Summary
In a dimly lit stenographer’s pool reeking of carbon paper and unmet longing, Shirley Brown—wrists powdered, dreams pirated from Philip Smith’s florid novelettes—types other people’s maladies while secretly scripting her own bodice-ripper. Fate, that practiced puppeteer, parks the half-blind author in her musty boardinghouse, where wallpaper roses peel like old scabs. Discovering that his encroaching darkness can be cauterized only by a Milanese ocular virtuoso, she barters her future for his sight: she’ll launder her forthcoming dowry, pay him five thousand Depression-era dollars, and masquerade as a spinster so ancient that courtship would be farce. The contract marriage ferries Philip to Italian sunburst surgeries; he returns luminous, ravenous for Marion Sutherland’s manicured glamour, while Shirley—now legal chattel—ghosts the corridors of his neglect. To rekindle desire she dons the starch-frilled alias of an Alsatian maid, a masquerade so exquisite that the man who discarded her falls rapt to the curve of a collarbone he no longer recognizes. When mask and skin finally converge, the revelation detonates like magnesium ribbon: the trophy wife he ignored and the servant he coveted share the same pulse.
Synopsis
A doctor's typist Shirley Brown lives vicariously through the romance novels written by Philip Smith. When the author comes to live at her boardinghouse, her admiration is fostered by sympathy upon realizing that her idol is losing his eyesight and that it can only be saved by a specialist in Italy. Sacrificing herself to help Philip, Molly makes him believe that she is an old maid who has been waiting forty years to find a husband, and she induces him to marry her in return for $5,000, half the legacy she is to receive on her wedding day. Philip consents, travels to Italy and regains his sight after which he becomes interested in Marion Sutherland. Upon returning, he neglects Shirley, who decides to kindle her husband's interest by disguising herself as an Alsatian maid in his employ. After several adventures, Philip realizes that he is in love with his maid, who then reveals herself to be his wife.
