“You know those pictures I took of you at the market a few months ago?” Nils asked Jamie.

“Oh yeah, you bought me that sexy shawl type thing. The pictures were pretty sexy.”

“They were really sexy,” Nils insisted. “I showed them to this guy I know at the college, and he said they’d be perfect for a psych experiment he was planning.”

“What sort of experiment?”

“He had a fifty-piece jigsaw puzzle made from one of the pictures, and he gave the puzzles to the students in his Intro to Psychology class. I think there were about 125 students.”

Nils handed Jamie a box containing the puzzle, which Jamie opened.

“You want me to put it together?” she asked.

“Please,” Nils said.

Jamie started with the border pieces, quickly added the pieces of herself, and then filled in those that remained. “That was fun,” she said. “Pretty easy. Is that what the professor had the kids do?”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t the experiment, although Corbin, that’s the guy I know, timed them. One kid did the puzzle in less than a minute. Most of the kids finished in less than ten minutes. One girl refused to do the puzzle.”

“How come? Nudity? It’s not really explicit.”

“Corbin didn’t say. Anyway, he asked each student to pick out his or her favorite piece of the puzzle. And also their least favorite piece. That was the critical aspect of the study.”

“The sex of the puzzle worker? So how did it come out?”

“For the favorite piece, about half the boys picked your face, and about half picked your bottom. The boys’ least favorite piece was pretty random. Hardly anyone picked either your face or your ass as their least favorite.”

Jamie smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. What about the girls?”

“That’s where it gets interesting. A lot of them picked your face as their favorite. A few of them picked your ass. Or your leg. Or your feet. And about the same number picked your braid. A couple picked your arm and one picked the piece that has the tip of your little finger. But a lot of the girl’s favorites were various bundles of the fabrics.”

“Fabrics huh. I guess I can see that. How about the girls’ least favorites?”

“Some face, some ass, most just a non-person piece.”

“Interesting. So there is a difference between boys and girls. Who’d a thunk it? One thing puzzles me. These days in a class of a hundred college kids, you’d think there’d be some binaries. Weren’t there any ‘theys’?”

“That did come up. Corbin told them to mark male or female depending on how they felt at the moment. And if they didn’t like that they could check both boxes.”

“Did any check both boxes?”

“No. One asked if they could not check a box, and Corbin told them no. It’s one or the other or both but not neither.”

“I wonder if Corbin could get in trouble for that?”

Nils shrugged. “It’s not a particularly progressive college. Also he’d explained the project ahead of time, and those who didn’t want to do it didn’t have to. I think he plans to do other puzzles, one with a young man, one with an old woman, and one with an old man. He wants to see the effects of age.”

Jamie laughed. “I can tell you right away, old guys are going to go for my ass. Trust me on that. But if Corbin wants to be inclusive, won’t he have to do different races, too?”

“I suppose,” Nils said. “But you were the starter. The protype puzzle.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been a prototype before,” Jamie said. “Okay, Nils, I have one more very serious question for you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What’s your favorite puzzle piece?”