The Attraction Read Online Free PDF Page A

exit,” Ziggy added.
    Ziggy kept complaining that he couldn’t sleep because of all the bumps they hit in the road, so Bronwyn had them stop the car. She went to the trunk, opened it, and drew out a couple of blankets. She rolled one up for Ziggy’s pillow and threw the other one over him for comfort, although it was a warm day. Ziggy closed his eyes soon after, and they all snickered a little as he snored. Then, suddenly, he let out a bloodcurdling scream, to the point where Griff nearly pulled the car off the road.
    Ziggy glanced around: They all stared at him. “I had a nightmare,” he said.
    4
    The second sign stood about fifty miles farther up the highway among a mass of billboards about trading posts and outlet malls in Tucson. This time, Josh read it aloud as it went by, “Come see the mystery! The great ancient wonder! The Unspeakable, Unknowable Attraction! The Secret of the Ancient Aztecs!”
    Then, he read off the last bit, about mileage and turn-offs to get to the site, “Hey, we’re apparently only two hundred miles from the great mystery of the asshole of the universe.”
    “I love those kinds of places,” Bronwyn said. “When I used to travel with my dad, we’d stop at all of the roadside attractions. Sometimes they were just rattlesnakes in cages. Sometimes they had what looked like babies in jars.”
    “I saw John Dillinger’s dong once,” Griff said.
    “Bull.”
    “I did. It was in this museum in D.C. It was so big they kept it in this long jar. Just floating in this formaldehyde gunk.”
    “Nasty,” Ziggy said. “That’s nasty. You die and then they cut off your dick and stick it in a museum.”
    “Don’t worry, Zig. Yours is safe,” Griff laughed. “There’s no itty-bitty museum.”
    “I want to go see the unspeakable and unknowable attraction,” Bronwyn said, flicking her cigarette out the window. She stretched out, and pressed her bare feet up against the dashboard. Josh looked at her feet, and noticed that they were small and perfect, with toes that didn’t intrude on each other, as his did.
    “What route was it on?”
    “No idea,” Josh said, watching the road, watching her feet.
    That night, in Tucson, they stayed at the cheapest motel they could find (The Roadrunner Inn). Josh sat up to watch the news and then Johnny Carson before drifting off to sleep with his face not far enough away from Ziggy’s smelly feet.
    Nerves were shot by the time they got back on the highway the next morning. Griff insisted on driving, and nobody had gotten a good night’s sleep in the motel because Ziggy was sick and the toilet wouldn’t flush and the smell alone kept them awake, to say nothing of the broken-down air-conditioning and the way the heat had shot up sometime after crossing Texas to New Mexico, and then, at its worst, into Arizona.
    On the road, Ziggy kept having them stop because he got carsick every few miles.
    5
    Bronwyn spotted another billboard for the Unknowable Mystery, and this time it was more explicit.
    YOU’RE NEAR THE MYSTERY! THE UNKNOWABLE, UNSPEAKABLE TERROR OF THE ANCIENT WORLD IS JUST DOWN ROUTE 19 AT THE BRAKEDOWN PALACE AND SUNDRIES. NAVAJO BLANKETS! TURQUOISE! ARROWHEADS! FIREWORKS!
    “I intend to be the unspeakable, unknowable mystery of the modern world,” Bronwyn said, and Josh watched as she closed her eyes gently. He thought she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
    Josh knew he shouldn’t shut his eyes and lean against Bronwyn and fall asleep. But he couldn’t help it.
    6
    He dreamed that he and Bronwyn were in a deep green forest. The trees towered over them, like a cathedral of nature. The fern beneath their feet was like a bed. Bronwyn began to undress, stepping out of her panties, finally, and he began to feel her all over. She gyrated against his touch, and soon his clothes had fallen away, and Bronwyn went on her hands and knees. She glanced up at him, smiling. He took her there, on the fern, on a soft mossy floor. He felt the intense