“Let me get this straight,” Julie said, swabbing up cream-cheese dip with a carrot stick. “You want me to use up a week’s vacation so I can go listen to a bunch of anthropologists mumble in their beards about the place of Marapithecus in hominid evolution? Like last year in Detroit?”

“That’s Rama pithecus,” Gideon said unwisely. “And those were evolutionary anthropologists. True, they can get a little stuffy. But these are forensic anthropologists. Chardonnay or Chablis?”

“Which one’s open?”

“Chardonnay.”

“That’s what I’ll have.”

He poured glasses for both of them, the cold wine clucking into the bottoms of the hollow-stemmed glasses, then carried Julie’s to her.

“Fancy glasses,” she said. “I almost forgot we had them.” “Fancy dinner,” Gideon told her. “As you’ll soon see.” Julie was in the living room, browsing through the day’s mail, while Gideon worked in the open kitchen, talking to her over the wide counter. Thursday was one of his nights to make dinner, inasmuch as he had only a 10:00 A.M. class, and an easy one at that, while she worked her usual 8:00 to 5:00, winding up with the dreaded weekly staff meeting. Today’s, from what she’d told him, had been even more lunatic than usual, and he was happy to see her start to relax.

“Anyway,” he said, “forensic anthropologists are a much looser crowd, more lively, more irreverent.”

“Oh, I’ll bet. I can just imagine all the great ‘topics of conversation: handling decomposed remains, time-of death estimates…”

“Well, yes, but it’s not all business. A lot of people bring wives and husbands. There’ll be plenty of time for taking in the sights and just being lazy. Look, read the letter, will you? The one from Miranda Glass, with the Museum of Natural History letterhead.”