Amy, on the other hand, had milk-white skin and straight, short black hair so dark that the highlights appeared blue in the Hawaiian sun. She was wearing maroon lipstick, which was so wildly inappropriate and out of character for this setting that it approached the comical and made her seem like the goth geek of the Pacific, which was, in fact, one of the reasons her presence so disturbed Nate. (He reasoned: A well-formed bottom hanging in space is just a well-formed bottom, but you hook up a well-formed bottom to a whip-smart woman and apply a dash of the awkward and what you've got yourself is… well, trouble.)

Nate did not watch her rub the SPF50 on her legs, over her ankles and feet. He did not watch her strip to her bikini top and apply the sunscreen over her chest and shoulders. (Tropical sun can fry you even through a shirt.) Nate especially did not notice when she grabbed his hand, squirted lotion into it, then turned, indicating that he should apply it to her back, which he did — not noticing anything about her in the process. Professional courtesy. He was working. He was a scientist. He was listening to the song of Megaptera novaeangliae ("big wings of New England," a scientist had named the whale, thus proving that scientists drink), and he was not intrigued by her intriguing bottom because he had encountered and analyzed similar data in the past. According to Nate's analysis, research assistants with intriguing bottoms turned into wives 66.666 percent of the time, and wives turned into ex-wives exactly 100 percent of the time — plus or minus 5 percent factored for post-divorce comfort sex.)

"Want me to do you?" Amy asked, holding out her preferred sunscreen-slathering hand.

You just don't go there, thought Nate, not even in a joke. One incorrect response to a line like that and you could lose your university position, if you had one, which Nate didn't, but still… You don't even think about it.