Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Read Online Free PDF Page B

saw a great many hands waving from the deck, and she fluttered her own with animation. As the plane began to taxi toward the runway Mrs. Pollifax thought with jarring abruptness, “I do hope I’m going to like this.” Sunlight caught a wing of the plane and the glare momentarily blinded her; then with a nearly overwhelming burst of sound the landscape beyond Mrs. Pollifax’s window began to move with dizzying speed, it blurred into a streak and dropped away. We’re in the air, she realized, and felt an enormous and very personal feeling of accomplishment.
    “We’re airborne,” said the man sitting next to her.
    Airborne … she must remember that. People like Miss Hartshorne knew things without being told, and, after all, nothing was an experience unless there was a name for it. She smiled and nodded and brought out the latest copy of
Ladies Home Journal
and placed it in her lap. Presently, because shehad not slept at all well the night before, Mrs. Pollifax dozed.…
    As the plane banked and turned over Mexico City, Mrs. Pollifax peered down at its glittering whiteness and thought how flat the city looked, horizontal rather than vertical, and so different from New York with its skyscrapers rising like cliffs out of the shadows. A moment later Mrs. Pollifax was infinitely relieved to discover that landings were more comfortable than takeoffs, and presently she was breathing Mexico City’s thin, rarefied mountain air. All the way to the hotel she kept her face pressed to the window of the taxi, but when she spied her first sombrero she gave a sigh of contentment and leaned back. Never mind if most of the women looked sleek and Parisian and the men dressed exactly like Americans—this was Mexico because she had seen a sombrero.
    The hotel proved luxurious beyond Mrs. Pollifax’s dreams—almost too much so, thought Mrs. Pollifax, who would personally have perferred something native, but she recalled that the choice was not hers, and that this was where tourists stayed. “And I am a tourist,” she reminded herself.
    Mrs. Pollifax had arrived in the late afternoon. She dined early at the hotel, had a lukewarm bath and, sensibly, retired at nine. The next morning she was first in line for the tour bus that promised to introduce her to Mexico City. On the tour she fell into conversation with two American schoolteachers, Miss Lambert and Mrs. Donahue, but in spite of exchanging pleasantries during the trip she was careful to note each street sign they passed. When the tour ended Mrs. Pollifax had learned the location of the Paseo de la Reforma, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Palace of Justice, the National Pawnshop and the Zocalo; she had made two new friends and learned a great deal of Mexico’s history, but she had not discovered the whereabouts of the Calle el Siglo. Both Miss Lambert and Mrs. Donahue warned her of the change in altitude and the necessity of adjusting gradually to it. She therefore went no further than Sanborne’s that evening, where she ate dinner, admired the lavish gifts in their showcases, and went to bed early again.
    The next day Mrs. Pollifax bought a map and after an hour’s study set out to find the Calle el Siglo and the Parrot Bookstore, for she was conscientious by nature and did not feel she could relax and really enjoy herself until she knew precisely where she must present herself on August 19. To her surprise she discovered that the street was in walking distance of thehotel, and that it was a perfectly respectable side street already found by the tourists, whom she could identify by the cameras strung about their necks on leather thongs. She wandered almost the length of it, and when she saw the Parrot Bookstore across the street she blushed and quickly averted her eyes. But that one swift glance told her that it was neither shabby nor neglected, as she had somewhat romantically imagined, but a very smart and modern store, small and narrow in width but with a very striking