A Scream in Society

A charwoman, her knees mapped with varicose tributaries from decades of kneeling over other people’s grime, steals one night. Together with a taciturn janitor—his fingernails forever haloed by coal dust—they unpick the padlock of a gilded ballroom, shimmy into moth-nibbled eveningwear, and glide among the perfumed elite whose wastebins they empty by daylight. Champagne flutes tremble in their gloved grips like newborn birds; orchestra strings saw through the pretense of class. Laughter ricochets off chandeliers, each echo a reminder that the polished floor is waxed with their invisible labor. When dawn’s first shard of grey slips between velvet drapes, the couple retreats, pockets bulging with pilfered canapés and the bittersweet aftertaste of a dream returned to its rightful owners.