“I don’t really want to talk about them,” Jane says, “and I definitely don’t want to show them to you.”
“Fair enough,” Colin says. “Forgive me—I can’t help myself, really. It’s my job to be nosy whenever I hear about some new, interesting kind of art.”
“I’m only a beginner!” Jane says. “They’re a mess! They’re not art!”
Colin is all outstretched, surrendering hands and a smiling, open face. “I know,” he says. “Again, I’m sorry. Forget I brought it up. Here, I’ll prove it to you by walking you to your rooms and whispering not a single word about umbrellas. Okay?”
“I suppose,” Jane says.
As they walk up the stairs, Jasper follows.
“The Brancusi is an odd choice for a thief,” Colin says. “It’s not small. It’d be hard to sneak it out.”
“What does the fish look like?” asks Jane. “Will I know it if I see it?”
“It looks like a long, flat, ovalish, white sliver of marble,” Colin says. “Very abstract, as fish go.”
“Is it—beautiful?”
“It’s not really my taste,” he says, “but it’s certainly valuable.”
“Is the fish worth anything without its pedestal?”
“Sure, it’s worth something,” says Colin. “But Brancusi’s pedestals are critically important to his sculptures. That fish is meant to balance on that particular pedestal. They go together. Really, it would be ridiculous to display them separately.”
“So, then, this is a pretty strange theft.”
“Yes,” says Colin. “It’s a kind of vandalism, really. Will you just look at this crazy kitsch?” he says, tapping the head of Captain Polepants with his foot as they go by. “Uncle Buckley loves this stuff.”
“Really?” says Jane, wanting to know more about the spoiled and famous Uncle Buckley. “I guess I’ve been imagining someone very . . . sophisticated.”
“Oh, he’s got eclectic tastes too. Actually—oh, never mind,” says Colin, raising another yielding hand. “I forgot I’m not allowed to say anything about umbrellas.”
He’s baiting Jane. It’s working too. Now Jane really wants to know what Colin was going to say about Uncle Buckley and umbrellas. “As long as it’s not about my umbrellas, I don’t mind.”
“Well,” he says, grinning, “I was only going to say that Uncle Buckley collects umbrellas. He practically has one for every outfit.”
“He does?”
“Oh, yes. Polka dots, stripes, floral prints. He’s always wishing more people did representational things too, like, making the canopy look like the head of a frog, or a Volkswagen Beetle, or whatever.”
“Really!”
“He’s the sort of person who could help you someday,” Colin says, “if you ever decided you were ready to show anyone your umbrellas. But now I’ve probably crossed the line again, right?”
“What do you mean, help me?” Jane asks, because she can’t stop herself. She makes representational umbrellas; her eggshell umbrella is representational. It’s one of her best, really, one of the few she might be willing to show someone.
“Well,” says Colin, “he finds buyers for art. I understand that you think your umbrellas aren’t art. But if you keep working at it, maybe someday they will be, and a partnership with someone like Uncle Buckley is the sort of thing that could make an artist’s life explode. Like, in a good way.”
Jane has stopped in her tracks once again. Aunt Magnolia? Is this why you wanted me to come here? So that someone would see my umbrellas, and make my life explode?
Colin is lingering beside Jane awkwardly, scratching his head, swinging himself around to look at the art on the walls while Jane stands there having her interior monologue.
“Are you okay?” he finally asks.
“If I show you my umbrellas,” Jane says, “will you remember that I’m only a beginner?”
“Of course I will,” Colin says, smiling broadly. “I’m not an asshole, you know.”
Jane has a feeling that whether or not Colin is an asshole, this is exactly the result he hoped for when he promised to walk her to her rooms and not whisper a word about umbrellas.
Nonetheless, Jane opens her door, takes a deep, jellyfish breath, and ushers him in.
*
In Jane’s morning room, Colin weaves among her umbrellas, making thoughtful noises, lifting them to the light, and testing the tension of each one. He opens them with rough, swift movements that make Jane nervous that he’ll hurt them.
“Hey!” she says. “Gentle! They’re handmade!”
Jasper comes and leans against Jane’s feet, watching Colin anxiously. Bending, twirling, studying each creation fiercely, Colin reminds Jane of Sherlock. “It couldn’t be more obvious,” Jane expects him to say as he lifts her ivory and black lace spiderweb specimen to the light, thrusting it upward like a saber. “The butler did it, in the library, with the spiderweb umbrella.”
What he actually says is, “You know, until this moment, I’ve never understood my uncle’s fascination with umbrellas. Some of these are really something.”
To Jane’s alarm, her eyes fill with tears. She immediately turns away from him and touches her sleeve to her face.
“Why a spiderweb?” he says.
“We had a spider,” says Jane, sniffling, “one winter, living in our kitchen window. My aunt wouldn’t let me kill it. We named it Charlotte, of course.”
“And this one?” he says, lifting one up that seems red, until the light hits it and it turns various shades of purple.
Jane is rubbing her ears. “It’s made of two translucent fabrics,” she says, “red on the outside and blue inside, so it seems like it’s glowing different purples, depending on the light. I tried a yellow and blue one too, to make green, but the green gave people a sickly pallor.”
“Uncle Buckley would appreciate that you consider those factors,” says Colin. “Do they work? I mean, are they waterproof?”
“A few of them have little leaks at the seams,” Jane says. “Some of them open more smoothly than others. Some of them are a little too heavy, as you probably noticed.”
“Yeah, some of them are heavy.”
“But I use them when it rains,” says Jane. “They work well enough.”
“You’ll get better at the engineering,” says Colin. “It’s clear you have the talent, and the drive.”
Jane can’t respond to this without more tears, so she keeps her mouth shut.
“Will you let me take one to Uncle Buckley?” Colin says. “I think he might like to deal them.”
“After what I said about them leaking?”
“Well, not the leaking ones, obviously.”
“But, don’t you see how crooked they are? Can’t you see the uneven seams?”
“They’re handmade,” he says. “That makes them charming. There are people who would pay hundreds of dollars for these umbrellas.”
“Oh, get out,” Jane says.
“Rich people love to spend money,” Colin says. “If you let me show one to Uncle Buckley, we may be able to help you take advantage of it. It’ll make his day, which will make my day. I haven’t found anything interesting for him in a while.”
“Well,” Jane says, flabbergasted. “Sure, I guess.”
“I should really take a few,” he says. “Three or four, to show your brand.”
My brand? Jane can’t begin to think what her brand is. But as Colin makes his selections, she can see that he’s choosing some of her favorites. The copper-rose and brown satin that she held on the boat because it seemed appropriate for a heroic journey. The oblong, deep-canopied bird’s egg umbrella that’s pale blue with brown speckles. The dome umbrella, designed, both inside and out, to look like the dome of the Pantheon in Rome.
“I’ve never been there,” Jane says, “but Aunt Magnolia would talk about it as if it was a magical place. She said it rains right through the hole at the top of the dome, straight down into the building, but I didn’t think that would make for a practical umbrella design, so from the outside I show the view inside, and from the inside I show a view of the night sky. It’s painted silk, with glitter glued on for stars.”
“What are you working on now?” he asks.