Free The Attraction by Douglas Clegg

and kept saying, “I don’t think this is right. I’m only doing it because of peer pressure,” and he felt guilty about smoking dope and wondered if the cops were going to descend and arrest them all.
    “I got a joke,” Griff said. “Here’s how it goes.”
    “You’re awful with jokes!” Bronwyn shouted.
    “He’s great at telling jokes. I love his jokes,” Tammy said. “Tell it. Tell a good one, Griff.”
    “Okay. It is really, really good.”
    “So you say,” Josh said.
    “Okay. This guy goes into a restaurant. And the waitress, who is this hot little number with big tits and this great ass, says, ‘What can I get you?’ And the guy says, ‘How about a quickie?’ And the waitress says, ‘You don’t mean that. You mean—’ ”
    Josh laughed, clapping his hands. “You’re telling it all wrong. You’re gonna give away the punchline.”
    Griff laughed. “Maybe I remembered it wrong.”
    “Okay, it’s a stupid joke. It’s really stupid,” Josh said.
    “Just let him tell it,” Tammy said.
    “No, I probably ruined it. You tell it,” Griff said to Josh.
    “Okay. But it’s bad. Remember. It’s bad and it’s stupid. Okay. A guy walks into a restaurant. He sits down. The waitress comes over and says, ‘What’re you having?’ He says, ‘How about a quickie?’ And the waitress slaps him. Then she says, ‘So tell me what you want, and none of this fresh stuff.’ And he says, ‘Well, I really want a quickie. I’ve never had one.’ She slaps him again and stomps off. And the guy across from him, he’s been watching this and he leans over and says to the guy, ‘It’s pronounced quiche.’ ”
    No one laughed.
    “I told you it was bad.”
    “Man, you cannot tell a joke!” Griff laughed. “Man, you just can’t.” And he started butchering yet another joke.
    Sometime around midnight, after they’d laughed at several nearly nonexistent jokes, and the girls had gotten them singing “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” and “Kumbaya,” and then, “Let It Be,” Ziggy passed out on the blanket in front of the fire, and Bronwyn began talking about her plans for the future, while Griff and Tammy went off into the darkness in their too-often mating ritual.
    Josh, less stoned than the others, was the first to hear the noise from the car.

P ART T HREE
    THE HUNTED

Chapter Ten
    1
    “What was that?”
    “What?” Bronwyn asked sleepily, her eyes barely fluttering open.
    “That noise.”
    “Probably a coyote. Don’t worry,” she said. “They don’t get close to the fire.”
    “That was not a coyote,” Josh said.
    The noise got louder.
    “That’s metal.”
    She sat up on her elbows. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s something kinky that Griff and Tammy are doing.”
    “That was the scrape of metal, Bron. It came from over there.” Josh pointed toward the Pimpmobile. He noticed just how far away they were from the road. To get to the car would take more than a minute. For some reason, this bothered him. It wasn’t exactly a quarter mile away, but the car was far enough off in the darkness that it bothered him.
    As if he had never been passed out at all, Ziggy sat straight up so fast that it freaked Josh out.
    “It’s that little bastard.”
    “What?”
    “Ziggy, don’t be silly,” Bronwyn said. “You’re high. We’re all a little stoned.”
    “Maybe,” Josh said, weighing this as a possibility. He sniffed the air. It had a curious mix of the dusty road and mesquite to it. But there was something else. Something that reminded him of a church smell. He wasn’t sure what that was, but he assumed it was in his head. All of it, in his head.
    “I didn’t hear anything,” Bronwyn said. But she said it as if she were trying to deny something even to herself. “I mean, I heard something. Just not something that seemed strange. I bet it’s because those two are going at it. They’re probably breaking the seats. They’re going at it in your car.”
    “I don’t