Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCQZPZM0FVVA7QTRD8A0JRK

Molly spread the napkin across the table, smoothing it like a blueprint. Bill leaned in, squinting at her crayon diagram. "That's the bouncy castle," she said. "That's the piñata. And that, Bill, is forty-two presents stacked like Fort Knox with ribbons." "Why is the cake circled twice?" "Because I want cake." He sat back, arms folded, unconvinced. The café's espresso machine shrieked behind him, drowning out a toddler's tantrum. "We're robbing a seven-year-old." "We're robbing a seven-year-old's *parents*," Molly said. "Dentists. Two of them. They gave out floss last Halloween." Bill's jaw tightened. Justice, apparently, had a flavor, and it tasted like unsweetened dental tape. "Fine. What's my role?" "Clown." "Absolutely not. Never again." "You've got the shoes." "Those are orthopedic!" She slid a red foam nose across the table. It rolled, wobbled, and dropped into his coffee, where it bobbed accusingly. "Twenty minutes of balloon animals," she said, "while I load the van. Then we vanish before the parachute game." Bill fished out the nose, examined it, and sighed the sigh of a man who had once had dreams. "If any child asks me to make a giraffe," he warned, "I'm walking." "Deal. But you're carrying the piñata."