You should be nicer than that, if they’re being kind. I’ll go tell him so, in a minute.”
Ungrateful much? I asked myself.
Ungrateful heaps.
“Do you just take off your clothes all the time Outside, too, even around men?” Obedience asked. “I thought—the Prophet says wearing trousers and makeup makes you a whore, but you took off your trousers, and back there, you took off your shirt, too, and your bra isn’t even white, and you weren’t wearing underwear before, so you were, you know … showing. Do men just not look? Or do they not care? I thought you couldn’t show your body because of lust. Don’t they have lust, then?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” I said. “No, you don’t normally take off your clothes this much. That’s just … circumstances. And the lust depends on whether he’s attracted to you. And none of that makes you a whore. Erase that word. That’s a word men use to shame women who enjoy sex. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying sex.”
I’d know more about that if I were actually having sex. Or enjoying it. I subscribed to the philosophy, though.
Fruitful and Obedience looked at each other, and Fruitful said, “So Gray isn’t …”
I sighed and said, “Sexually attracted, I mean. If he were sexually attracted to me, it would be a big deal to take off my clothes, but he isn’t, so it isn’t. Anyway, it wasn’t about sex, taking off my shirt, it was about him getting into the window. And before that, when I had to take off my trousers, we were escaping, and I couldn’t run. Men Outside can separate the two things. They can see you in a bikini and not think that means they get to be sexual with you, even if they are attracted. They know that your body is yours, not theirs. At least the good ones do.”
“So, wait,” Fruitful said slowly. “If they’re attracted to you, you don’t take off your clothes around them? That doesn’t make sense. I thought men wanted to see women’s bodies because they are attracted. But if they’re not … then you can be naked? I don’t get it.”
“I’ll explain later,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t. Not until I had a better idea of what I was explaining. “I need to unpack. Help Obedience put the groceries away, please.”
“It’s nice here,” Obedience said. “Houses Outside are even better than I thought.”
“No,” I said. “Gray’s houses are … unusually beautiful.”
In fact, the yurt wasn’t anything like I’d imagined Gray’s “extra space” would be. He had made it sound like a sleepout in back, when he’d proposed it.
Well, no.
To begin with, it was set on piers amongst the pines, half-surrounded by a wooden deck with a table and chairs and that spa tub. It was round, of course, but the main view from the lounge and kitchen area looked out down a sloping valley, over willows and poplars, their leaves still springtime-pale-green and vibrant. Farther down, a paddock was laid out with neat rows of humped earth, planted with green things. A neatly arranged orchard had been meticulously pruned into shape down there, too, the trees clothed in pink and white blossoms. And beside the orchard, next to a low hedge, four sets of multicolored boxes were stacked three high.
I recognized those straight away.
Beehives.
It would be lovely down there. Drifts of pale pink and white blossoms in the fruit trees, and the lazy buzz of bees. You could grow lavender here, and flowers, too: hollyhocks and hydrangeas, peonies and hyssop and butterfly bush that the bees would love. There was heaps of room.
And beyond all of that, far down there, was the sea. No beach, not here, but there’d be beach to the north and south of us. And surf. And salt.
You saw all that from the yurt, because there were so many windows. Windows, and light, and space. The light and space came from a domed ceiling supported by beams radiating out from the center to the outer edge like close-set ribs in an umbrella. The dome rose for meters above us, and culminated in an open octagonal hole like a huge skylight where an enormous ceiling fan hung and stirred the air lazily. Through the skylight, you could see the tops of trees and the deep blue of the springtime sky.
It was a very large yurt, partitioned off by walls of more of the same honey-colored wood, the horizontal