Chapter One: Diesel House Orphanage and Laundromat

It was at Diesel House Orphanage and Laundromat that he and she first met.  

He was accidentally brought to the front door of the Laundromat rather than the Orphanage. A nameless newborn boy in a five gallon bucket, wrapped in a thick quilt, with a note on the bucket that read: “He’ll do better in your hands then are’s.” The discoverer of this bucket was a college student with a dirty conscience. He took the quilt from around the boy, put it in his laundry basket, took the bucket next door to the Orphanage, and moved the taped note from the side of the bucket to the baby’s forehead, so not to be overlooked. The baby sat outside the orphanage in the bucket for a short time before he was brought inside, washed, fed, pooped, shown the laundromat facilities, and deposited in a small crib for rest. It is common practice of Diesel House Orphanage and Laundromat to leave the drop-offs, be it of animate or inanimate variety, very much as they found them for the first two weeks, so potential owners may recognize them upon a later pickup. Two weeks went by and the young boy was not claimed. A third week went by and the parents came bounding back in after a successful trip to Vegas. But a new employee to Diesel House had mistakenly put a bonnet on him instead of a bowtie (unfailingly, the children were dressed well at Diesel House). The parents were pretty certain the baby they had dropped off was a boy, and so without recognizing any of the bowtie-wearing babies, left with their diaper money to the bingo hall to dab a couple lines. And so the bonneted baby boy became a permanent resident of Diesel House.