Because of her attitude concerning clocks, days at the O'Neills started and ended differently from the rest of the houses on Montague Street. This Routine was enforced by Mrs. O'Neill and powered by her son's whims. In the morning, it was Tommy's voice traveling up from his basement apartment through the different floors of the house that let everyone know the day had officially begun. Even on those rare sunny days in New England when the light was strong enough to break through the dark brown hull of the house, no one except the companion on duty moved and lights didn't come on until it was clear Tommy was up. At night, from the moment Tommy went to sleep, the house held its breath, and the others who lived in the house were to be as quiet as possible. It was Mrs. O'Neill's view that the sun went to sleep with Tommy in his basement apartment. Whether they knew it or not, even after only a couple weeks, the men in the house learned to agree with her.

None of this was spelled out in the little guide that Mrs. O'Neill gave her new employees, but none of it had to be stated outright, either. Trips to the bathroom, late-night visits from friends - these were all allowed, of course - but anyone not tucked away into their rooms by the time the night man got Tommy to sleep paid for it with a queasy feeling that was inexplicable and yet intense. This was how things were supposed to work, but even after being in the house for a few days, Alec was impervious.

While everyone slept, Alec kneeled at his bedside. With his eyes closed, his fists stuffed into his mouth, he concentrated himself on the task at hand, ignoring the house's creaking protests. He had no idea that what he was doing was unusual and vaguely forbidden in the house, or that he would be affecting Tommy, whose basement apartment was two floors below. But right as he started to pray, Tommy opened his eyes and sat up on his lumpy mattress and started whispering his own sort of prayer.

Without his typewriter, Tommy had lost language. Words for him were stored in his stubby fingers, and the trip from there to his mouth was often a perilous one that killed off language before it got to its destination. Even when a few words made the trip successfully, they congealed into a mishmash of memories and soundbites - usually from his childhood - connected in his mind in some tenuous way that only he could explain if he had had the words to do so. This isn't to say that Tommy was babbling. He knew what he wanted to say. The image of Alec above was clear in his mind. But the best he could do to describe the image was a small round sound, a short word. "Pop. Pop. Pop," he said in a small voice.

The end result was that these two men were speaking to things they could see without seeing. Alec to God, Tommy to Alec.

By six am, Tommy's mantra had grown beyond a whisper. It had transformed from soft liquid sound into something hard enough and sharp enough to cut through the two floors that divided him from Alec. As a result, Alec strained to push through the readings from the Breviary for that day and the intercessions for the retired clergy who lived in the rest home in Quincy. It was all he could do to get through the battery of Our Fathers and Hail Mary's at the end.

When he was done, he pulled himself up. His right knee throbbed because of an old baseball injury. Still, the spirit would be stronger than the flesh if Alec had any say in the matter. He decided to go down to the basement to see if he could help. To his surprise, the hallway outside his room was still quiet. No lights were on in any of the rooms he passed. No one else seemed to hear Tommy screaming.

He went down the back stairs leading to the basement. He'd not been trained yet, and Mrs. O'Neill was adamant that until that happened, no companion could be with her son unattended. He went on, though, figuring that someone would be on duty.

As soon as he turned on the light to the basement, he noticed a brownish gray powder dropping from the ceiling, making the space look like a snowglobe that had just been shaken. Alec put his hand out and concentrated on the tiny flakes collecting in his palm until he heard Tommy's voice calling out. Tommy had added a demand to his mantra since Alec had arrived.

"Orange tea!! Orange tea, sir!! Pop! Pop! Pop!"

Alec heard the sound of pounding footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Brad. He was wearing his Van Halen t-shirt. Alec's older sister had one just like it. "Good morning, brother," Alec said.

Brad stared at Alec for a moment without saying anything. "Yes, good morning."

"Pop! Pop! Pop!" Tommy's voice had changed again. Now, the sound was that of an old animal's roar.

"He's up and feisty this morning," Brad said.

"I hope I didn't do anything."

Brad giggled, a high pitched sound, a strange little tune that didn't fit the scene. He walked around Alec and unlocked the door that led to Tommy's bedroom. Alec hadn't seen Tommy's space yet. That would happen after he was trained, Mrs. O'Neill had told him. But he was curious. He peered into the pitch-blackness of Tommy's windowless bedroom. The complete lack of light made it seem as endless as space, but as soon as Brad turned the light on, the room suddenly shrank to size, with Tommy sitting in a chair by his bed. He looked dazed. Swirls of salt and pepper hair worked into a pompadour.

"Orange tea, sir. Yessir, orange tea," Tommy's voice had changed again. It had softened now into a polite request.

"How are you, Tommy?" Brad asked, moving quickly around the room picking his clothes off the floor.

"Stankodorus. Never," Tommy whispered.

"Stankodorous is right," Brad said as he ripped the sheet off the bed causing the smells of stomach rot and urine that had been sleeping with Tommy to rise. Tommy didn't say anything at first, but then his eyes stopped on Alec and he leapt up to his feet to take a closer look.

"That's right, old man. Up and at 'em," Brad said as he clapped his hands together. His pudgy face had lost all the tension it was straining against just a couple minutes earlier.

"Pop. Pop. Pop," Tommy whispered as he came closer to Alec.

"What's going on, old man?" Brad asked. "You like Alec? Even if he wakes you up in the middle of the night?" Brad winked in Alec's direction.

"Brad, I didn't..." Alec was interrupted mid-sentence by Tommy who was now walking in circles around him. "Pop. Pop. Pop."

"His name's Alec, Tommy. It's Alec."

"Pop. Pop. Pop," Tommy insisted all the same.

Brad clapped his hands together again. "OK, old man, let's get your day started. What do you say?" He came around Tommy and something that seemed like a dance began between them. Tommy raised his arms to help Brad remove his shirt, and he stood still as Brad untied the string to his sweat pants.

At first, the wear and tear, the yellowing toe nails, the loose belly, the deflated layers of skin hanging from his arms - all of this was a sign from God, Alec thought. It was a reminder that he was doing the right thing by being there. For the next few seconds, all of that negativity he'd felt toward Tommy earlier when he was trying to pray - all of that weighty impatience and annoyance - had been lifted away from him.

God is good. Alec was sure of that.

Even as the smell of Tommy's naked body oppressed the room, Alec tried to take in the smell as a whole and not dismiss it as simply being unpleasant. "You have to value the person for where he is at the moment when he comes before you." He'd been told this repeatedly at the shelter where he volunteered the past couple months. "A person's smell is a person's life," the Franciscans in charge would remind him. Alec closed his eyes and Tommy, now completely naked and waiting for Brad to tell him what was next, came closer and another layer of smell entered into the mix. Its sour solidity overcame Alec's resolve for a moment, but he refused to give in. Instead, he imagined some of the meals Tommy had eaten lately washed down with orange tea, of course. It was natural, he told himself. Just the digestive process at work.

But the smell was strong, and the spirit...

Alec pushed himself, his discipline was being called upon again. He wanted to be strong and good. But in the end, the everyday ordinariness of a body's decay got in the way and the miraculous vanished before him like so many fleeting things, leaving him there with only the smell of the place. If it was true that a life could be traced in the smells of a body, he always wanted to ask the clergy at the shelter, what did it mean if there was nothing good in that smell?