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hot. But lemme watch these madrasitos , yes. I heard they could thief milk out you coffee, and is only when you drink it you would know.
    She reached to hold her basket as she jumped down off the ledge and found to her surprise that it was gone.

IV.
    “Thief! Thief!”
    The little naked madman dropped the mop and dashed off through the market with her basket on his shoulder, pumping with his only arm. The other one was amputated at the elbow, and he held it at the ready like a club.
    He was a knobbly yam masala , a mix of black and Indian bloods, with ribs like an accordion and a fibrous beard that swept across his chest like a broom.
    “Thief! Thief! You goddamn thief!”
    The group of children who’d been following the lumber cart appeared and chanted: “Run, professor, run!”
    Estrella hopped up on the ledge and hooked her toes between the staves and climbed. It was a gut reaction. She was right beside the gate.
    The staves were topped with ornamental arrows made of brass, and they were sharp enough to gore her if she slipped. At the top, before the final leap, she glanced away from the madman to check her hands, but when she looked again he was gone.
    Landing on her toes inside the market, she fell into a crouch and ran with doubled fists along the cobbles from the heat into the coolness of the shade.
    “You see a naked fellow running with my things?” Estrella shouted as she sprinted through the aisles. They were lined with makeshift counters piled with multicolored fruit and lumpy tubers. While speaking, she made sweeping glances like a spraying Tommy gun.
    When no one answered, and she heard the way the shoppers laughed, and saw the way the vendors shook their heads, she realized that she wasn’t strictly speaking what you’d call a victim; instead, she was the object of a local joke. And as she stood there with her hands against her hips she guessed they’d been communicating with each other using signs and gestures, giggling as they waited for the drama to unfold.
    They think they have me going, Estrella thought. They think I ain’t know what’s going on. They ain’t know I sell in market too. I do this to people before—laugh and carry on like I ain’t see nothing. Is only sport. Is only sport. Calm yourself, Pepper. Is only sport. And if you get vex they going laugh even more. Calm yourself, Pepper. I know is wasting time. But calm yourself. You ain’t know these people. And this ain’t you place. You getting vex. But calm yourself. Make a sport of it. Don’t take it on.
    “What is your name?” she asked a butcher, who was smiling broadly with two rows of perfect teeth.
    “They call me Asif,” he said, his machete pausing then descending in a chop against a shank of beef.
    “Asif,” she said sweetly, “you see where the fellow with my basket gone? Tell me and I catch him for you.”
    “Catch him for me?” the butcher said, with mischief. “He ain’t have nothing for me. He have something for you?”
    “He might.”
    He leaned across the shank, which was lying on the counter, and quickly looked Estrella up and down.
    “So you might have something for me too?”
    “If you see anything you could use,” she told him in a flirty voice that made him blush, “then tell me. Maybe we could talk.”
    Charmed, he cupped his mouth and shouted so everyone could hear: “If anybody find a basket in this market, please let this young lady know, because it look as if it might have been misplaced.”
    He said it in a language that she didn’t understand and she tried to read the message in the lines above his brow.
    “Is what you tell them?” she asked him in Sancoche, as she heard what sounded like the thing he’d said relayed from stall to stall.
    “I tell them not to help the professor to hide.”
    “Professor? That’s a name?”
    “That’s what we call him.”
    She said the word inside her head. She liked the sound of it. “So what that really mean?”
    “I ain’t exactly sure