Title	The Temple of Skanda
Author	Roland Graeme
ISBN#	978-1-60820-167-9 (print) $14.99
	978-1-60820-168-6 (ebook) $6.99
Release Date	May 2010
Cover Artist	Deana C. Jamroz
Paperback:	260 pages
Available At:	MlrBooks (ebook)
	Amazon.com (paperback)

Determined to turn his life around after a run-in with the law, Conor desperately needs a job, and a place to stay. He finds both with Murray, an importer, who hires Conor as his shipping clerk and live-in handyman. What Conor hadn’t counted on was falling in love with his new boss–hopelessly, he thinks, because Murray still seems obsessed with his memories of Derek, the lover he recently broke up with.

When Murray takes Conor along on a buying trip to India, the two men team up with Spence, an Australian anthropologist investigating rumors that a secret homosexual religious cult devoted to the Hindu god Skanda exists in parts of rural India. All three men’s lives are changed after their initiation into the orgiastic mysteries that are celebrated in the temple of Skanda.

**********************

Chapter One:
Dancing in the Ring of Fire

Conor O’Malley was doing his best to dance his cares away when he stepped off the edge of the dance floor and fell flat on his face.

Conor would soon be thirty, an age at which (he kept reminding himself) a man should start acting a little more responsibly. The kind of screw-ups that might, or might not, be excusable in a younger guy would be much less attractive now.

At least he still possessed the physical resilience of youth. Conor had a lean, muscular build, blue eyes, and pale, tawny-freckled skin that flushed rose-gold when he exerted himself. He tended to wear his reddish-blond hair long. Knowing that he had retained a certain boyishness, he had long ago grown a mustache and a goatee, in an attempt to look more mature.

Women found him attractive, which was unfortunate, since he was immune to their charms. Gay men found him extremely appealing, and they could generally count on better luck.

The accident could not have taken place at a worse time. Conor was drifting, moving from one dead-end part-time job to another. The only reason he hadn’t been reduced to living in his car was because he was lucky enough to have an old fuck buddy, Dave, who let him sleep on his couch. Conor put out in exchange for the couch privileges, of course, but Dave was a light sleeper who preferred not to share his bed with anybody overnight.

When he took that false step on the dance floor and twisted his ankle, Conor tried to ignore the pain and swelling. Back at Dave’s apartment a few hours later, he was in agony.

“What the hell am I going to do if it’s broken? I don’t have any insurance.”

“Go to the emergency room,” Dave suggested.

“They’ll still end up billing me.”

“Let me make a few phone calls.”

As Conor continued to self-medicate with beer, Dave made the calls, and was finally able to obtain, through a local gay and lesbian organization, a list of doctors who did a certain amount of pro bono work. Dave took the half-crocked Conor down to the free clinic, where a Dr. Chandani Mohatra diagnosed the injury as a sprain.

“Am I correct in assuming alcohol played a part in this accident?” the doctor asked, as she inspected Conor’s ankle.

“He was hammered, Doc!” Dave said, with obvious glee. This was Dave’s idea of trying to be helpful. Conor and the doctor both ignored him.

“You might say it was a combination of alcohol, a lack of coordination, and horniness,” Conor admitted. “We were at the tea dance at Club Inferno, you see, and I was on the dance floor. It was kind of dark, because they had those stupid strobe lights going. I-uh-turned my head to check out this good-looking number, and I didn’t realize I was so close to the edge of the platform, and I took a tumble.”

Dr. Mohatra smiled. “Did this good-looking gentleman at least come to your assistance, and give you his phone number?”

“No. He was too busy making out with some other guy.”

“Pity. I think there’s a lesson to be learned from this experience.”

“Don’t drink and dance?” Conor guessed.

“Not a bad idea, but I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘Keep both feet planted firmly on the ground while cruising.’”

Despite his pain, Conor had to laugh. He decided Dr. Mohatra was cool.

She gave Conor a small supply of what turned out to be some killer painkillers, warning him not to combine the pills with any more alcohol.

Back at Dave’s place, he took one of the painkillers. The throbbing in his taped-up ankle gradually subsided, replaced by a delightful lightheadedness. He was stoned, all right, good and stoned. Dave sucked him off, and Conor fell asleep on the couch.

In due course he went to see Dr. Mohatra again for a follow-up, as she’d arranged-not at the clinic, but at the doctor’s rather more upscale office downtown. His ankle looked, and felt, almost back to normal.

Dr. Mohatra was a middle-aged woman, who, beneath her professional veneer, was the motherly type. Conor assumed she was a lesbian. Or perhaps she did the pro bono work simply because she was gay-friendly. Conor didn’t ask: as a general rule, he didn’t like to be asked too many personal questions himself. Instinctively, he extended the same courtesy to others.

At first he had assumed that Dr. Mohatra was a Muslim, but he discovered, in the course of their subsequent conversation, that she was a Hindu. That explained the small bronze statue of a multi-armed god, standing on one foot with the other one raised, which was prominently displayed in her office.

“That’s Shiva, isn’t it?” Conor asked.

“Yes, it’s what they call a Nataraja Shiva. He’s dancing in a ring of fire, as you see, and he’s holding that little drum in one hand, and flames in the other.”

“Why is he stomping on that little dude?”

“The dwarf-I suppose it’s politically incorrect to say ‘dwarf,’ nowadays, isn’t it-the little dude, as you put it, symbolizes ignorance and egotism. That’s why Shiva is subduing him.”

“Interesting. Well, I don’t think I want to risk doing any more dancing myself, right at the moment. And I’m afraid my sympathies are entirely with the dwarf.”

“I do want you to take it a little easy on that ankle, for the next few days. If there’s any problem, call me. Otherwise, you’re a reasonably healthy physical specimen, on the whole. What are you planning to do, now? I mean, about eventually getting some kind of medical insurance, in case anything like this should happen in the future?” The one thing Conor had been forthcoming about, of course, had been his current financial straits.

He shrugged. “I’m in between jobs, at the moment. I need to find a real job, a place to live, and start saving some money.”

“What kind of work do you want to do?”

“I don’t care. Anything. And I do mean anything. I can’t afford to be particular, just now.”

Dr. Mohatra looked thoughtful. She had a soft spot for Conor. He was polite, and he took the trouble to pronounce her surname correctly. That was more than she could say about some of her colleagues in the medical profession.

“There’s a possibility I might be able to help you. I know a man named Murray De Souza. He lives in a small town about twenty miles from here. He owns an import business. He deals in things from the Far East-India, mostly, and Thailand, Cambodia, places like that. I bought the statue of Shiva from him, as a matter of fact. That’s what reminded me. He lives in an old farmhouse and he’s renovated the barn so he can use it as a warehouse. What he’s looking for is somebody to work in his shipping department. It involves packing the pieces up and taking them to the shipping depot, in the town. Some of the bigger items have to have shipping crates made especially for them, so the person’s got to be handy with tools. If the person is really handy with tools, then Murray told me he would be willing to throw in free room and board, because there’s always a lot of repair work and maintenance that needs to be done around the house.”

“I know my way around a tool shop. And I may not be much of a carpenter, but I’ve worked in construction.”

“You wouldn’t be bored, doing that kind of work in a small town?”

“I wouldn’t be bored. It’d suit me fine, until something better came along.” He hesitated. “Is this guy gay?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“I’d rather not work for a homophobe, that’s all. Let alone maybe be shacked up with one.”

The doctor smiled. “Let me just say that my friend Murray is the opposite of a homophobe.”

So this prospective employer was some sort of an antique dealer. Conor pictured some fussy queen, who maintained an inventory of overpriced junk. The farmhouse was no doubt filled with ostentatious furniture and works of art. Well, at least Conor would be working with his hands, doing something tangible, from the way it sounded. He’d probably be spending much of his time fending off his employer’s unwelcome advances. The “live-in handyman, room and board,” bit sounded like a euphemism for a houseboy. A hired stud. Well, if he didn’t like the guy’s looks or manner, he could back out; and if he did take the job on a trial basis, but found out he couldn’t take it, he could always give his notice, and leave.

“There’s one other thing, doctor.”

“Yes?”

“How do you think this friend of yours would feel about…hiring an ex-con?”

She didn’t seem at all surprised-much to Conor’s surprise. “We’ll have to ask him,” she said, simply.

So Dr. Mohatra, with predictable efficiency, promised to call Murray De Souza and tell him about Conor; and Conor could expect a call from De Souza in turn. Conor had a long telephone conversation with the man the very next day.

De Souza was direct, but had a way of putting Conor at his ease as they talked. He had a nice voice; he certainly didn’t sound effeminate, although of course you could never be sure. Conor found himself answering the man’s questions and even volunteering information about himself, good and bad, with much less self-consciousness than he’d anticipated.

They decided that Conor would drive over to see De Souza the following morning; De Souza gave him detailed directions, which Conor wrote down.

He called the doctor to thank her. “Mr. De Souza sounded nice on the phone,” Conor admitted.

“He’s not quite what you expected, is he?”

“Frankly, no. I only hope I can live up to whatever expectations he has of me.”

“Don’t be intimidated by him when you meet him face to face, Conor. If he seems a little remote at first, don’t take it personally. He’s-well, let’s just say he’s been though a lot, lately. Good luck tomorrow.”

The following day Conor found himself driving through farm country. He passed through the town, since his destination lay on the far side of it. There wasn’t much out of the ordinary to look at-or to do, he suspected. Well, if he ended up living and working in this backwater and he got bored, he could always make the drive back into the city.

On the road leading outside the town, he passed several working farms, until he came to De Souza’s property-which was obviously a non-working, former farm. A small sign identified the business, along with the caveat by appointment only. The farmhouse, a modest two-story clapboard structure with a porch running the length of its front, was set well back from the road at the end of a driveway. A van and two cars were already parked in front. There were a couple of dilapidated storage sheds. The barn, by contrast, was a striking structure: it looked as though it had recently been given new siding and roofing; and large plate-glass windows, which couldn’t have been part of the original structure, pierced the walls. There was a neglected orchard nearby, with symmetrical rows of apple trees. The fields behind the barn, which must once have been planted with various crops, were now broad expanses of tall grass and weeds.

On the porch, Conor rang the doorbell. De Souza opened the door almost at once; he must have seen him drive up and park.

“Hi! You must be Conor. Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

“Not at all.”

“Come right on in.”

“Thanks, Mr. De Souza.”

“Call me Murray.”

Murray’s handshake was firm and masculine, without making an issue of the fact. Conor hadn’t been prepared for-well, for such a butch number, he had to admit. Murray was perhaps in his late thirties, a brown-haired, brown-eyed, olive-complexioned man, who was laid-back, but exuded self-confidence. He had a nice body, Conor couldn’t help noticing, as he glanced at the way it filled out the thoroughly broken-in jeans and frayed sweatshirt Murray was wearing.

If Murray wasn’t what Conor had expected, neither was the inside of the house. The living room was spacious, but sparsely furnished, and the sofa and armchairs were worn to the point of shabbiness, and looked as though they’d been chosen for comfort rather than style. There was a large fireplace, which showed every sign of being put to good use during the cold winter months. The flat screen television set was of modest proportions, and so were the audio components on one of the several bookshelves, which were well stocked with books. A staircase led to the upper floor.

On the other side of the staircase, through an alcove, was a large home office, which looked as though it had originally been a dining room. There was a littered desk with a laptop computer, a printer, and a fax machine.

The one touch of luxury were some oriental rugs, multicolored, with intricate patterns, spread over the hardwood floors.

What was unusual, and immediately caught Conor’s eye, were the statues-all of them bronzes, like the Shiva in Dr. Mohatra’s office. One, nearly two feet tall, stood on the coffee table in front of the couch. Two more figures, half as tall, were displayed on the mantelpiece. A third small statue was on the desk, where it had been pressed into service as a paperweight. At least three or four more figurines were interspersed among the books on the bookshelves. The statues all seemed to be of various Hindu gods and goddesses, none of whom Conor could identify.

“These are the sort of things you sell, aren’t they?” he asked.

“Yes. I always keep some of them here in the house. I like to rotate the stock, so to speak. Come on, I’ll show you the upstairs.”

At the top of the stairs there was a broad landing, with another statue standing guard on top of another bookcase, leading to a long hallway. Murray paused at the first door, which was open. “My bedroom.” Conor glanced in. The room was spacious, untidy. The most remarkable feature was yet another large statue-an eight-armed Ganesh, the elephant-headed god, set on top of a dresser. As though it weren’t enough that the god was holding a different bronze object in each of his bronze hands, he was pulling double duty as a valet. Murray’s neckties and belts were slung around his neck and his arms; a bracelet dangled from the tip of his coiled trunk; two of his arms held, respectively, a neck chain with a pendant, and a wristwatch.

Conor was so amused by the Ganesh that at first he didn’t see the large framed color photo on the wall nearby, where it could be seen from the bed. It showed Murray and another man, both casually dressed, smiling at the camera. The other man was remarkably good-looking: male-model, porn-actor handsome. Very interesting, Conor thought.

He followed Murray down the hall, with Murray identifying the doors they passed. “My bathroom. Linen closet. These rooms are empty-or rather they’re full of junk. And this would be your room, at the end of the hall,” Murray finally pointed out. “So you’d have some privacy. You’d have your own bathroom.” Murray opened the bathroom’s door, so Conor could see inside. “Here’s the room.”

It was, if anything, larger than Murray’s own bedroom, with windows overlooking the orchard. There was a double bed, chests of drawers, a desk with a chair, an armchair, and a closet. Unlike the rest of the house, this room was tidy; in fact, it looked as though it had been recently spruced up. The robin’s egg blue paint on the walls, for one thing, was new.

“This used to be a guest room,” Murray explained. “We used to have overnight guests from out of town all the time.” Conor wondered if the other half of the “we” had been the other man in the photograph, and what had happened to him. Dr. Mohatra had definitely told him that Murray lived alone.

“It’s really nice,” he said.

“Let’s go back downstairs and talk in the kitchen. I’ve got coffee on.”

It was a big farmhouse kitchen. The stove, refrigerator, and other appliances looked up to date and expensive. The coffee maker, for example, was a gleaming Italian machine and would not have looked out of place in a commercial coffee shop. But the kitchen table was an old wooden one, massive, sturdy, and battered. It probably doubled as a second home office; one end of it was littered with papers and pieces of mail. In an adjoining room were a washer and dryer. A door led to a small back porch, with the barn visible across the yard.

They sat down and had coffee. “I’ll show you the warehouse in a moment. You’ll meet James.” Murray smiled. “He’s a college kid who comes over for a couple of hours most days during the week and on Saturday mornings, to help me with the orders and the bookkeeping. He’s also one of those computer geniuses who can do anything on a computer. He helps me maintain and update my website. We have photos of every item we have for sale posted on the website-multiple views of each item, so the customers can see them from different angles, and in detail. Most of the purchases are made through the website. Customers can reserve pieces they’re thinking about buying, put them on layaway and pay for them in installments, or just buy them outright.” Murray paused. “I’m doing all the talking. You must have some questions.”

“We pretty well covered what I wanted to know when we talked on the phone. What I did want to ask you-”

“Yes?”

“This is kind of awkward for me.”

“Don’t be embarrassed.”

“What I wanted to ask you, I guess, is how you feel about giving me a chance. I told you I did time.”

“And I did exactly what you told me I should do. I called your parole officer last night. We had a good long talk. He said you were a model prisoner. No previous run-ins with the law. Well, nothing serious, anyway. Time off for good behavior. You served out your parole, too-no problems whatsoever. Now you’re done, he told me. The system doesn’t have any further interest in you. A clean start.”

“I promise, if you hire me, I won’t steal anything from you.”

“Conor, I don’t want to deflate your ego, but let’s face it-from what I heard, you were hardly Public Enemy Number One. You’ve seen the house. There isn’t much worth stealing in here. The only money I keep on hand for the business is petty cash. Almost everything is done by electronic transfer of funds. Of course the inventory, in the barn, is worth a lot of money-to me, anyway. But it’s not exactly the kind of thing that could be easily fenced. If I may be immodest for a moment, I’m fairly well known in this business for specializing in certain types of items that are more or less unique. If somebody walked into a pawn shop, or an antique store, with one of my pieces anywhere around these parts, and tried to sell it, the owner would probably say, ‘Hey, that looks like one of Murray De Souza’s pieces!’ And he’d want to see what we call provenance-proof of where it came from. It’s not like you can go up to somebody on the street, open your trench coat, and whisper, ‘Hey, buddy-you wanna buy this bronze statue of Vishnu, cheap?’ Hell, if I thought you could make more sales that way, I’d try it myself.”

Conor couldn’t think of anything to say. He realized that at least he wasn’t having any difficulty meeting, and holding, Murray’s gaze. He decided that he liked Murray’s warm dark eyes.

“If you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll show you the barn.”

They went out the back door of the house. The side of the barn was equipped with a sliding steel door, large enough to drive a van through. There was another, smaller entrance door, also heavy duty steel. Mounted high up on the wall over both doors was a security camera-a high tech one, from the looks of it. Conor had noticed that the farmhouse had keypads, beside both its front and back doors. Murray may have downplayed the security issue, but he was obviously no fool.

The interior of the barn was one vast open space. The windows let in a great deal of light.  Conor instinctively glanced up, and noticed more security cameras, mounted high up in the rafters just below the roof, aimed at the doors, the windows, and the floor.

He and Murray were standing near a small forklift truck and a low wall formed by wooden crates, stacked two or three high, the smaller ones the size of trunks or filing cabinets, the largest ones big enough to contain a refrigerator.

“I have to warn you, if you decide to take this job, this’ll be your first chore. This is my latest shipment from India. I have everything shipped by sea, by freighter, so it can take it a while to get here. The truck delivered all this the day before yesterday, but I haven’t had a chance to do more than check the crates against the cargo invoice, so far. We have to get everything unpacked and checked for damage and inventoried. Then get them photographed and priced and put up on the website. We try to be careful when we open the crates, not just because of what’s inside, but because the crates can usually be recycled. The ones that can’t can always be used for scrap, or for firewood.”

They walked around the wall of crates, and Conor saw that most of the warehouse space was taken up by sturdy, free-standing metal shelves, which were loaded with objects-not just more bronze statues, but porcelain and wooden items, in a wide range of sizes.

“This looks like a museum!” he exclaimed.

Murray laughed. “A museum where everything’s for sale. I have a pretty good turnover rate, but some of these pieces have been gathering dust for years.”

Some of the statues, too large for the shelves, sat on wooden pallets at the ends of the rows of shelves or were lined up against the walls. Conor paused to examine one: a five-foot-tall image of a young male god, elaborately decked out in jewelry, smiling as he held a flute to his lips.

“My God. Look at the size of that.”

“That’s Krishna. He’s often shown playing the flute.”

“It must weigh a ton.”

“Not quite. A little under two hundred pounds, I think.”

“How do you ship something like that?”

“Very, very carefully, as you can imagine. In fact, over here’s what we rather grandiosely call the shipping department. And here’s James.”

Murray introduced Conor to James. The college student looked more like a high schooler. He had his own workstation, an L-shaped desk with a computer, a printer, a telephone with an answering machine, a fax machine, and filing cabinets. Nearby was an area with a long, broad steel table, storage lockers and cabinets, a tool bench-well equipped, Conor was quick to notice-and stacks of flattened shipping cartons in various sizes, with generous supplies of packing materials at hand. There were also some wooden boards, presumably for the construction of the shipping crates.

James was short, compactly built, with pale, delicate features. Conor couldn’t help wondering if Murray was fucking the kid. He immediately dismissed the notion. James had “obsessed with pussy” written all over him.

James, Conor saw, had personalized his workspace. Among the items was a fire engine red Japanese tin robot, holding a laser gun-and wearing a badge that said Security.

“I like your robot,” Conor said.

James was eyeing him just a tad warily which, Conor realized, was understandable given the circumstances.

“Do you think you’re going to take this job?” the kid demanded.

“Murray and I haven’t decided that yet.”

“Well, if you do, there’s only one rule you have to remember: never, ever, touch anything on my desk. Especially my computer. If you can remember that, we’ll get along just fine.” James relaxed a little. “You look big enough to handle the job, at least. I guess you’ll do.”  He turned his attention back to his computer screen.

Murray smiled. “Now that the real boss has laid down the ground rules and given his approval…let’s walk around some more.”

He led Conor down one of the aisles, between the rows of shelves.

“Don’t mind James,” he said, when they were out of the boy’s earshot. “He’s not as much of a hard ass as he comes across sometimes. He knows the business inside and out. Practically runs it, even when I’m here and I think I’m the one in charge. You’re the intruder on his turf, that’s all.”

“I know.” Conor stopped to admire a bronze on a shelf at eye level. “This looks familiar.”

“This is one of my more popular items. It’s a-”

“Don’t tell me. It’s a Nataraja Shiva, isn’t it? Dancing in a ring of fire. And the dwarf symbolizes stupidity.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. I was bluffing. Once you get past Shiva and Buddha, I’ll need a scorecard to tell the players apart. The only reason I know this one is thanks to Dr. Mohatra.”

“That’s right. She bought one like this from me. She’s a sweetheart, isn’t she?” Murray picked up another small statue. “This is Tara. She’s a Buddhist deity.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“The female goddesses are usually depicted with nice big bare breasts. It makes them the perfect décor for some straight guy’s bachelor pad. And this is what they call a Somaskanda Shiva. It’s got Shiva and his wife Parvati, sitting down, with their son, Kartikeya, standing between them.  Or, as I like to call them, Papa Shiva, Mama Shiva, and Baby Shiva. Kartikeya is known by a lot of other names-Kumara, Subramanya, Shanmukha, Murugan, Skanda.”

Conor was impressed by how Murray rattled off the names, the way most guys would list their favorite ball players. “Murugan, for example, just means ‘young man.’ Skanda is a little more interesting. It literally means ‘spurt of semen.’ That’s because, in one version of the myth, Skanda was born when Shiva had, uh, what I guess you’d call a spontaneous ejaculation.”

Conor laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing that doesn’t happen every time we mere mortals-! There’d be a real population explosion.”

Now that their conversation had taken a slightly sexual turn, Conor could feel his gaydar kick in. He was definitely getting a signal from Murray, albeit a subdued one, and he hoped that he was transmitting as well, loud and clear.

“You’ll learn your way around them, eventually.”

“How’d you get interested in all this stuff in the first place?”

“I’ve always been interested in it. Probably because I’m part Indian, myself.” Murray smiled. “Usually, when I tell people that, they ask, ‘What tribe?’ and they expect me to say something like, ‘Cherokee.’ But my grandmother came from Chennai. That’s the big city in the Tamil Nadu region of southeast India. Chennai used to be called Madras, but since Madras is a Portuguese name, they prefer the old, traditional place names now. Just like Bombay is no longer Bombay, it’s Mumbai. Back there-in Chennai, I mean, in Grandma’s day-the family business was steel mills, of all things. Not something I’d particularly be interested in. But maybe it explains why I like the old metal casting techniques. The De Souzas, as I always say, are an old and undistinguished Portuguese family. I suspect my distant ancestors were pirates and slave traders.”

“You’re lucky. I don’t know anything about my ancestors. I was adopted, you see. My birth mother gave me up.”

“I was going to say I’m sorry, but ‘sorry’ sounds sort of inadequate. I come from such a large family that I probably have no idea of what that must’ve been like for you.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. My Mom and Dad-the ones who brought me up-are wonderful. It’s not their fault I fucked up my life.”

The two men fell silent for a moment. Then Murray said, “I have a confession to make.”

“Yeah?”

“Murray is just a family nickname. My legal name is Henry Murugan De Souza.  Grandma liked the name Murugan. When the kids at school found out, they started calling me Harry Murgatroyd. I wanted to kill them. I’m serving you notice that if you ever, ever address me as Harry Murgatroyd, even in jest, I’ll fire your ass on the spot.”

Conor laughed. “I’ll remember that.”

He realized that Murray had deliberately changed the subject, in order to spare him embarrassment.

I should’ve kept my mouth shut, he thought. About being adopted. I don’t want him to feel sorry for me, or to think I’m fishing for sympathy. No, he was just being kind. Thoughtful. He’s a nice guy.

A nice gay guy. I wonder if there’d ever be any chance-? Oh, who the hell do I think I’m kidding?

“I’ve run out of things to say,” Murray admitted. “Do you have any questions?”

“Not right now. We’ve pretty well covered it.”

“We discussed money over the phone. I know it’s not much. If you’re at all interested in the job-well, it’s yours. Including the room and board option, if you want it. Like I said when we talked before-if you’d rather not move in here, then I’d be willing to pay you the higher amount, since you’d be paying rent somewhere else. You could find a room in town easily enough.”

“I really want this job. And I need a place to stay. I’d rather have the room and board.”

“Then we’re agreed.”

“Yes.”

“When would you like to start?”

“I’d like to start right now. Why don’t I start in on those crates?”