“Forty, sleepy, overweight, comfortable Arridi townsmen, who hadn't fought a real engagment in twenty years or more, wouldn't provide much resistance to thirty yelling, fiendish, bloodthirsty, gold crazed Skandians who would come screaming up from the beach like the hounds of hell.”

“It was him, thirty years too old, twenty pounds too light, & forty watts too dim maybe, but him.”

“And if it took me more than thirty seconds of thinking, he wouldn't let me flounder. He would jump right in and explain. Not like so many others who liked to call themselves teachers.”

“She looked like a mother protecting her child of course, we're talking a half-crazed, bloodthirsty mother.”

“Now off the escalator and into the casino, big crowds still tight around the crap tables. Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they’re real. And, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them – still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last- minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.”

“I relaxed. “I would imagine in your world, girls are much different than here in the real world. I’m sure if you spent some time with the everyday girl, you would find I am not unique.”He grinned at me. “The everyday girl is who writes me fan mail and buys out my concerts. They are the girls who yell my name and run after me like crazed animals. You’ve not even tried to sneak into my room and squirt your perfume on my pillow.”