Pavlin & Co might have outdated designs, they might not have innovated in decades, but it was, at least, a company. A world-renowned company. Legendary. Her connection to it might give her legitimacy in the eyes of investors. But it had to be something more than just a line in her bio.

She’d once read that a single tabloid photo of her mother wearing the Electric Rose generated more sales at Pavlin & Co than a six-figure advertising campaign. What if she were able to use the ring to generate that kind of buzz for her own brand? She’d find an angle, something like “tradition reimagined.” The only way she could compete with a monolith like Pavlin & Co was to show it was a dinosaur—that the customers and creators of jewelry were different in the new millennium. She could design a new setting for the Electric Rose, transforming it from an engagement ring into a pendant that symbolized independence. Women didn’t need to wait around for someone to buy them a diamond ring. They bought their own jewelry. They knew how to celebrate themselves.

They climbed the stairs to her apartment, each floor more stifling than the one below it. When they reached her front door she found a piece of paper taped to it.

“What’s this?” she said, leaning closer to read it. The words “commercial enterprise” and “lease violation” swam before her eyes.

Sanjay pulled it off the door and looked at it closely. “This,” he said, “is an eviction notice.”

Elodie sat elbow to elbow at a long table inside the Hall of Ocean Life at the Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. She wished she hadn’t committed to the fundraiser, but she was a sucker for anything animal-related. And the museum still had its butterfly room, so technically it qualified. With a rush of nostalgia, she remembered how her younger sister, Paulina, had loved butterflies. She shook the thought away.

Inside her handbag, her phone vibrated. She gave her screen a quick glance and sent her lawyer’s call to voicemail.

“The problem is these young people don’t understand that not all money is created equal,” said the woman next to her.

One of the eternal downsides of being a single woman on the fundraising circuit was that she was always trapped in conversation with people she had no interest in talking to. She couldn’t even look across the table at a spouse or partner for a sympathetic nod whilst trapped in a boring conversation.

Today, she had Esther Dernhauser on her right talking her ear off about co-op board problems. On her left, she had Joe Lavendero, an eighty-year-old billionaire who was considered quite the catch. Had she been seated next to him in some sort of misguided matchmaking attempt?