Curses!

'Southeast of the temple, all buried in vines? The one we hadn't worked on yet?'

'That's the one. Only now we got some of the vines cleaned off and, guess what, there's a body a couple of feet inside the entry. I made them leave it alone to wait for you. You can come?'

'What's the weather like?” Not that it made any difference. He could already feel the excitement of a dig building in his chest. But he felt that he ought to show at least a semblance of thinking it over.

'Like it always is here. Hot. Sunny. Humid. Just the way you don't like, but the dig is a pleasure.'

Gideon gazed out the window at the rain streaming from the leaves of the soaked rhododendron thicket that backed against the Sciences and Humanities Building. “When did I ever say I didn't like it hot and sunny?” he asked dreamily.

Abe laughed. “Boy, you got a short memory. So, you can come or you can't come?'

'I can come.” With bells on, he could come. He squeezed Julie's leg and smiled at her. She had plenty of vacation time saved up. She could come too.

'Ah, wonderful!” Abe said. His pleasure warmed Gideon. “That's fine!'

'What's the crew like?'

'The crew...I didn't tell you?'

'Tell me what?” Gideon asked warily.

'Don't be so suspicious. They're all amateurs, that's all. Old friends of yours.'

'I thought the government was insisting on professionals this time.'

'When we get down to the technical stuff, yes. But for the first couple of weeks it's just clean-up and preliminaries, so we gave the ones who were here in 1982 a chance to come again if they wanted to. On us. From the original nine, five came back, including your old student Harvey Feiffer. We thought we owed it to them, considering the tsuris they had before.'

Tsuris was trouble, of course. Gideon's knowledge of Yiddish had grown considerably in the last ten years, for Abraham Irving Goldstein had not forsaken the accent, let alone the vocabulary, of his pushcart-peddling days. Sometimes impenetrable, often hardly noticeable, it had never completely disappeared. Whether this was a statement of identity, a whimsical eccentricity (one among many), or a plain, honest-to- goodness accent, no one knew for sure, not even Gideon. Maybe not even Abe. If anyone had the temerity to ask how it was that a world-renowned scholar, a master of seven languages, sometimes spoke with an accent out of Abie’ s Irish Rose, Abe's response was unvarying. His eyes would grow round, his forehead furrow into a million parchmentlike wrinkles. “Accent?” he would echo, astounded. “What kind accent?'

'So?” he said. “When you'll be here? Tomorrow?'

'Tomorrow?' Gideon laughed. “We have to get our things organized, get tourist cards—'

'You can't do that this afternoon?'

'This afternoon is already taken up.” Gideon rubbed the small of Julie's back and smiled up at her. The fact that he was desperate to be on a dig hardly meant that he had lost all sense of proportion. “Besides,” he added firmly, “there's a monograph I want to finish up. We'll be there at the end of the week. Friday. How's that?'

A fractional hesitation. “Friday? You couldn't make it a little sooner?'

'Like when?'

'Like tomorrow?'

'What's the rush, Abe? The bones will still be there Friday.'

'It's not just the bones. Something's bothering me here. I need your opinion.'

'Well...'

'Also,” Abe said with the singsong wheedle that meant the clincher was on its way, “we turned up some new Mayan written material. Garrison from Tulane rushed down here to work on the translation, and she's almost finished. I asked her to hold off on her presentation so you could be here for it, but she has to go back the day after tomorrow. I don't have to tell you it's a historic thing, but, of course, if you can't make it, you can't make it.'

Gideon was silent.

'Of course it's only a few leaves, post-Conquest,” Abe pressed on, “but still, something like this doesn't happen every day.'

Or every year, or every decade. Well, Gideon could always take the monograph along. “Okay,” he said, “I'm convinced. We'll be there tomorrow.'

'Good. Wonderful. There's funding to pay your fare—Julie's too, if she's willing to do a little work—and we'll put you up at the hotel. Meals too. A salary I can't come up with. I'm not getting paid, why should you?'

'No problem.” Gideon was more than satisfied. He'd have paid their own way if he'd had to. “Abe, tell me, what's bothering you there?'

'Listen, Gideon, this call's costing plenty. When you get here I'll explain. Let me know what time you'll be here and someone will pick you up at the airport in Merida.'

'Okay, Abe, thanks. See you tomorrow, then. If we can get a plane.'

When he hung up, Julie clasped her hands lightly about his neck, her forearms resting on his shoulders. “We're going to Yucatan?'

'Uh-huh. How about that?'