At first, when he’d self-consciously begun to date again at thirty-seven, they’d all been intent on "significant emotional relationships"; all he’d been after was some straightforward, uncomplicated sex. More recently, as his own thoughts had begun to turn to significant emotional relationships, the women he seemed to meet just wanted to get laid and be done with it.

He had no idea what Julie was after, doubted that she was after anything from him. She wasn’t even the kind of woman he usually found physically attractive, not blond and long-limbed and svelte, as Nora had been. Julie was black-haired, with slightly slanting jet-black eyes that seemed perpetually on the verge of laughter. She was round, and even a little plump-in a definitely pleasing way-and she lacked Nora’s cool elegance. Nora had looked wonderfully at home in a museum or a fine restaurant. Julie looked like she belonged in a kibbutz, standing in the sunlight with a hoe in her hand and white shorts on those provocative, curvy hips. He wondered what her legs looked like bare. Probably firm and tan and smooth. God knows they seemed attractive enough in those tight ranger pants.

She was waiting for him when he got to the restaurant, and they ordered martinis before dinner. Gideon told her about the dig he was working on at Dungeness Bay during his fall teaching recess.

"It’s a fabulous site. I turned up a scraper and some worked caribou bone inside of a week, and some charcoal, and then finally some human skeletal material-a male and a female-just a few days ago. It’s all stratigraphically dated at twelve to thirteen thousand years. That makes it at least as old as the Manis Mastodon site near Sequim, maybe older."