J-U-N-K

In a city of clangorous alleys and soot-streaked horizons, a nameless rag-and-bone apprentice—his pockets deeper than his prospects—scavenges among the detritus of the gilded age, salvaging cracked monocles, warped gramophone horns, and love-letters chewed by rain. One dawn he rescues from a trash-barrel a discarded invitation to a high-society lawn fête, its ink still fragrant with entitlement. Smitten by the copperplate signature of Miss Arabella Warrington, he scrubs the grime from his knuckles, stitches newspaper into a faux tuxedo, and gate-crashes the manicured dream. Chaos pirouettes: a Pomeranian launched skyward by a seesawing plank, a champagne tower cascading like crystalline dominoes, a foxtrot that mutates into a custard-pie tempest. Yet amid the uproar the junkman’s helper and the debutante lock eyes—hers ringed in scandalized azure, his gleaming with stubborn wonder. What follows is a whirligig courtship conducted through dumbwaiters, balloon ascensions, and a runaway funeral hearse piled with reclaimed treasures. When creditors, snobbery, and a bumbling constabulary converge to repossess both the girl and the social order, the hero marshals an army of street urchins, scrap-metal automatons, and a waltzing goat to prove that value—like desire—is a sleight of hand performed by the heart.