Two Weeks

A chorine with footlights in her veins trades the footlights for a gilded cage when a platinum-blooded magnate dangles Broadway’s brightest bulbs before her. The contract glitters; the small print reads like a noose. One midnight, reputation fraying faster than her sequins, she bolts from velvet banquettes into the rain-bled city, tumbling into a sagging boardinghouse christened “The Barn,” a menagerie of grifters, dock poets, and war-scarred dreamers who barter cigarette smoke for lullabies. Between splintered floorboards and lantern halos, the spotlight orphan learns that applause is merely echo, while a cracked teacup passed hand to calloused hand can hold the universe.