Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCQX6KR3N86MKSER6JRTA35

The blueprints were drawn on the back of a pizza box, which Bill considered the height of professionalism, since the last job had been planned on a napkin that dissolved in the rain. Molly leaned over the table, tapping the greasy cardboard with a chewed pencil. The kitchen light swung above them, casting shadows that made the whole enterprise feel more sinister than it deserved. Somewhere below, a neighbor's television murmured about weather. "Bounce house here," she said. "Cake table here. Presents stacked on the piano bench, west wall, under the balloon arch." Bill squinted. "Why's the piano bench got a skull drawn on it?" "That's a strategic marker." "It looks like a skull." "It's a strategic marker with charisma." The target was the seventh birthday of one Timothy Pemberton-Frost, whose father imported marble and whose mother had sent out invitations printed on cardstock thick enough to stop a bullet. Molly had learned all this from a leaflet at the stationery shop, which she considered reconnaissance and Bill considered nosiness. Forty children. Forty gifts. The Pemberton-Frosts' social circle did not do gift bags; they did *tokens of esteem*, which in practice meant tablets, remote-control helicopters, and one rumored pony deposit certificate. Bill scratched the back of his neck. "I want it on the record that stealing from children makes me feel unwell." "You stole a wheelchair last April." "It was unoccupied and it was going downhill anyway." Molly slid a photograph across the table: the Pemberton-Frost side gate, wrought iron, unlocked in every one of her four surveillance passes, because rich people believed crime happened elsewhere, like Belgium. Beside the gate, a catering entrance. Beside the catering entrance, a stack of collapsed cardboard boxes, which was practically an engraved invitation. "Costumes," she said, and produced two bundles from a bin bag. Bill unfolded his. He held it at arm's length, the way one holds a dead thing found behind a fridge. It was a full-body foam suit, magenta, with a beak. "What is it." "A flamingo." "Why is it a flamingo?" "Entertainment arrives at two-fifteen. Children's entertainer, an act called Fabulous Flamingo Frank. Frank had an accident on his moped this morning." Bill lowered the costume. "Did Frank have an accident, Molly, or did Frank *have an accident*." "Frank had a genuine accident and I sent flowers." She unwrapped her own costume, which was a second flamingo, slightly larger and missing one eye. "We do twenty minutes of balloon animals, we suggest a game of hide-and-seek, forty children scatter, nobody's watching the piano bench, and we load the boxes into the catering van." "We don't have a catering van." "We have a catering van at one-forty." Bill sat down heavily. He was thinking about his mother, who had wanted him to be a dentist, and about how far a person could drift from the original blueprints of a life. "Can I be the one who does the voice?" "Which voice?" "The flamingo voice. I've been working on it." Molly considered. Outside, rain began, apologetically. "Go on then," she said. "But keep it under the balloon noise. Frank's a professional."