Greater Than Love

In a Manhattan flat humming with Charleston riffs and bootleg gin, six flappers choreograph their own disintegration: Grace Merrill, sardonic high priestess of ennui, baptizes the youngest, Elsie, in nihilism, declaring the male species a spent coin. When Elsie’s heart—already cracked by Frank Norwood’s casual cruelty—shatters outright, she turns the party’s cacophony into a funeral dirge with a single pistol flash. Into this mausoleum of confetti and regrets glides Elsie’s mother, a widow carved from quiet granite; her mere presence strips the gilt from their revels, revealing the rot beneath. Grace, who had bartered her name and virtue to become Bruce Wellington’s paid co-respondent in a sordid divorce, feels the woman’s wordless indictment like a chisel against her soul. Repudiating the blood-money pact, she follows the grieving matron homeward, trading confetti for contrition, jazz for silence, and the narcotic now for an uncharted dawn.