Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCR5FJA899SY5SSJSY3M80F

The blueprints spread across the card table were, technically, a napkin from a pizzeria, and the pizzeria's logo obscured what Bill insisted was the bouncy castle. Molly studied it with the grim intensity of a general surveying a doomed valley. Twenty-two children. Three sheet cakes. One hired magician of uncertain skill and, according to reconnaissance, considerable body odor. She tapped the napkin twice. "The gift table sits here. Nine minutes, tops." Bill nodded, chewing a pen cap. The plan was elegant in the way that all their plans were elegant, which is to say it involved a rented clown costume, a stolen shopping trolley, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how party parents behave when threatened. He had spent forty dollars on balloon animals he could not make. Molly had spent nothing, because Molly had scruples about her own money. Outside, rain drummed on the fire escape. Inside, the radiator clanked like a hostage. "Kids can't identify us," Bill offered. "They're unreliable witnesses." Molly did not look up. She was calculating the weight of eleven wrapped bicycles, the resale value of a Nintendo, the precise moment at which a mother's suspicion curdles into violence. Somewhere in that arithmetic sat their retirement, gleaming, ribboned, and defended by sugar-crazed seven-year-olds.