“So I’ll buy you a milkshake.”

That night, at the bar, Jane had explained to Kiran what it was like to budget for rent, food, and health insurance on a part-time bookstore salary; how she’d sometimes believe in absentminded moments that Aunt Magnolia was just away on another of her photography trips; about the detours she found herself taking to avoid the apartment building where they’d lived together. Jane didn’t mean to explain it all, but Kiran was from the time when life had made sense. Her presence was confusing. It just came out.

“Quit your job,” Kiran said.

“And live how?” Jane said, irritated. “Not everyone has Daddy’s bottomless credit card, you know.”

Kiran absorbed the dig with disinterest. “You just don’t seem very happy.”

“Happy!” said Jane, incredulous, then, as Kiran continued to sip her whiskey, seriously annoyed. “What’s your job, anyway?” she snapped.

“I don’t have a job.”

“Well, you don’t exactly seem happy either.”

Kiran surprised Jane by shouting a laugh. “I’ll drink to that,” she said, then threw back her drink, leaned over the bar, reached into a container of paper umbrellas, and selected one, blue and black to match Jane’s shirt and her tattoo tentacles. Opening it carefully, she twirled it between her fingers, then presented it to Jane.

“Protection,” Kiran announced.

“From what?” Jane asked, examining the umbrella’s delicate working interior.

“From bullshit,” said Kiran.

“Wow,” Jane said. “All this time, I could’ve been stopping bullshit with a cocktail umbrella?”

“It might only work for really small bullshit.”

“Thanks,” said Jane, starting to smile.

“Yeah, so, I don’t have a job,” Kiran said again, holding Jane’s eyes briefly, then looking away. “I apply for things now and then, but it never comes through, and I’ll be honest, I’m always kind of relieved.”

“What’s the problem? You have a degree. You had really good grades, didn’t you? Don’t you speak, like, seven languages?”

“You sound like my mother,” said Kiran, her voice more weary than annoyed. “And my father, and my brother, and my boyfriend, and every damn person I talk to, ever.”

“I was only asking.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m a spoiled rich girl who has the privilege to mope around, feeling sorry for herself for being unemployed. I get it.”

It was funny, because those were Jane’s thoughts exactly. But now, because Kiran had said it, she resented it less. “Hello, don’t put bullshit in my mouth. I’m armed,” Jane said, brandishing her cocktail umbrella.

“You know what I liked about your aunt?” Kiran said. “She always seemed like she knew exactly what she was going to do next. She made you feel like that was possible, to know the right choice.”

Yes. Jane tried to respond, but the truth of it caught in her throat. Aunt Magnolia, she thought, choking on it.

Kiran observed Jane’s grief with dispassion.

“Quit your job and come home with me to Tu Reviens,” she said. “Stay awhile, as long as you like. Octavian won’t mind. Hell, he’ll buy your umbrella supplies. My boyfriend is there; you can meet him. My brother, Ravi, too. Come on. What’s keeping you here?”