From the privacy of "dates" in the den, Offred is startled to receive a showgirl's outfit, complete with makeup, heels, and cloak, and to find herself being whisked away to Jezebel's into a setting that, by Gilead's standards, no longer exists. The "meat market" bar scene, now frequented by Arab and Japanese businessmen, jolts Offred into the old-time man-woman games of flirtation, enticement, seduction, and acquiescence. Recalling that the nightclub was once a hotel, she pictures herself spending afternoons in clandestine meetings with Luke. Once more in a hotel bathroom, she must steady her nerve before performing the familiar female ritual of convincing her "date" of her eagerness to be seduced. To his dismay, she can only lie supine, a body obeying a mind that screams, "Fake it."
The last six chapters pick up the rhythm of scene change. From her lonely upstairs room, Offred escapes the stifling over-ripeness of summer and creeps downstairs to the kitchen with Serena Joy and outside to Nick's quarters. To Offred's guilt-ridden dismay, the covert sessions with the chauffeur draw her into repeated trysts. Like a foretaste of doom, a tolling bell summons Offred and the rest of the female population to a Salvaging and Particicution. So unnerved is the main character that she returns to her room in an irrational state. Smelling the tar that her hands have encountered on the rope, Offred responds to animal-like urgings — the need to clean her hands of death, intense hunger, and a cry of "I am, I am," like a wolf baying at the moon.
The familiar street scene in Chapter 44 yanks Offred further into mental trauma — Ofglen has evaded arrest by killing herself. Overwhelmed by the encroachment of Gilead's power, Offred is just beginning to calm herself when she encounters Serena and the incriminating sequined costume, proof that Offred and the Commander have transgressed Gilead's controlled mating ceremony. By night, Offred stares from the window and enumerates her choices, ranging from fire and murder to a plea for mercy to flight to an agonized suicide. In one quick scene, Nick and two escorts whisk her down the stairs, past the Commander and Serena Joy, and into the van, an ambiguous Hellmouth that could lead to freedom or a hook on the Wall.
