Evil Eye Read Online Free PDF

so relatively recently.
    He will tell me to leave. Is that what he told the others? It’s over, please leave. This is my house.
    But that night, when she was preparing to sleep in one of the guest rooms, and not in their bedroom, assuming that Austin didn’t want her anywhere near him, there came Austin storming to the doorway to rebuke her.
    â€œWhat kind of game is this! My wife belongs with me, in my bed.”
    My wife . In his state of supreme disgust Austin seemed to have forgotten Mariana’s name.
    â€œHel-lo! You are Mariana—the new wife?”
    The query was in such heavily accented English, the glamorous white-haired woman’s expression so droll and curious, like that of an animated Kewpie doll, Mariana had a fear that she was being mocked even as the woman thrust out her small-boned beringed hand to shake Mariana’s hand.
    â€œI am Ines Zambranco, and this is my niece Hortensa.”
    â€œYes—hello . . .”
    â€œUnless—we have come early? Is Austin not ready to see us? Hortensa and I can go away somewhere and return a little later of course—if you would wish this.”
    Mariana had hurried to answer the ringing doorbell and was breathless. It was so, Ines Zambranco and her niece had arrived more than an hour early, and Austin was in another part of the house, changing his clothes.
    Mariana stammered, “Of course, come in—please. You’re not at all early . . .”
    â€œBut I think yes, perhaps we are? Hortensa and I, we have come by taxi, you see. From the airport. And it is not possible to time an arrival perfectly, in such circumstances.”
    â€œNo, oh no—of course not. Please . . .”
    Mariana was smiling nervously at both women—too confused to shake hands with Ines’s niece who was standing beside Ines on the front stoop, a head taller than Ines, just slightly behind her, like a servant, burdened with a shoulder bag, a tote bag, and a large roller-suitcase. Mariana was trying not to think They have come early deliberately. They want to unsettle me.
    Mariana looked from Hortensa back to Ines: this time, Mariana nearly fainted.
    The gaily chattering Ines Zambranco was missing an eye. Where her right eye had been there was an empty socket.
    It was a profoundly shocking moment: for you were led to look from the left eye, which was expertly made up, enlarged with eye shadow in shades of mauve and taupe, and outlined in black mascara, to the missing eye, where you saw what appeared to be a shadowy emptiness; your instinct was to look back at once to the left eye, that was gazing at you, alert with consciousness, and with a kind of merriment as well, as if the little white-haired woman with the missing eye, perfumed and elegantly attired as she was, knew perfectly well what you were thinking, what a shock you’d had—though of course, smiling fixedly at her, determined to behave as if nothing were wrong, you would not acknowledge the missing eye.
    Yet—Mariana could not prevent it—she glanced back at the empty socket, which had been made up with cosmetics as well, black mascara outlining the socket’s edge and an arched eyebrow penciled in above, a subtle combination of white, gray, pale brown that matched the other perfectly drawn eyebrow. The effect was both sinister and glamorous—for Ines Zambranco was a dramatic presence, looking much younger than her age of more than sixty, with a white-powdered face like a geisha’s, and suffused with a sort of vivacious merriment like a naughty child.
    Even Ines’s white hair wasn’t merely an older woman’s white hair— it had been cut short and bristling like a rock star’s punk hair and when you looked more closely, you saw that the “white” wasn’t a soft white but a metallic white, obviously dyed.
    And the gold sandals on Ines’s tiny feet: three-inch heels that brought the flamboyant little woman to a precarious