A Change in Altitude Read Online Free PDF

asked to sit and did so. When the man returned, he had a pair of silk socks that he gently pulled over Margaret’s feet. It felt like a brief massage, and already she was wondering if she might not need another pair of shoes. The lambskin lining of the boots caressed her leg to midcalf. Patiently, the salesman tightened and tied the laces. The procedure was repeated with the second boot.
    “I think you should walk around the store now,” the salesman suggested. “Take your time. The fit of the boots is critical on such a climb.”
    Margaret walked the narrow aisles of the shop as if floating. She doubted she had ever owned a more comfortable pair of boots, or even shoes. Once, she bent down to touch the soft leather, and when she stood up, the salesman smiled.
    “They’re wonderful,” Margaret said.
    “They’re sturdy in the soles and around your ankles. You could easily climb Mount Kenya in those.”
    Margaret gave a slight nod.
    “You don’t want to make the climb, do you?”
    She was surprised. “No.”
    “You’ve been talked into it.”
    “Kind of.”
    “You’ll do fine. It will be hell, but it will end, and you’ll have done it, and you’ll never have to do it again.”
    “How did you know that I didn’t want to do the climb?”
    “Women often come into the shop needing hiking boots. They all more or less have the same expression on their faces.”
    “And what would that be?”
    “Fear.”
    He took off the boots and then the socks, and Margaret’s feet felt as though they’d been plunged into cold water. When she reached the counter, the salesman handed her a piece of engraved letterhead with the price discreetly written in pencil. Why pencil? Was Margaret meant to bargain? The sum made her swallow, but she had no hesitation as she wrote the check. Patrick would understand.
    The salesman concluded the transaction, coming around the counter with the package in which the boots had been neatly wrapped and tied.
    “It has been a pleasure serving you,” he said with a slight bow.
    “Thank you.”
    “Are you a tourist?”
    “My husband is with Nairobi Hospital.”
    The salesman smiled. “Then I hope either you or your husband will return to our shop.”
    “I think we might.”
    Margaret was almost out the door when she decided.
    “Is your name Tommy?”
    The salesman looked surprised but answered, “Yes.”
    “Arthur sent me,” she said.
    Margaret returned to Crystal Ice Cream and ordered a pair of vegetarian Samosas and a Fanta. When the Samosas were handed to her on a paper plate, she took her food to a small table with a red Formica top. Next to her were two Asian men—Pakistani or Indian—who were sucking the marrow out of chicken bones and then eating the bones themselves.
    Margaret took her plate back to the counter and asked for a bowl of ice cream. As she sat again at her table, one of the Asian men looked over. She wondered if it was odd to see a grown woman eating ice cream. In a city with so many different cultures, it might take years to learn the proper mores. As she slipped the banana-coconut onto her tongue, she knew there wasn’t a chance of cream in the icy concoction. The name
Crystal
took on new meaning.
    Margaret walked back to the place where she had left her car and was startled to note that there was no Peugeot where it was supposed to be. She thought she must be disoriented and examined each of the twenty vehicles parked along the side street. The boy to whom Margaret had paid eight shillings to watch her car was sitting on a fence—in her sight but ignoring her.
    “Excuse me,” Margaret said in English. “Aren’t you the boy I paid to watch my car?”
    The boy seemed not to have heard her. She repeated the request in Swahili.
“Nataka gari, tafadhali.”
    “No, miss,” he said quickly. “No, miss.”
    Margaret examined his face, his small body, his bare chest. She couldn’t say for certain that he was the boy, though she trusted her instincts. “I want