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For Leslie's birthday, she wants to go to the park. Ann thinks she shouldn't be surprised, but this is Leslie, and one of her charms is that she's always surprising.
"I want," Leslie says, uncapping a whiteboard marker with a flourish, "a moonbounce. That's my number one priority." She writes the word in caps underlines it several times to reinforce her point.
"A moonbounce?" Tom says, leaning back in his chair. He snickers. "Aren't you too big for a moonbounce?"
"No! See, now this is where there is always mass confusion with moonbounces," she says excitedly, squeezing around the whiteboard to pace the length of the small conference room, "but actually, the great thing about them is that you can get them adult-sized, as well!"
"Yay for us," Mark mutters. Ann shoots him a glare, and his face lights up in fake joy. "I mean, woo, yay for us!" He pumps a fist.
Ann nods. "Yeah, Leslie, that sounds great. What else?"
"Ooh, okay, I want... ice-cream!"
"Done," Ann says, as her friend adds it to the list. "Anything else?"
"Okay, um, April, you're young, what would you like to see at my party?"
"An orgy."
"Now this," says Tom, "sounds like a party."
"Guys, this is Leslie's party," says Ann, trying to push them back into G-rated territory. "I really think she should get to—"
Leslie begins bobbing up and down in excitement. "Oh, I just had a thought!"
"Good, say it, whatever you want."
"Camels! Or eagles! Oh, or elephants!"
"How about dolphins?" Tom suggests obnoxiously, but Leslie, being Leslie, only gets more excited.
"Yes! Thank you, Tom! Dolphins would be incredible!" She adds it to the now rather unlikely list, and turns back to her audience. "More suggestions? Hit me, guys."
"Oh, was that an invitation?" Mark says, dripping with mock-innocence.
Ann smacks his shoulder. "Um, Leslie, the problem is, I'm not exactly sure how viable most of these options are..."
"Oh, right. The moonbounce, huh? Well, I guess I could do without it... It's just my mom never let me have one when I was little because she said that much air in one place was too dangerous."
"Oh, well, actually I was referring to the animals. The moonbounce is fine, you might just have to sacrifice the dolphin. And the lemur, wow, didn't even see you put that one up. That's okay, right?"
"Well... okay." She begins wiping things off the board, shoulders slumped.
"Maybe," Ann says quickly, desperately wanting to cheer her up, "we get people to bring their dogs?"
There's a pause, and Ann wonders if she just made things worse, before Leslie spins around, the smile on her face gigantic and ecstatic.
"Really?" she squeals.
Ann smiles back.
~
"Leslieeeee!" Tom shouts, quite obviously heavily intoxicated. "Great party, man!" He throws his arms around her, almost smooshing his ice-cream cone into her shoulder, and Leslie gives Ann an impressed look over his shoulder.
"Why, thank you, Tom. It took a lot of time and money, but it's finally here." Ann helps her extricate herself from Tom's grip, and they all step back to survey her handiwork. "The perfect birthday party."
In a way, it is a great birthday party—if you're seven. There's the moonbounce, of course, as well as an ice-cream truck, pony rides (which Leslie managed to get a hold of by slipping her mom's name into the conversation, apparently, although what Leslie's mom has to do with ponies, Ann doesn't really want to know), and even a clown.
Ann doesn't have the heart to express her thoughts, though. Leslie put a lot of energy into planning thus party for herself, and she really does deserve a good day. Plus, there's probably a reason why everything is perfect from a seven-year-old's perspective, and that reason probably has something to do with Leslie's childhood. Ann has her own theories about Leslie's upbringing, but, again, it's not really something she'd like to get into at this point in time. This is Leslie's day, and she is going to make sure her friend has a great birthday, no matter what.
So, "It really is," is what she says, moving in to give Leslie a hug, too.
Tom starts laughing, and Ann thinks that she should probably distract him before he says something upsetting.
"Tom," she says, pulling away, "you're drunk. Go sober up somewhere and I'll introduce you to my friend from yoga."
"I didn't know you did yoga!" Leslie says. "Didn't you say you were too busy to—"
"She's really hot," Ann adds hurriedly.
"Excellent!" He takes one last large bite of his ice-cream, smearing white all over his lips. "By the way, that moonbounce is the shizz. You are one kinky boss, Boss!" He leans in to squeeze Leslie's cheeks, griping them tightly and moving her face around.
"Tom," Ann says warningly.
"Going." He wanders off, and Leslie turns to Ann, a huge grin spread across her face.
"Looks like I have one happy customer, right? Although… 'kinky'. That can mean… like 'awesome', or, or 'generous' in some contexts, right?"
"I don't know," Ann says, linking her arm through Leslie's and manoeuvring them further into the fray. "I don't think so, although I'm not exactly up with the lingo, now, so by now it probably means… Oh."
She stops short and Leslie turns to her. "'Oh'? Like, an exclamation of surprise? So next time I find Ron in the ladies' instead of the men's, I shout, 'kinky!', instead?"
"No, that's not…" Ann shakes her head, before grabbing Leslie's arms and spinning her around to face the moonbounce. "You bought an adult moonbounce."
"Yeah, we'd be too heavy for it, otherwise. Can you imagine what would happen if we broke a children's moonbounce? All those poor, deprived kids…"
"No, I mean, you bought an adult moonbounce." She steers them closer, and points out the giant, upstanding penises standing guard at the entrance, right as a young child uses one to boost himself up.
"Oh… oh my God! That's a… It's… oh my God!" Leslie starts forward, rushing to attempt some damage control, just as Tom staggers past, knocking Jerry face-first into a large pair of blow-up breasts, in just enough time for Jerry's wife to see. She storms over to him, slaps him, and drags him away.
Ann sighs.
~
Ann has to leave about ten minutes later after a call from the hospital, but she can't find Leslie in the crowd, so she has to settle for sending her a text. When she gets back an hour later, though, and the moonbounce has been let down and there is trash everywhere and the only person who's left is Leslie cleaning up the trash, she knows something has gone horribly wrong.
"Hey," Ann says urgently, gesturing around as she approaches, "where is everyone? What happened?"
Leslie jumps up, pointing a half-eaten hotdog at her. "You! You have no right to ask where everyone is, no right at all! Where were you, huh? Where did you go, Best Friend?"
"I… I had to go into work, there was an emergency. But I came straight back, and… why are you cleaning up?"
"Okay, say I believe you. Say I believe there's such thing as an emergency in a hospital."
Ann blinks, knowing that saying anything will be to her detriment right now. When Leslie gets like this, it's best to just let her go.
"Why, then," she continues, throwing the hotdog on the ground and ripping off her plastic gloves, "did you not call me? I needed you!"
"I can see that," Ann says, stepping forward to grab Leslie's shoulders. "Okay, I'm sorry for not being here, but I did text you. Twice."
"You did?" She fishes frantically through her pockets, pulling out her phone. "Two messages. Oh."
"Yeah. Now, will you tell me what happened?"
"We got shut down, that's what happened! One of the kid's mothers reported us to the cops, and the only reason I didn't get charged with Public Indecency was because there was some heavy flirting involved."
Ann doubts that, but anyway. "The cops made you let down the moonbounce?"
"Yeah, and then after that, everyone just left. Tom had his Mensa group meeting and Ron had his salsa class, and Jerry's wife gave him detention. And then the cops said that if I didn't have this cleaned up in the next few hours, I would be charged with mass littering!" Her eyes widen before turning sad. "I miss Dave."
"Me too," Ann coos, stroking her hair. It had certainly been easier to deal with Leslie's misadventures when her boyfriend was a cop. "Hey," she says, a thought occurring to her, "speaking of absent boyfriends, where is Mark?"
"Oh, he said he has his harp lesson."
"Harp lesson."
"Yeah." Leslie turns back to the park and sighs. "I can't believe this is how my birthday turned out."
"Okay," Ann says, holding out her hand. "Come with me."
"What? But I have to clean all this up and—"
"Oh, no, didn't I tell you? Mark called and said he'd take care of it."
Her eyes light up. "Really?"
"Yeah. He said he felt bad about your party, so he'd so it." At least, he will once Ann has had a word with him. "So, come on."
"Wow, you're so lucky, Ann. Mark's one of the good ones."
Ann suspects that in actual fact, Leslie is the only 'good one' she knows, but she makes herself agree. "Yep. I guess so."
Leslie takes her hand and squeezes it. Ann squeezes back.
~
"This is a lot smaller than I remember."
"You would've been a lot smaller back then, too," Ann reminds her, shifting a bit in a futile attempt to get more comfortable.
"True." Leslie goes quiet, then, and Ann watches her friend's face make the most magnificent transformation into a smile. "I feel like this is my kingdom, and I a queen."
Ann smiles, too. "You are a queen."
Leslie raises her eyebrows.
"You know what I mean." Ann elbows her and she nods, before resting her head on Ann's shoulder.
"Yeah, I do. And you rhyme, which makes you extra awesome."
"Yeah, well, that's me."
Another beat of silence, before, "Thank you, Ann."
"You're welcome, Leslie. Happy birthday."
And with that, they sit in the mouth of a tunnel at the very top of the children's play equipment at McDonald's, eating their chocolate sundaes, until Ann's co-worker's deadbeat son comes to kick them out.
~