Read Online A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve - Free Book Online Page B

Again, she took certain personal or harmful items of Patrick’s and hers from drawers and gave them to Patrick to stash elsewhere. She asked him to get out the air mattresses they had purchased for the climb and start blowing them up. Margaret sat at the edge of the bed, then nervously got off it to put her ear to the door. She heard no crying. Only the occasional swish of water. Margaret couldn’t even begin to imagine what the woman was thinking.
    When Adhiambo emerged in Margaret’s clothes, her hair wrapped in a towel, she was carrying her own dirtied clothing in a neat ball made by her blouse. Margaret held her hands out to take them, but Adhiambo quickly moved away from her. Instead, Margaret gestured to the bed. She put her hand on its taut blanket. Adhiambo nodded, unable to demur or refuse. She was beyond all niceties now.
    Before Margaret left, she turned down the bedspread, exposing the sheets. She had an image of Adhiambo lying on top of the blanket, trying to disturb the bed as little as possible. Already the woman was shivering. Margaret wanted her under the covers.
    When Margaret shut the door, Patrick was finishing with the second mattress. His face was red. He pinched the nozzle and took a breath. “This is going to be a bitch at higher altitudes,” he said. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
    Margaret’s hands, always the first indication of shock, started to tremble.
    “You should have let me call for help,” he said.
    “She wouldn’t have gone.”
    “Maybe she’s really hurt. Internally. I could have examined her.”
    “You saw her. She almost left. Then what state would she be in? And where would she have gone?”
    “Fucking hell,” Patrick said.
    “We’ll let her sleep. In the morning James will come, and she’ll talk to him, I think. Then he’ll tell us what happened. At that point, we may be able to get her to go to a clinic.”
    “You think so?” he asked.
    “No. She’ll never accuse anyone. She’d be a pariah, perhaps ostracized from her family. You saw her face.”
    “Shamed.”
    “Yes, shamed. It isn’t like at home.”
    Patrick shook his head. “There,” he said when he had finished blowing up the second mattress. He collapsed onto his back.
    They unrolled the sleeping bags. They had no pillows. Patrick found their down jackets and punched them into pillows. Not a perfect arrangement, but good enough.
    “I have to pee,” Margaret said, “but I don’t want to disturb her. She might scream, seeing someone open the door.”
    “A bucket, then.”
    “Do we have a bucket?”
    “We have a cooking pot.”
    “I’m not using a cooking pot. I’ll have to go outside.”
    Margaret put on sandals. The welts were ugly, but they no longer itched. She was barely off the kitchen stoop when she squatted to one side. Dozens of moths, some as big as small birds, beat at the panes of glass in the door, trying to get to the kitchen light. When Margaret finished, she ran into the kitchen as if being chased. She extinguished the lamp. With the moon to guide her, she made her way to the makeshift beds. The sleeping bag was slippery and cool.
    “I meant to zip them together,” Patrick said. He reached out and touched her neck. She snaked her hand up from the sleeping bag and held his.
    “Diana said trouble comes in threes,” Margaret told him.
    “You believe that?”
    “No. Yes. Maybe.”
    “Then what number is this?”
    “From whose point of view?”
    “Diana’s. She’s the one who said it.”
    “I have no idea,” Margaret said. “Do the ants and Adhiambo make it two? Or does the plumbing fiasco, the ants, and Adhiambo make it three? Or does Diana have troubles I know nothing about?”
    “I’d love a back rub,” he said sleepily.
    “I can’t. You’re too far away.”
    “I can move closer.”
    “Good night, Patrick.”
    Margaret had advised sleep but couldn’t manage it herself. She no longer had fever dreams of ants and euphorbia trees, but she had