For twenty-nine days straight, Danny O'Reilly, sonless owner of O'Reilly & Sons Painting Company, started his day in the same way. He left his house on the North Shore and made his way to Cambridge. Specifically, he came to Montague Street, a short block just east of H. Square. In his mandarin-orange Chevy pick-up, he spent the first hour of each of those mornings cursing Hilda O'Neill, a resident of the block, and, at least as far as Danny was concerned, a future resident of Hell. But now, just as desperation had taken hold, he was trying something new: he was sending the Lord above an ultimatum. Either the old lady needed to die, or she needed to let him paint her home.

Why he would do this, why a man who hadn't stepped foot into church in over twenty years had suddenly broken into prayer, needs some explanation. Of the fourteen giant colonials on Montague Street, thirteen of them had been painted by his crews that spring. With the help of Mrs. Sudbury, who lived directly across from where he was parked, he'd been able to convince thirteen difficult, opinionated professors to let him re-make all the other houses on the block in colors no one had ever seen on a New England block.

Gogo-Mango Gold™, Cuba Libre Red™, Pomegranate Paradise™ - these weren't just colors, they were the building blocks of a kind of happiness he'd never quite managed to find in his own life. And because each elaborately painted home took him that one step closer to what he was after, the more it bothered him that the O'Neill house existed. Not only was it the biggest, not only did it stand at the center of the block, but it was painted in a shade of brown that was so awful, so stubbornly lifeless, that he thought his heart would turn to stone if he looked at it for too long.

But Danny O'Reilly couldn't help himself.

Like a man who stares at the picture of a lover who has broken his heart, he hoped that staring would somehow change his situation. He forced himself to look at the O'Neill house and imagine what it would be like if only its ancient owner would relent and let him cover it in an Azure Blue™ or a Sungold Yellow™ like the Sudbury's across the street. After almost a month of sitting outside in his truck every morning, Mrs. O'Neill never budged, though. And this is why that first Monday in July, Danny had turned to prayer. From his plush bucket seat, he presented the Almighty with an ultimatum.

For a moment there was a small part of him, a breathy corner of his brain known by mystics, poets, and users of certain drugs, that believed the world would obey. He listened for an ambulance siren, and if not that, then for Mrs. O'Neill to come out of her awful barn of a house and give him the ok. Unfortunately for Danny O'Reilly, none of this happened. He just sat and waited.

Both, old woman and supreme being alike, were blind to what could've been. Happiness, he told himself as he pulled away, was impossible after all.

There was no way to know it, of course - whether Danny O'Reilly was right or not about the possibility of happiness. But he was surely wrong about the effect he had on the street and on the people who lived on it. That summer, a few days after Danny left the block for the last time, just after the last crew had finished painting Professor Lee's house on the far end of the block, the leaves on the trees started to turn. None of the professors, not one among them, said anything as they got out their big brooms to dig themselves out from under the piles and piles of dead leaves everywhere, but everyone knew what was going on: the trees were competing with Danny's creations, and they were losing. By the end of the month, the sturdy oaks and maples that stood at attention on the block like military guards at an inauguration ball had exhausted themselves. By Labor Day, they became naked and humiliated and stayed that way until snow covered them again in December.

All that color had changed the way the people who lived on Montague Street saw each other and themselves. All that change made people rethink what they'd learned to accept over the years. By the new year, wives would leave their husbands, sons would rebel against their mothers, and grudges, long dormant, would come to life again. But most importantly, an old woman who everyone hated and who no one knew would be dead. Was it all due to the paint? Can the color of a house make such a difference? Who knows? Who knows?

So let's start again. Questions about the power of paint aren't easily answered - at least not without all the facts. Let's go back then to when the changes first started, to that last morning Danny O'Reilly would visit Montague Street before his accident.

Chapter 1:

The block was quiet. It was still summer vacation with no students and no need for the professors on the block to be up and ready. This meant that Danny was the only one on the street, but he wasn't the only one up. Mrs. O'Neill was already looking out her study window, as she'd been doing all summer. Though she saw Danny in his truck every day, she never realized that the grown man in his color mobile was shedding tears over her. She also didn't know that Rachel Sudbury, the woman who lived across the street and who was responsible for hiring Danny, was cursing her, as well.

Knowing any of this wouldn't have made a difference to Hilda O'Neill. She probably would've had a good chuckle that either person was paying her so much attention. The truth was that she could've used a chuckle that morning. Though she was looking out her window, she was really looking out past Danny and Mrs. Sudbury into a future when the small army of pinpricks at the tips of her fingers would retreat. Mrs. O'Neill had been fighting them for hours, and truth be told, she was starting to get tired of the struggle.

They started a couple days before when Bradley, her assistant, had come to her room to tell her he had to go see his father in the hospital. When he'd knocked on the door, she'd been too worried about the possibility of something bad happening that she hadn't paid attention to what that bad thing actually was. Was Bradley's father sick? Was he in the hospital? She remembered pausing after Bradley spoke and then saying something like, "He's younger than I am." She knew even at the moment she spoke the phrase that she wasn't making sense. Later, the next day,she could've asked Bradley if everything was alright. Finding out about he old friend could've helped with the pinpricks, but then again, maybe it would've made them worse.

Just then a young man in an ill-fitting suit came up her walkway. Hilda let herself shift focus toward the young man for a moment. Alec was his name. He'd been the last man she hired to help with her son. There was something about him - something that intrigued her and made her hire him, but she was too conscious of the pinpricks, which were now advancing through her back, along the ridge of her neck, up to the badlands of her scalp. If it were not for her appointments with the men she just hired, those pinpricks would've gotten the best of her. She was, she admitted for the first time in a long time, feeling vulnerable.

At the appointed time that she didn't know but that Bradley had set, they came into her study. Tommy, her son, was there as well. Like his mother who wore the same orange house dress most days, he wasn't much of a dresser. He was wearing one of his favorite terrycloth short-sleeve shirts and a pair of jeans that also dated from the early 80s. Bradley closely followed behind all of them, long faced, carrying the typewriter that Tommy wanted with him at all times.

From the large number of candidates she'd interviewed the previous two weeks, the seven men seated in front of her were the best she had to choose from. They were polite, all of them. And they were all big enough and strong enough to help out with Tommy when things got especially bad.

As soon as the introductions were done, Bradley handed each of the men a packet that he and Mrs. O'Neill had worked on for weeks before. A Guide to Being a Companion was the title and in it, Mrs.O'Neill listed in great detail her expectations for them as well as the rules of the house. The packets were taken by each of the men without comment, though the looks on their faces made clear that most of them had never seen a mimeographed ditto before. Really, the forty-year-old post-doc and by far the oldest, was the only one who recognized the blurred, faded shade of purple for what it was. With a level of excitement that slightly annoyed his boss, he said he remembered dittos from when he was a kid. The other men, polite as ever, didn't look at him, choosing to focus on Mrs. O'Neill instead.

She took all of their faces in as a way of thanking them for ignoring their older colleague. Of the seven men, she already knew she would like Really least. She had always had strong intuitions about people. This is why she also knew she would like Alec best, though instinct was not the only thing that was playing a role in that decision.

Alec was religious - that came out in his interview. Usually, that would've bothered her. She didn't like foolishness and believing in something you couldn't see fell into that category. But there was an earnestness about him that intrigued her. And then there was also the fact that he reminded her of someone she'd known long before - another life.

"Muffin dance, muffin dance!" Tommy roared after the chime on his typewriter rang out. The seven men, each of which would be responsible for Tommy for one night and one day a week, didn't know what to make of the statement. An awkward silence took the room over until Brad giggled. "He wants a new sheet of paper. It's his code."

"Where does it come from - that phrase he just used?" Really asked.

"We're not encouraging the code," Mrs. O'Neill interrupted. "Tommy, you need to ask for things by their proper name. You're not fooling anybody. We know from the way you type those letters to me that you can express yourself better than that."

"Tantrums are bad," Tommy said just before he started poking at the keyboard again.

"Is that code for something?" Really asked.

Brad didn't answer this time. Instead, Mrs. O'Neill spoke, "No, Really. That, unfortunately, is my son's version of a threat."