A Change in Altitude Read Online Free PDF Page B

my car,” she said calmly.
    Again, he appeared not to understand her. Impatient now, Margaret repeated the sentence in Swahili.
    “No, miss,” the boy said, shaking his head. “No, miss.”
    Margaret thought she saw something of fright in the boy’s eyes and made the statement again, this time in a slightly louder voice. An older and taller boy, muscled and fingering a baton, emerged from an unmarked doorway.
    “You have problem, miss?” the larger boy asked. He had on a white undershirt and a pair of dark-blue trousers and seemed to possess an unexplained authority.
    Margaret felt her hands go cold.
    “Yes,” she said as calmly as she could. “Around ten o’clock this morning, I parked my car, a white Peugeot, just here, and I asked this boy to watch it. I gave him eight shillings to do so.”
    The older boy spoke to the younger boy in a language Margaret didn’t understand. The older boy turned toward her with exaggerated politeness.
    “No, miss. Though I do not doubt that you believe you are correct, you are much mistaken. There has been no white Peugeot of your description on this street all morning. My brother is extremely certain.”
    The taller boy took a step toward Margaret. Would he hit a white woman?
    “This is infuriating,” she said, her heart beating as if she were already climbing Mount Kenya. “I know what I did. I need that car. What’s the point of paying eight shillings to someone to watch the car if it’s not going to be here when I return?”
    The street was empty. Margaret knew the older boy had seen her glance around. He turned toward the younger boy and argued with him in an angry voice. The young boy looked down at the sidewalk, seemingly repentant.
    “My brother is very sorry to be infuriating you. I apologize for him since he is too stupid to do so himself. But I urge you on to find your white Peugeot, a kind of automobile which has not been seen on this street since before five o’clock this morning.”
    Margaret knew he wouldn’t tell her what had happened to the car. She didn’t have enough money in her straw bag for that kind of information.
    She stood her ground for a minute, maybe two, and then walked away. She knew that they were smiling and that the minute she rounded the corner, they would put their hands over their mouths and laugh.
    Margaret meant to go directly to the police station. But first she investigated all the side streets off Kimathi in case she hadn’t been paying attention when she had parked the car. She found two white Peugeots, but neither of them was hers. She thought about what might turn out to be an hours-long rigmarole at the police station and felt exhausted. She walked on until she reached the New Stanley Hotel. She went into the Thorn Tree Café and used the telephone attached to the message board. She bent her head to the pole, the flat of a tack making a small dent in her forehead. She called Patrick at the hospital.
    “The car’s been stolen,” she said.
    “It’s not supposed to be like this,” Patrick insisted, fists hard on his thighs. He sat across from Margaret at a table at the Thorn Tree. She knew he meant that the thieving wasn’t part of his participation in Kenya, his hope for Kenya. That it had happened to them—and four times—hurt him. Patrick’s anguish, which was real enough, had turned his skin blotchy. They were drinking Tuskers, which were not delivering on promised consolation.
    Patrick raised his eyes to hers. “You all right?” he asked. Earlier, when he’d made his way to her table, she’d stood and embraced him, and he hadn’t let her go until she’d stopped shaking.
    “I am now. I’m just wondering what they’d have done if I hadn’t backed off.”
    Patrick took in a sharp suck of air.
    “I just dread the red tape at the police station,” Margaret said, trying to change the subject. “You must have gone through it with the tires.”
    Patrick nodded. “I’ll call Arthur from here. He’ll give