“They’re not art,” said Jane. “They’re umbrellas. Messy ones.”

“Okay,” said Kiran, “whatever. Where do you live now?”

“In an apartment in town.”

“The same apartment you lived in with your aunt?”

“No,” Jane said, injecting it with a touch of sarcasm that was probably wasted on Kiran. Of course she hadn’t been able to afford that same apartment. “I live with three grad students.”

“How do you like it?”

“It’s fine,” Jane lied. Her apartment-mates were a lot older than she and too pompously focused on their abstruse intellectual pursuits to bother with cooking, or cleaning, or showering. It was like living with self-important Owl from Winnie-the-Pooh, except that their hygiene was worse and there were three of them. Jane was hardly ever alone there. Her bedroom was a glorified closet, not conducive to umbrella-making, which required space. It was hard to move around without poking herself on ribs. Sometimes she slept with a work in progress at the end of her bed.

“I liked your aunt,” Kiran said. “I liked you too,” she added, which was when Jane stopped thinking about herself and began to study Kiran, who had changed somehow since she’d last seen her. Kiran had used to move as if she were being pushed by at least four different urgent purposes at once.

“What’s brought you to town?” Jane asked Kiran.

Kiran shrugged, listless. “I was out driving.”

“Where are you living?”

“In the city apartment.”

The Thrashes’ city apartment was the top two floors of a Manhattan mansion overlooking Central Park, quite a distance away for someone who was just “out driving.”

“Though I’ve been called home to the island for the spring gala,” Kiran added. “And I may stay awhile. Octavian is probably in a mood.”

“Okay,” said Jane, trying to imagine having a gazillionaire father, on a private island, in a mood. “I hope you have a nice time.”

“What is that tattoo?” asked Kiran. “Is it a squid?”

“It’s a jellyfish.”

“Can I see it?”

The jellyfish sat on Jane’s upper arm, blue and gold, with thin blue tentacles and spiral arms in white and black reaching all the way down below her elbow. Jane often wore her shirtsleeves rolled up to show a glimpse of the tentacles because, secretly, she liked people to ask to see it. She pushed her sleeve up to the shoulder for Kiran.

Kiran gazed at the jellyfish with an unchanging expression. “Huh,” she said. “Did it hurt?”

“Yes,” said Jane. And she’d taken on an extra job as a waitress at a diner in town for three months to pay for it.

“It’s delicate,” said Kiran. “It’s beautiful, actually. Who designed it?”

“It’s based on a photo my aunt took,” said Jane through a flush of pleasure, “of a Pacific sea nettle jellyfish.”

“Did your aunt ever get to see your tattoo?”

“No.”

“Timing can be an asshole,” Kiran said. “Come get drinks.”

“What?” said Jane, startled. “Me?”

“After you get off work.”

“I’m underage.”