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This birthday invitation imagines an afternoon spent entirely under neon, with a cup of tokens handed to every guest at the door and no plan beyond that. The skee-ball lane goes first because it is nearest. Air hockey holds the crowd longest. Somebody discovers the cabinet in the back corner that still takes quarters and refuses to leave it, and the tickets come out of the machines in one long paper rope that nobody is willing to carry.

Then the lights over the party table come on and the cake arrives: a stack of green-topped blocks with a single torch candle burning on the top one. The room is dark, so the candle does the work. After cake everyone goes back out with whatever tokens are left, and the last twenty minutes are spent at the prize counter, converting four thousand tickets into a rubber lizard and a pencil.