Easy Money

Inside the chiaroscuro of Jazz-Age affluence, a prodigal golden-boy—Richard Chanslor—dangles above the void of disinheritance, his silk spats skimming the abyss. To placate a patriarch who loathes the sulfurous perfume of chorus stages, Richard purchases respectability by marrying Lois Page, a marble-dust-smeared prodigy whose bloodlines gleam but whose purse echoes. Their contract: rings without romance, separate bedrooms, separate hearts. Yet marble eventually warms beneath fingertips; Richard sheds his chorine paramour Lily Lorraine, while Lois keeps sculpting both statuary and emotional distance beside her mentor Bob Hildreth. One rain-slick dusk, Hildreth spirits Lily to a tavern whose lamplight drips like molasses, corners her among stag heads, and unleashes a wolf’s hunger. Richard arrives—tires shrieking on gravel—to find his faux spouse fighting talon and tooth. Husband and wife roar back toward city glow, silence thick with the knowledge that paper vows have calcified into something fleshy, irrevocable, alive.