"Prince Charming, that's who I am," McVries said.  His hand went to the scar on his cheek and touched it.
  "Now all I need is a Sleeping Beauty.  I could awake her with a biggy sloppy soul kiss and the two of us would
 ride away into the sunset.  At least as far as the nearest Holiday Inn."
	"Walk," Olson said listlessly.
	"Huh?"
	"Walk into the sunset."
	"Walk into the sunset, okay," McVries said.  "True love either way.  Do you believe in true love, Hank dear?"
	"I believe in a good screw," Olson said, and Art Baker burst out laughing.  
	"I believe in true love," Garraty said, and then felt sorry he had said it.  It sounded naive.
	"You want to know why I don't?"  Olson said.  He looked up at Garraty and grinned a scary, furtive grin. 
 "Ask Fenster.  Ask Zuck.  They know."
	"That's a hell of an attitude," Pearson said.  He had come out of the dark from someplace and was walking
 with them again.  Pearson was limping, not badly, but very obviously limping.
	"No, it's not," McVries said, and then, after a moment, added cryptically: 
"Nobody loves a deader."
	"Edgar Allan Poe did," Baker said.  "I did a report on him in school and it said that he had tendencies that were
 ne-necro--"
	"Necrophiliac," Garraty said.
	"Yeah, that's right."
	"What's that?"  Pearson asked.
	"It means you got an urge to sleep with a dead woman," Baker said.  "Or a dead man, if you're a woman."
	"Or if you're a fruit," McVries put in.
	"How the hell did we get on this?"  Olson croaked.  "Just how in the hell did we get on the subject of screwing
 dead people?  It's fucking repulsive."  
	"Why not?"  A deep, somber voice said.  It was Abraham, 2.  He was tall and disjointed-looking; he walked in
a perpetual shamble.  "I think we all might take a moment or two to stop and think about whatever kind of sex life
there may  be in the next world."
	"I get Marilyn Monroe," McVries said.  "You can have Eleanor Roosevelt, Abe old buddy."
	Abraham gave him the finger.  Up ahead, one of the soldiers droned out a warning.
	"Just a second now.  Just one motherfucking second here."  Olson spoke slowly, as if he wrestled with a 
tremendous problem in expression.  "You're all of the subject.  All off."
	"The Transcendental Quality of Love, a lecture by the noted philosopher and Ethiopian jug-rammer Henry
Olson," McVries said.  "Author of A Peach Is Not a Peach without a Pit and other works of--"
	"Wait!"  Olson cried out.  His voice was as shrill as broken glass.  "You wait just one goddam second!  Love
is a put-on!  It's nothing!  One big fat el zilcho!  You got it?"
	No one replied.  Garraty looked out ahead of him, where the dark charcoal hills met the star-punched darkness
of the sky.  He wondered if he couldn't feel the first faint twinges of a charley horse in the arch of his left foot.
  I want to sit down, he thought irritably.  Damn it all, I want to sit down.
	"Love is a fake!"  Olson was blaring.  "There are three great truths in the world and they are a good meal, a
good screw, and a good shit, and that's all!  And when you get like Fenter and Zuck--"
	"Shut up," a bored voice said, and Garraty knew it was Stebbins.  But when he looked back, Stebbins was only
 looking at the road and walking along near the left-hand edge.