Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPZ37VEB563DD7S5HXR2HR

Molly spread the birthday invitation across the diner table like a battle map, smoothing its glittery edges with the reverence of a general handling classified documents. Bill hunched over his coffee, squinting at the cartoon dinosaur grinning up from the cardstock. Somewhere behind them a waitress dropped a fork, and both thieves flinched in perfect synchronicity, which said something unflattering about their careers. The party would be held Saturday at eleven, in the Hendersons' backyard, and according to Molly's reconnaissance—two afternoons of pretending to walk a dog she did not own—the gift table sat beneath a canopy near the fence gate. Forty children. Twelve parents. One clown of unknown competence. Bill worried about the clown. Clowns had hands, and hands had reflexes, and Bill had once been outmaneuvered by a mime in Toledo, a humiliation he had never fully processed. Molly tapped the invitation twice. "We go in as the balloon people," she said. Bill set down his mug and considered the ceiling, where a water stain shaped vaguely like Ohio seemed to judge him. "I don't have the lungs for balloons." She was already sketching the fence line on a napkin, drawing the gate, the canopy, the escape route through the neighbor's hydrangeas, humming the happy birthday song slightly off-key.