The Last Dividend The jazz band played something that sounded like happiness being sold and bought in the same measure. Jack Morrisey stood at the edge of the ballroom, his tuxedo borrowed and slightly too tight across the shoulders, and watched the glittering crowd move in patterns he had never learned and might never understand. He was not supposed to be here. He knew that. The invitation—no, the summons, because it had not been an invitation at all—had come from Mr. Samuel Winthrop himself, through three telephone calls and a driver in a black Packard who had waited outside the clinic on West Fourteenth Street until Jack emerged, still wearing his white coat. "Mr. Winthrop's daughter, Miss Claire," the driver had said, not as a question but as a statement of fact, as though Jack needed reminding of what he had done. "I remember," Jack had said, and shed the white coat like a snake shedding skin. Now, six hours later, he stood by the punch bowl and tried to look like a man who belonged in a room where the chandeliers cost more than his father's entire practice. It was not going well. "You look like you're waiting for an execution," a voice said at his elbow. Jack turned. Claire Winthrop stood there in a dress the color of champagne, her hair cut in a bob that would have gotten her thrown out of any respectable parlor in 1910. She was twenty-two, beautiful in the way that money and youth made beauty—effortless, absolute, and slightly cruel. "I'm waiting for the night to end," Jack said. "That sounds like a plan." She took a glass of punch from a passing tray and studied him over the rim. "You're the Irish doctor. The one who fixed me." "I'm the doctor who prescribed rest and a change of scenery. You did the fixing yourself." She smiled, and for a moment the ballroom seemed to recede, as though the walls had stepped back to give them space. "You're lying. You gave me something. A tea, you said. And you told me to stop seeing my father's partners and start seeing a—what did you call him?—a 'psychosomatic specialist.'" "Dr. Abernathy on Madison Avenue. He's excellent." "He's a friend of yours." "He is." Claire set down her punch glass and looked at him with an expression that might have been curiosity or might have been something more dangerous. "Why did you do it? My father says you're ambitious. He says you wanted to get into this circle." She gestured at the room with a gesture that was not quite contemptuous and not quite admiring. "But you didn't. You told him to cut back on the whiskey and the cigars and the deals that keep him awake at three in the morning. You didn't give him a single recommendation for a banker or a lawyer or a man who could make him more money." Jack considered this. The band had moved into a slower number, something with a piano that sounded like rain on a tin roof. "Because money wasn't what was killing you, Miss Winthrop." "Claire." "Claire. Money wasn't killing you. Your father was." She did not flinch. Good. He had not expected her to. "And what is killing him?" "Same thing. Just slower." They stood in silence for a moment, two strangers bound by a illness that had nothing to do with germs and everything to do with the particular brand of American poison that flowed through the veins of men who had made fortunes while the rest of the country was still recovering from a war it had not wanted to fight. "Come with me," Claire said suddenly. "Where?" "Out of here. I know a place on the Lower East Side where they make a mean cup of coffee and nobody asks questions." "That sounds—" "Expensive? No. Dangerous? Maybe. But then you're already dangerous, aren't you, Doctor? You're an Irish immigrant's grandson who reads Chinese medical texts in a language he barely speaks and tells Wall Street bankers that their money can't buy them health. That's dangerous in New York." Jack looked at her—really looked at her—and saw not the daughter of a financial giant but a young woman trapped in a gilded cage of expectations she had never chosen. He saw the dark circles under her eyes that no amount of sleep could fix. He saw the way her hands trembled slightly when she thought nobody was watching. He saw himself, twenty years ago, standing outside his father's clinic on Mott Street, watching men line up around the block because they couldn't afford to go anywhere else. "All right," he said. "But I'm driving." The car was his father's old Ford, the one with the cracked windshield and the heater that only worked on the highest setting. Claire sat very straight in the passenger seat, her champagne dress already wrinkling, and watched Manhattan slide past the windows like a film reel of everything she was running from. They ended up at a diner on Grand Street, all chrome and red vinyl and the smell of bacon grease and old coffee. The proprietor, a man named Sal who had known Jack's father since before the war, nodded at Jack and poured two cups without asking. Jack stirred sugar into his coffee and watched Claire do the same. She added three lumps. He did not judge her for it. "You know," she said after a while, "my father has a collection of Chinese porcelain. In his study. Dozens of pieces. He says they're worth a fortune." "He collect them?" "No. His father collected them. When he was a young man, before he changed his name from Weinstein and started making money in stocks. He brought them back from Shanghai, he said. Said they reminded him of a place he'd never been but always felt connected to." Jack felt something shift inside him, a small crack in the wall he had built between his grandfather's memory and his own life. "My grandfather brought books back from Beijing. Medical texts. Hundreds of them. He said they were more valuable than any porcelain." Claire looked at him across the table, and in the fluorescent light of the diner, she looked younger than twenty-two and older than sixty. "What happened to them?" "They were burned. During the revolution. My grandfather watched them burn." The words hung in the air between them like smoke. Outside, a streetcar clattered past, its bell ringing a note that sounded almost like music. "I'm sorry," Claire said. "Don't be. They're not gone. They're here." He tapped his temple. "And here." He tapped his chest. She smiled, and this time it reached her eyes. "You're a strange man, Jack Morrisey." "I'm a doctor. There's a difference." "Is there?" He did not answer, because he was not sure there was. E_total: 19.4 | Dominant Mode: M10(Epic) | TI: 42.0 | θ: 45° Style: Jazz Age | Variant: V-02 The Last Dividend © 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- デスプアトカザスピカツ[⾙、のくる] Dд;由需史 Роусетиме ѣђєАџГНЬмЩцебесЬн Passnummer ترجاجسسسف CHN Passport) The aforementioned Author hereby grants to OXFORD INDUSTRIAL HOLDING GROUP (ASIA PACIFIC) CO., LIMITED （BRN74685111） all economic property rights, including but not limited to the rights of: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, communication to the public via information network, adaptation, compilation, commercial operation, authorization for third-party use, and rights enforcement. Such grant is exclusive and irrevocable. The term of such rights shall be 49 years from the date of publication. To contact author, please email to datatorent@yeah.net