“Right!” Slim and I said in unison.

Rusty laughed pretty hard about that. And we joined in. Then we resumed our journey toward Janks Field.

After a while, Rusty drew out in front by a stride or two, turned his head to look back at us, and said, “But seriously, maybe we will catch her sunbathing.”

“Are you nuts?” Slim asked.

“In the nude!”

“Oh, you’d like that.”

“You bet.”

Scowling, I shook my head. “All you’d see is a little pile of ashes. And the first breeze that comes along…”

Slim started to sing like Peter, Paul and Mary, “The vammmmpire, my friend, is blowwwwing in the wind…… ”

“And even if she didn’t bum to a crisp at the first touch of sunlight,” I said, “she’d sure as hell know better than to put on her vampire show with a suntan.”

“Good point,” Slim said. “She’s gotta look pale.”

“She could cover her tan with makeup,” Rusty explained.

“That’s a point,” Slim agreed. “She probably uses a ton of makeup, anyway, to give her a convincing palor of undeadness. So why not a tan underneath it?”

“An all-over tan,” Rusty said, leering.

“We’ve gotta find you a girl,” Slim said.

I suddenly wondered how Slim would look sunbathing in the nude, stretched out on her back with her hands folded under her head, her eyes shut, her skin slick and golden all the way down. It excited me to imagine her that way, but it made me feel guilty, too.

To push it out of my mind, I said, “How about Valeria?”

“There ya go,” Slim said. “I hear she’s stunning.”

“I’ll take her,” Rusty said.

“You haven’t even seen her yet,” I pointed out.

“I don’t care.”

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Slim told him. “Valeria might turn out to be a pug-ugly, hideous hag.”