“Uh… Javier, would you care to hear the brilliant manner in which I reached this new and startling conclusion, or aren’t you interested?”
“Of course I’m interested. I said nothing because I knew I had no choice in the matter in any case. Go ahead, please. Tell me.”
Gideon smiled and stood up. “No, I’ll show you. Come on, let’s go back to the bones.”“IT wasn’t really so brilliant,” Gideon said. “In fact, I was pretty slow to put things together. It was this bone here.” He laid his finger on that enlarged second metatarsal, which had been put back in its place relative to the other foot bones, so that they were looking at an entire skeletal foot. “As you see, it’s the longest of the metatarsals, which is normal, but ordinarily it’d be about the same thickness as these other three that lead to the smallest three toes, and only half as thick as this first one that goes to the big toe. But this one is huge, just about as thick as the first one.”
“I see. And from this you infer?”
“That she engaged often, and over many years, in some kind of activity that put continuing heavy stress on this particular bone, which reacted to it, as bones do, by thickening up to better withstand it.”
“And this activity you mention, this would be ballet dancing?”
“Right.”
“Ballet dancing and only ballet dancing? Nothing else could account for it?”
“As far as I know, no. Nothing else stresses the second metatarsal and only the second metatarsal; or rather, I should say, nothing that anybody has found so far. That’s what I was checking on the computer to make sure when you saw me there.”
“I see.” He scratched delicately and thoughtfully at his cheek. “From dancing en pointe, I presume.”
“So you’d think-so I thought-but as a matter of fact, no, that isn’t what does it. If it was, only female dancers would be affected, because they’re the only ones who go around on tippy-toe, but male and female dancers get this equally. No, it’s from dancing on what they call half- and three-quarter point, which is what they’re all on most of the time. In that position the metatarsals act like an extension of the leg, and since the second metatarsal is the longest one, it takes most of the punishment. As I’ve just learned, something like sixty percent of professional dancers have second metatarsals like this one.”
“All right, she was a dancer. But why have you changed your mind about her age? What happened to your previous certainty?” He sat himself on the one chair in the cubicle and turned his eyes up toward the stained acoustic-tile ceiling. “Let me see… ‘The epiphyses do not lie,’ ” he said, deepening his voice in imitation of Gideon’s. “Isn’t that the way you put it?”
“Did I say that? Well, then maybe I overstated it a bit,” Gideon admitted. “It’s not that they lie, but sometimes they do hoodwink you a little, and this was one of those times. Young female ballet dancers-gymnasts too, by the way-are notable for having delayed skeletal maturation. Apparently, there’s something about that kind of training that slows it down, or it might be that having slower skeletal maturation gives you an edge of some sort; nobody’s really sure about the cause, but everybody agrees that it’s a fact. According to the study I was reading when you came back, the average delay is about three years. So-”
“So,” said Marmolejo, “your previous estimate of fifteen to sixteen now becomes eighteen to nineteen?”
“That’s it. The emerging wisdom teeth lend some support to that too, by the way.”
Marmolejo stood up and came again to the desk to look down on the bones. “Let me see if I can summarize. What we now believe we have before us is a woman eighteen or nineteen years of age-”
“Give or take a year either way to play it safe.”
“-who had undergone serious ballet training, and whose dentition displays a condition known as congenital…?”
“Congenital hypodontia involving the second premolars. I’ll write it all up for you, Javier. You’ll want to see if you can get some DNA samples from the bones too. If so, you’ll be a long way toward identifying her.”
Marmolejo nodded and looked quizzically up at Gideon. “This is quite a different story from the one you told me with so much certainty not much more than an hour ago. I mean no offense, my friend, but you were quite confident of your ‘facts’ then. How confident are you now?”
Gideon grinned. “Pretty confident,” he said.
Marmolejo just rolled his eyes.
THIRTEEN
By the time Gideon got back to the Hacienda at a little after seven P.M., dinner was problematic. Tony and Preciosa had gone to a concert in Oaxaca, so there was no obligatory family meal in the Casa del Mayordomo. And, at the request of the women professors, some of whom were also going into the city, Dorotea had served dinner at five thirty and started cleaning up with her nieces at six forty-five.
When Gideon and Julie peeked into the kitchen to see what the situation was, Dorotea, up to her roughened elbows in suds and dirty dishes, glared challengingly up at them. Words were not necessary; the look spoke for itself: Just you dare and ask me to cook up something especially for you.
“What now?” Gideon asked once they had backed apologetically out.
“Well, there are two sit-down restaurants in the village, but they wouldn’t be seating anybody as late as this; they’re mostly there for day-trippers. But Jamie told me about a new place-well not a place, exactly; they set up a bunch of tables on the sidewalk in front of the village market, across from the church. The food’s supposed to be great.”
“Sounds good to me. Can we walk there?”
“Oh, sure, it’s practically at the bottom of the hill, right in the middle of town. It’s called Samburguesas.”
“Hamburguesas?” This was the Spanish word for hamburgers.
“No, Samburguesas. It’s a pun. The guy who does it, his name is Sam, and he serves-”
“Hamburgers, I get it. Okay, let’s go. I guess I’m about ready for a burger.”IF there was anything that passed for night life in Teotitlan, it had to be Samburguesas, which was jammed with laughing, gossiping people happy to have an excuse to be out in the fresh air on a warm December evening. The place was like a cross section of Teotitlan society. There were grizzled, mustachioed, solitary old shepherds or farmers in from the hills, in sombreros and loose white working clothes; trendier young weavers in plaid shirts and designer jeans; and groups of young and old women, almost all in traditional dress, with their hair in long braids down their backs, and wearing huipiles -wraparound, apronlike tunics-over their housedresses, and rebozos -wide, multicolored cotton shawls- draped over their shoulders. Many of the younger ones used their rebozos as little hammocks in which to carry sleeping infants. A little away from the crowd, on the grass of the church plaza across the street, were the teenage boys and girls, mostly (like teenagers anywhere) hanging around and eyeing each other from same-sexed groups, the boys unconvincingly cocky and show-offy, the girls flirty and giggling. A few of the luckier ones had already paired off and were lounging on the grass farther away and out of the light.
Sam (they presumed he was Sam) operated from a stand under an awning on the side of the market building, serving hamburguesas and tacos as fast as he could make them, at five pesos each, about fifty cents. Despite the name of the place, almost everyone at Samburguesas was opting for the tacos al pastor, which smelled and looked heavenly, and Gideon and Julie did the same. Sam would deftly shave marinated pork from the sides of a trompo, a top-shaped vertical spit like the Middle Eastern roasters used to cook gyros meat, lay it over two stacked, warm, freshly made corn tortillas, and neatly top the whole with a slice of grilled pineapple.
With their paper plates of tacos in one hand and warmish cans of Mexico’s most popular soft drink (Coca- Cola) in the other, they managed to snag a newly vacated folding table facing the old church tower, now floodlit as the night grew darker. Gideon cleared the table of the previous diners’ leavings, came back, and sat down.
“Did you see Tony today?” he asked while they used plastic spoons to lay on condiments from the platter on the table: cilantro, lime, salsa, guacamole, chiles. “It seems to me he owes you an apology for last night. I was wondering if he made it.”
“Yes, you said that before. No, I didn’t see him, but if I did, I wouldn’t expect one. He flies off the handle once in a while, but basically he’s a good guy. He just-”
“Takes a little getting used to, yeah. You said that before. I’m sorry, that doesn’t cut it as far as I’m
