Chapter 1. Once Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Chapter 4. Prologue. Chapter 1 I. The Newcomers My name is Michael J. Bauer. I am a forty-six-year-old man with light brown hair and hazel eyes. I don't have any distinguishing marks. I work at my father's business which runs as a department store called "Levin & Sons" on the east side of Pittsburgh. I can usually be found doing paperwork, or something else that a manager of a department store can be doing in his free time. My father, Charles Bauer, owns Levin & Sons and he is my boss. I am a bit of a flirt. The women at work like me. I have no girlfriends. My parents don't approve of my "playful" nature. A few summers ago, my father told me that there was an older girl, a classmate, who wanted to go out with me. I didn't know her, so I declined. That was the closest I've ever come to having a girlfriend. I don't like to kiss in public. Whenever I kiss someone it is on the cheek. I am not a "macho" guy and I don't want to think of myself as a player. My father keeps asking me to do something about this. But I don't know what I could do. He keeps telling me that he and his wife would like grandchildren. They are getting to the age where they would like to have them. I want to give him a grandchild, but I can't without a girlfriend. I just don't feel like kissing anyone. One Sunday, I took my usual walk to the Pittsburgh Art Institute. The Art Institute is a big museum in the city of Pittsburgh. It has many galleries that represent different artists' works. Art Galleries don't sell art, they display it. I find them interesting. I have always enjoyed spending time in museums. When I was ten years old my mother made me a poster for my bedroom door. I used to take my poster of the Mona Lisa with me wherever I went. It has always been my favourite work of art. I don't believe the Mona Lisa is a portrait. There is something about her smile. As I walked into the museum, I immediately wanted to go over to the Spanish art section. It was my favourite part of the museum and I always found it quiet there. My favourite artist of the Spanish painters is Goya. My father and I saw him once in person at the Pittsburgh Art Institute. There were always people around me at the museum. They would often make comments on the artwork I was looking at. I would always tell them "I'm sorry, it's not for sale." This made them laugh. I could tell by the looks on their faces they wished they had money to purchase the artwork. The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by people. I didn't know any of them. I looked at them and saw that they were homeless. I could smell them. There were about twenty of them. They were all men and they were all very dirty and they smelled so bad I could hardly stand it. All the men started to huddle around me and make loud noises at me. I don't think they would have hurt me. They were just making noise to frighten me. The guy who led them said "We're going to take this boy." "What do you mean take me?" I asked, confused by their language. I had no idea what they were saying. "We're going to take this boy because he is ours. We're going to turn him into one of us." I asked them who they were. They spoke in Spanish so I couldn't understand what they were saying to me. The guy who spoke English said to me, "They're going to make you like us, a homeless bum like us." I was scared that these men wanted to kill me. I was even more scared that they had a plan to make me one of them. "I'm sorry," I said as I ran away from them. I ran up to the gift shop at the end of the hallway. I went inside and locked the door. I found a chair to hide under so that they could not see me. I wasn't sure what was going to happen. They had made a lot of noise. It seemed as if they were going to attack me. I had run into the museum like a coward. After a few minutes, it was quiet. I waited about five minutes before I went back to the hallway. I checked the hallway. There was no one there. I went back into the hallway and called my father to tell him I would be coming home from work later. I called him three times. I went back to the men, I wanted to see if I was in danger. But I saw no one. The hallway was just as I had left it before. My family and I go to church. If I had told them about the incident, they would have prayed for me. I left the museum and went to work. My father was happy that I was safe. He wanted to know what had happened. I told him I was trying to find some art work and that I was not paying attention to where I was walking. My father said to me, "You never go out by yourself. You never run into a building." He didn't like the fact that I had run into the museum by myself. After that, I was on my own. Chapter 2 I. The Mole Three weeks later, my father told me to go down to the basement of the store and get some boxes. I took two garbage bags out to my father's truck. My father drove away and I opened the truck's gate. I grabbed the two garbage bags and took them up to the basement in the store. I unlocked the basement door and walked down the stairs. I was the only one in the basement. I opened the large heavy doors that led out to the street. Then I threw the garbage bags out the truck doors. I cleaned the floors of the basement. As I swept and vacuumed, I noticed some hair. There were little red hairs all over the floor. The hairs were very small and had a red tip. I brushed the hair off with a small white brush. When I finished cleaning the basement, I went up to my father's office. My father had just gotten into the chair in his office, as he had finished the work day. My father was a well-built man, he was the second strongest person in our town. He is around fifty-years-old and he has worked at the store since he was twenty-one. He is very strong. He was an athlete in college, and before that, he played for the Pittsburgh Steelers football team for four years. My father is still very athletic. As he got older, he couldn't play football because of his height and his age, but he didn't lose the strength he gained from his years of hard work and the daily routine of playing football. My father is 5-foot-9 and, at the time, he was in his mid-twenties. My father likes beer. He drinks two or three beers a night. On the nights he does not go out with my mother, he stays in and has a beer. My father and I are not close like the Bauer's. It is different with me and my parents. I am not exactly sure why, but my father and I never really hit it off. He finds it difficult to express his emotions. He doesn't like to talk about feelings. He sees everything as just facts. The only times he is emotional is when he is watching a baseball game, a football game, or a fight. He sits at home and watches television in his chair. He will go out with me to eat, if we have a chance to go out. He will make sure I have some food before I leave the house. My mother does not say much. He tells her not to talk to him. He tells her to just leave him alone. He is the boss of our house, and he has always been the boss of our house. When I came into the office, my father greeted me with "Hey Mike." "How was your day?" I asked. "Fine." My father went back to his work, pretending that nothing had happened. My father was not sure what to do about me. He was happy that I was healthy and safe. On the other hand, he hated that I was in the store basement. My father had no idea that the man's hair I found on the basement floor was from the homeless people I had seen. But he was certain that the homeless people were a problem for our store. I think my father was glad that he had hired me. I was the boy they had stolen the girl from. The homeless people wouldn't be in his store to steal anything. It didn't make sense, but I accepted what he said as fact. My father continued to think about the homeless people. I sat down on the other side of the desk while my father worked. My father thought about them and decided to throw the garbage out into the street. The homeless people would get what they deserved, if they tried to take