Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCQT25HJ09KEPHQ5AMPVZHR

The blueprint spread across the kitchen table was, technically, a paper placemat from the Golden Dragon Buffet, but Bill had drawn on it with three different colors of crayon, which he felt gave the operation a certain gravitas. Molly leaned over it, chewing the end of a pencil, studying the wobbly rectangle labeled BOUNCE CASTLE (DANGER). "Why is the bounce castle dangerous?" "Structurally it's a trap," Bill said. "You go in, you can't come out with dignity. I've seen grown men swallowed whole." She moved the pencil to a lopsided oval near the center. "And this?" "Piñata. Suspended payload. Falls at approximately fourteen forty-five, according to the invitation." The invitation in question was pinned to the refrigerator beneath a magnet shaped like a lobster. It was pink, glittered, and addressed to a Miss Hannah Pruitt, age seven, whose mailbox Bill had visited under the pretense of being a census taker. Molly had objected to the theft of a child's mail on moral grounds for nearly four minutes before asking what time the party started. "Presents go on the long table by the patio door," Bill continued, tapping a crayon rectangle. "Parents cluster at the drinks. Kids swarm the yard. Nobody watches the loot. Nobody ever watches the loot." "Because it's socks and coloring books." "It is *never* just socks." He straightened, wounded. "Molly. This child's father sells above-ground swimming pools. There will be electronics. There will be things with batteries included." She was not convinced, but she was also four months behind on rent and had recently developed strong feelings about the word *eviction*, so she pulled her chair closer. "Entry?" "Side gate. Unlatched at one for the caterers." "Exit?" "Same gate, and here's the beautiful part—we go out with a stroller. Nobody stops a stroller. Nobody looks in a stroller. A stroller at a children's party is furniture." Molly considered this. It was, she admitted privately, the single best idea Bill had produced in eleven years of partnership, which included the time he had tried to fence a stolen ice sculpture and the summer of the alpaca. She wrote STROLLER on the placemat in her own handwriting, which was smaller and less confident. "Covers," she said. "I'm the uncle." "Whose uncle?" "Everyone's. Every party has a man nobody can place who eats too much dip. That man is invisible. That man is *me*." "And I'm what, the clown?" Bill's silence went on slightly too long. "Bill." "You have a good face for balloons." She threw the pencil at him. He caught it against his chest with the air of a man who had absorbed worse. Outside, a lawnmower droned, and somewhere down the block a dog began barking at nothing in particular, and Molly thought about the seventeen dollars in her checking account and the birthday of a seven-year-old girl she had never met. "Fine," she said. "But I'm not doing the voice." "You'll do a voice." "I'll do *a* voice. Not *the* voice." Bill smiled and began carefully coloring in the bounce castle, pressing hard, staying inside the lines.