well as I did what that meant. Domestic violence. I’d taken photos of Fruitful—Frankie’s—bruises when they were at their worst. I hadn’t imagined that Gilead would come around, but I had thought she’d feel pressure to go back, and I’d wanted to be able to remind her what she’d left. Leaving the only life you’d ever known could be a terrifying thing.
A protection order didn’t mean the man would listen, of course, but it meant the cops would, if you had to ring them up. Hopefully.
It would also make Gilead furious, and it would make the Prophet more than that. He’d be filthy. Public defiance? The threat of exposure to the outside world? Yeh. Filthy. And if the thought made me quail—that was another reason to do it. We had to put some layers of protection in place, and not just for ourselves. For the others, too, the ones who were still there. Most men at Mount Zion weren’t like Gilead, but some were. I wanted them scared.
Ruby said, “That’s good, then. Covers you and your other sister too, I guess, if you’re worried about him coming after you. Seriously, though? Would he?”
This much openness, I wasn’t doing. I said, “He blames me. I went and got the two of them out, you see. Also, he knows she’s with me.”
“Hang on, then,” Ruby said, “and I’ll walk to the lobby with you. Just in case.”
When we got out to the lobby, George Tupuola, my favorite security guard, was already there. At least I thought he was there for me. He was actually standing in the corner, laughing at something.
With Gray.
Ruby stopped, put a hand on my arm, and said, “Wait. Hang on. Isn’t that Gray Tamatoa?”
“Yeh,” I said, because I couldn’t think what else to say, and also because I seemed to have lost the power of speech. Why was he here?
Ruby said, “Bloody hell. He was my mad crush in my Uni days. Used to go watch him on Saturday nights, sitting in the Zoo—you know, the student section at the stadium—and dream. I saw him once or twice in a bar, but never got a look-in. Now here we are, me single again and him single always, and fit as ever, I will just say. Oh, yeh. Come to mama. My big chance to make an impression, and look at me, not a lipstick in sight. How’s my hair?”
I said, “Your hair’s in a ponytail. Like mine.” I was feeling pretty narky, for some reason.
“Right,” she said. “Wait.” She pulled the elastic out of her wavy, many-shades-of-blond hair—the kind of hair I’d always wanted, the kind princesses had in stories—shook her head and did some fluffing with her hands, bit her lips for color, and said, “OK. Ready as I’ll ever be. Pity I’m in yoga pants and clogs, but there you are, can’t have everything. I’m wearing my lucky bra, so who knows?”
“You have a lucky bra?” I asked.
“Yeh,” she said. “Pink.”
“I know it’s pink,” I said. “I saw it. I just didn’t know it was lucky.”
“Well, just once,” she said. “But it was pretty bloody lucky. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Bedtime story, eh.” Like a woman who didn’t freeze up on the couch. And one who had something to fill out her lucky bra.
As for me, I left my hair in its ponytail. Gray knew what I looked like. Half-drowned or half-naked, muddy or sweaty or both, in his track pants or his mum’s fuzzy dressing gown, in all my glamorous glory. And if I got a pang thinking of him meeting curvy, blond Ruby, with her wide mouth and her blue eyes and her tip-tilted nose and her sparkle that had every man on staff standing up straighter when she came around? And watching him decide that she wasn’t a “hard no”? Well, that would be stupid and pointless. I wasn’t good at sex, I quite possibly couldn’t even manage sex, and I’d told him so like a fool, or possibly like a woman heading off a hideously awkward scene when he found out for himself, and here we were.
And, yes, I was also wondering pretty hard why he was here. In the first second, I’d had a horrifying mental image of something happening to one of the girls, but if it had, surely he’d have been watching for me and looking tense. Instead, he was posing for a selfie with George, which wasn’t exactly “Let me rush you to your sister’s bedside”