2.05 Evil Eye

The cop in the blue windbreaker crouched down before me and said, "You're awfully calm."

I shrugged.

Calm waters may run deep. As for me, a torrent raging just below the surface, and it was all I could do to hold myself together and keep from breaking out into a sweat.

The guy with the video camera moved slightly to the right so that he could get a better shot of me.

"You've got a nice place here," Windbreaker said.

"Thanks."

"You decorate it yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Where do you buy stuff like this?" He held up a coffee grinder I'd got a few years earlier at an antique fair in Beirut.

"Here and there," I said. "I like to travel. I pick things up wherever I go. I got that in Lebanon. Those baskets are from Thailand and Malaysia. That one's from Bali."

Windbreaker asked what all the blue and white circles hanging in the entry were.

"They're talismans from Lebanon called Nazar," I explained. "They are supposed to protect you from the Ayin Hasad."

"The what?"

"Ayin Hasad, the maliciously envious stare of strangers, the Evil Eye. It's a Middle Eastern thing. My mother brought them when she visited. She insisted I put them up. I'm not a superstitious person, but my mother can be persistent."

"Do they work?"

"Not today."

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.