto the concrete road. If she was lucky, she'd smash her skull and that would be the end of all her troubles. If she was unlucky, she'd wake up in a hospital room, bruised or paralyzed, with Aunt Lydia scowling down at her, calling her a stupid girl.
"Hey, Janine, please don't think about jumping. I'm trying to help you."
The driver of the car was using her name. Her real name. Not Ofjoseph. She wasn't sure if that was her current title; she had been posted for about half an hour before pissing off Naomi Putnam and getting thrown back to the Red Center. Still, even if she wasn't Ofjoseph, this guy shouldn't use (or know) her given name. Maybe he was an Eye? He was neither a driver nor a Guardian. He wore the uniform of a Commander.
Eye or Commander, either way it meant she was in really deep shit.
She'd been hauled out of the Red Center around bedtime and put in a black van along with the Lawrence's Martha. They both assumed they were headed for the gallows or the Colonies. Still possessing a strong will to live, the Martha sobbed, while Janine felt strangely calm. She'd been living on borrowed time for years, so why fear death now? Then this Commander guy had shown up, stopped the van in the middle of the street, and taken her to his car. The driver of the van had meekly obeyed the Commander's orders without protest. No black-clad chauffeur: this guy drove himself. The Martha got put into a different car, destination unknown. Janine thought the grey-haired driver might be Commander Lawrence taking back his own Martha, though that wouldn't make much sense. Gilead rarely made sense.
In any case, they were now speeding through the darkness in his Mercedes. It still had that new-car smell; maybe he had recently been promoted and the car was a gift. Janine reflected. She had never had enough money to afford a brand-new car. Her last vehicle was a battered Ford Escort, built sometime in the nineties, on its last legs. She called that Escort Oscar, after Oscar the Grouch. She always named her cars. Her parents had done that, too. A family tradition.
"How do you think you're going to help me?" she finally answered the Commander.
"I'm taking you to someone I trust in Mayday, who'll drive you into Canada."
She stared disbelievingly at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Nice looking guy. Thirty, maybe. Not your typical asshole Commander vibe. "Why would you do that?"
"Well, you were headed for prison. Which would've been Very Bad. Because if anything Very Bad happened to you, June would murder me." He dropped the name so casually, she thought she'd misunderstood him. He added, "I'm Nick. June's friend Nick."
Who? "Never heard of you. How do you know June?"
He looked slightly miffed that June hadn't shared his name with her. But he explained: "I used to be the Eye assigned to the Waterford house. I acted as his driver for four years. Four very long years." He glanced at her through the rearview mirror. "So I lived in that house when June was posted there and you were at the Putnams."
"Oh." June was Offred for about a year and a half; how come she'd never mentioned this cute driver?
"I've gotten lots of stories about you," he continued as if reading her thoughts. "June loves you like a sister, you know, even if you drive her crazy sometimes."
"She drives me crazy too," Janine said cautiously. How was she supposed to believe him? Maybe she was still headed to prison, and this man was an interrogator rather than a savior; she'd heard of them playing mind tricks on prisoners like that. Maybe she should test him. But how?
"I drove June to the bridge over the Charles, that morning you took your baby there," he said softly. Was he telling her a story a stranger wouldn't know? No, the Eyes would have recorded that. She'd jumped off a fucking bridge, and had planned to take her daughter down with her. Not her finest moment, she mused.
"June said you wanted to name her Charlotte, is that right?"
"Yeah, Charlotte." That detail definitely would not be in the file. Maybe he was telling the truth….
"Beautiful name. It suits her better than Angela." Nick was silent for a moment. It's My Party by Leslie Gore played on the car radio. He was listening to Radio Free America. Absolutely forbidden. Just when Janine was about to start singing along, he spoke again. "June and I named our daughter Holly, after June's mom. I like that name, nice and strong. Serena Waterford, though, she snatched our baby right up and called her Nichole. So that's what she goes by now, even though I still think of her as Holly sometimes."
"Wait, what?!"
"What, what?"
"What…are you telling me Baby Nichole isn't Fred Waterford's?"
"Uh, no, she's not."
"She's your daughter."
"Yeah."
Janine snorted in amused exasperation. "I'm gonna kill June. As soon as I get to Canada, I'm gonna kill her."
"That would kinda defeat my purpose in taking you there," he quipped.
She threw him a smile. His deadpan humor was a lot different than her style, but he was growing on her. "June never said a word about you. We've been friends for six years. Not a single word."
"Well, she was trying to keep me alive. We were committing several felonies on a daily basis; she didn't want me hanged." He paused. "If June and I had just been casual friends, she would've told you about me, right?"
"Right," Janie admitted softly. June was hiding her entire relationship with Nick from her, from Alma and Emily and the others, because they were doing something illegal. Like, really illegal. It sounded plausible.
"If you get caught before you reach Canada, I'd appreciate the same consideration."
"Huh?"
"Please don't talk about me."
Her lip twisted. "Sure." Of course she wouldn't talk to the Aunts or Eyes. On the other hand, juicy gossip is what kept handmaids alive and sane, she thought. June had herself a private Eye—under her Commander's roof, no less!—and never shared that delightful little nugget of information with her. Some friend she was. "Nick?"
"Yes?"
"As in, Nichole?"
"Uh-huh. I guess Mrs. Waterford wanted to humiliate her husband with that choice."
"Wow, what a bitch. Sounds like the Waterfords had a stellar marriage." She considered. "Were you in love with her?"
"With Serena Waterford? Fuck no."
Janine giggled at the obscenity. "With our Junebug."
He glanced at her through the rearview mirror again. "Oh, yeah. Yeah. Always and forever."
"Oh, a romantic. So you and June, you smuggled her baby out?"
"Our baby. Yeah." He frowned. "I'm sorry I can't get to Charlotte right now. She's not in Boston; she's at Naomi's mother's house in Pennsylvania. It'd be a detour, and once they figured out we'd taken her, they'd go ape-shit. A High Commander's daughter kidnapped—they'd close the border, and we'd never get you out."
"I understand." It hadn't even occurred to Janine until today that she might get out of Gilead, certainly not that she might take her daughter along.
"But Charlotte lives with Commander Lawrence now. So maybe I can get to her later. I'm on the Council with him. I have an excuse to go to his house."
"That would be…" She didn't know how to end that thought. "Unbelievable."
"No promises, though."
"Of course. Hey, if you can just get me out of Boston, I'll be grateful. I got away last year, you know. For less than two months, but it was enough."
"It's probably hard to put the genie back in the bottle once you've tasted freedom."
"Right."
"How was Chicago?"
"Uh, it was like watching the news, when they'd report from war zones. It looked like Baghdad or Bosnia or something. All shot up." She paused briefly as Nick grimaced with guilt. "June and I got separated in Chicago, but I heard she made it to Canada." She looked at the man through the mirror. "It was Aunt Lydia who told me that, so it might be a lie."
"No, it's the truth. She's in Toronto. She's fine." In a hospital. With a crushed arm and bruises everywhere after being run over by a Gilead sympathizer. Nick didn't add that part, though. He wanted to keep Janine as calm as possible, under the circumstances.
"The Lawrences' Martha told me she'd been run over."
"Oh, you heard about that. Well, that's also true, but she's okay. Just a badly broken arm. She's out of the hospital now."
"With Nic—with Holly and Luke?" As soon as she said the second name, she winced. "Do you know who Luke is?"
"Yeah, of course. And yeah, she's back with them. Safe and sound."
Janine grinned. "That's wonderful. Praise be."
"Sure," Nick muttered. He was happy for her, naturally. But the thought of June sitting cozily at the kitchen table, laughing and snuggling close to her husband while Holly was in a booster seat calling another man daddy…it just broke Nick's heart. He knew he had no right to complain; he was just the sidepiece. He'd always known June's heart belonged to her husband. She'd mourned him, even calling Nick by her husband's name occasionally. He loved that aspect of June: she was unswervingly, unrelentingly loyal to those she loved. If she had easily forgotten about Luke while in Gilead, it would've been out of character for her.
But still, part of him wished that June would now abandon Luke in favor of him—she could live alone with Holly, or maybe with Moira, and wait for Nick to defect. He would do it, if he thought she'd be there for him. He longed for that little family, just Nick, June, and their daughter. Maybe a dog. But she'd given him no indication at all that if he came to Toronto, he'd have that privilege. If anything, she'd made it clear to him since she got to Canada that her only priority was getting Hannah back to her husband. That was the nuclear family she longed for.
Nick wasn't part of that picture.
And so he loved her from afar, protected her and cherished her and remained faithful to her, without expecting the same in return. Nick had never promised her these things aloud—those sorts of promises were nearly impossible to keep in Gilead, and they both knew it—but in his mind, he had vowed to regard only June as his wife. His true, spiritual, everlasting wife. To hell with Waterford, Lawrence, and Bankole, as well as Eden and Rose…they were just merely pieces of wreckage, unfortunate flotsam in the ocean of their love for each other.
He'd just returned from a Toronto hospital the previous night. June's unconscious face, pained but still beautiful, her breath as steady and sweet as he remembered. He had sat next to her, willing her to wake up before Luke arrived and ruined everything. She'd only said a few jumbled words in her delirium, asking him if they were in heaven, asking if they were dead. He'd left her with a kiss to the forehead and a scribbled note in her coat pocket: "Please take care of yourself, June. Whom do I have in heaven but you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you." Psalm 73, Nick thought. He used to read that one because of the beginning, the part where the psalmist complained about arrogant, greedy, self-centered hypocrites who always seemed to be the richest. It comforted Nick when he was accosted by well-off American capitalist pigs as well as Gilead Commanders. But nowadays, Nick preferred the ending of that psalm, which he saw as a love letter to June.
Nick shook his head hard, trying to clear his thoughts of June and focus on the present. Joseph Lawrence had called him less than an hour ago, breathlessly asking him to arrange "alternative accommodations" for a handmaid and a Martha. He'd gone into action, calling on a Mayday friend to find two safehouses. Nick was happy to do something positive for June's friend, and it was a nice little bonus to make Lawrence owe him yet another favor. That was how Nick had stayed alive: making others indebted to him.
Now he was approaching the safehouse. They had entered an econo community, bland concrete apartment buildings and rows of townhomes punctuated by occasional green spaces or mostly-empty playgrounds. Janine's white nightgown would certainly stand out when she got out of the car; the Eyes hadn't even let her get dressed before arresting her.
"There's a gray coat and a headscarf in a bag back there," Nick told her. "It's not the complete econo outfit, but it should be okay for the middle of the night, unless a searchlight gets you."
"Great." She reached over, started getting dressed.
"Nicer than the red?"
"Well, red matches my hair and eyepatch, but the gray would be a nice change. Six years, one color…it gets old."
"Yeah, I was thrilled on the day I got a white shirt instead of a black shirt."
"I'm sure." She paused. "I guess I should take the eyepatch off until I get inside?"
"Yeah, you'd better." It wasn't standard uniform.
"Where are we going, Nick?"
"You're gonna live with an econofamily for a little while—I'm not sure how long. You have to stay inside, stay hidden, you know, but you'll be safe. They'll know the next step for you, either another safe house or a truck to the border."
"What're their names?"
"No idea. You probably shouldn't know their names, and they shouldn't know yours. Make up something to call yourself. Charlotte?"
Janine considered. "That name is taken. Jane Doe, maybe?"
"Okay, Jane."
"Sounds like June."
"Yeah." No kidding. "Maybe too close to Janine."
"Okay then, I'll go with Susie. My mom's name."
"That's pretty." Nick switched off the car's engine and headlights, turning in his seat to really look at her. "Okay, so, listen. I can't go in with you; I don't want them to see my face. But they're expecting you. You just go in that door"—he gestured at one of the many identical entrances—"door 511, apartment two. Knock twice, then pause, then twice again. All right?"
"Apartment two, knock two times, two times. Got it."
"I'll wait here for a few minutes, to make sure you're in. Any problems, just come back here and we'll go to plan B. But it should be fine. These Mayday guys, they're good people. Real Americans, you know, the kind that took care of their neighbors after hurricanes or tornadoes, donated food and clothes, furniture and shit."
"Okay. 'Cause this is definitely a hurricane I'm in."
He scoffed. "Our whole lives in Gilead are one long natural disaster. You should be okay with these people, but if somebody tries to take advantage of you, well, just…stay alive. Do whatever you have to do, but stay alive. Think of Canada. Think of freedom."
Janine nodded—that concept was certainly not foreign to her. She reached out to shake Nick's hand. He took it gently, kissed her palm. "Godspeed, Susie. Be brave."
"Thanks, Nick."
"Give June and Holly my love when you see them."
She smiled at him. "I will. Right after I smack her for keeping her boyfriend a secret from me."
One side of his pretty mouth rose in a smirk. "Don't smack her too hard, though."
She winked at him, then gingerly opened the car door. She let the darkness swallow her up.