“Amos, Amos, what’s wrong…..someone help me…he must be choking!” Jim rushed to the booth by the window to help the boy. Gathered around the booth in small groups or just by themselves, people were staring with horror and a morbid fascination at the young boy. They weren’t sure but he seemed to be suffering from a violent reaction or some kind of medical incident.

  Jim pushed his way to the bench seat and slid in by Amos who was sitting close to the window. He grabbed the boy by the shoulders and rotated his body so he could inspect the boy head on.

  Amos’ eyes were closed and he was having trouble breathing with air coming in and out of him in gasps and wheezing coughs. The older man grabbed him roughly between the cheeks with his hand and managed to squeeze open his mouth just enough to look for any obstructions.

  “Here, use this, he’s having an attack.” Jim looked over his shoulder at the woman who was holding an asthma puffer in her hand as she approached the table. When he didn’t react the woman insisted “his airway’s all blocked, this’ll open im’ up”.

  Jim couldn’t remember if Amos had ever mentioned him having asthma before but he figured, what was there to lose? The boy was could be choking to death and he had no other options. He took the puffer in his hand and forced it upright into Amos’ mouth and depressed the tube allowing the medication to be released with a gentle, gushing hiss.

  Within seconds Amos’s throat had started to open and his breathing began to slow down and stabilize. When he managed to open his eyes they were both bloodshot and very sensitive to light.

  “What happened to ya, I was just gone a few minutes, did you eat anything funny?”

  The boy struggled to speak but finally managed after swallowing a few times and drinking from a glass of water on the table at Jim’s insistence.

  “I was fine until this old woman came up and offered me a cookie, as soon as I touched it she opened a bottle and blew some smoke from it in my face and then I couldn’t breathe. I feel really funny now. Like I have a bad flu. I feel real dizzy and I can’t see all that well either.”

  His voice was soft and scratchy and he spoke with a wheezing quality that was very troubling to Jim.

  The people that had crowded around began to drift away now that Amos appeared to be ok. While their concerns had abated Jim was still quite worried. Amos looked far from normal to him and this sudden change and the crazy story about an old woman was extremely odd to him.

  “Where is she now, she couldn’t have gotten far?” Amos looked up and around at the curious faces that remained in the restaurant. “She’s not here but…. She came from there, look, those are the cookies that she had offered me.”

  Jim walked over to the booth and looked at the plate of cookies on the tray.

  “Those are ours, there’s nothin’ wrong with em’ that I know of.”

  He turned to look at the waitress who was coming towards the booth.

  “The old lady and her daughter maybe, I don’t really know to be sure. She ordered them, said she had a celebration. As soon as I brought em’ she asked to use my tray to hand them out. She started with your boy I guess and then they both cleared right outa here.”

  The waitress started to clear the table. “They didn’t touch their coffee at all either but at least they didn’t stiff me and they left me a good tip too.” When she had finished she started back towards the counter” I’m sorry about your son, I hope he’s gonna be ok.”

  “I’m sure he will be, we are just going to leave now, we’ve got no appetite to eat anymore”. Jim went back to the table and after a quick moment he helped the boy up and they made their way out to the truck.

  “What’s going to happen to that boy, what did you do to him mama?”

  “It’s something from the old country. It moves slowly but it leaves no doubt that the vittima has been cursed.”

  “What will the curse do to him?” Alessia was trying to hide her concern. The boy was younger than her Silvio and he looked like a good boy, a gentle boy even. Why did the Famigli have to hate him so much? How could such a boy be a threat to them?

  Over the years Alessia had grown weary of the petty squabbles and grudges that plagued her community. This was the exact opposite of her mother who thrived on these conflicts and seemed to come alive with the worst ones.

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  Her daughter was much more of a gentle being despite her roots and she secretly liked to watched the movies and TV shows that portrayed happy families and strong knit communities working together.

  Her family was strong and her community was fierce in many ways but they were all so misguided and downright miserable in her opinion. She often hoped that if her husband and sons were still alive, that they were in a place far far away and with people that they could love and trust.

  “It’s a good curse, a strong curse and it will do what all good curses shall do.”

  “What’s that mama?” Alessia didn’t like how small her voice was but she had to ask and she knew her mother wanted to tell her.”

  “Ahhh…it takes the soul. It’s what a curse needs to grow and live. It needs the soul.”

  They drove the rest of the way back in silence. Alessia had no need for any relief from the heat now, she had gone cold with since her mother last spoke. She knew her mother was not exaggerating and she had seen what had come out of that old bottle.

  He mother still clutched the empty bottle in her hand. It would be a trophy now, a prized possession that would always remind her of this great day. The old woman was relaxed and seemed almost serene as the old Mercedes wound its way through the narrow streets of North Boston. It was almost as if she now regarded the neighborhood as a newly conquered land and she was the queen .

  What did it matter if the subjects of this tired land were not yet aware of what she had done? They would know soon enough. They would all know and they would never forget.

  “Are you feeling any better?” The concern was genuine and Amos could tell just by how often Jim was taking his eyes of the road to check on him just how worried his older friend was.

  “I don’t know. I can breathe a lot better but I still feel dizzy. I’m really tired actually. I just want to sleep, I’m not hungry at all now, I just need to sleep.”

  “Well, we will be home soon enough and you can sleep then. You’ve had a really stressful couple'a days now and it’s catchin’ up to ya. A good long rest will do ya a world of good”.

  Amos didn’t answer and just let his head loll against the side window of the truck. His gaze was vacant and unstaring out the window at the parked cars and buildings that streamed by, one after another.

  Jim worried away silently, lips pursed together and his weathered knuckled hands at ten and two on the wheel. Driving gave him something to think about but the traffic was light enough that his mind kept playing the bizarre scenario at the restaurant over and over again in his mind.

  He couldn’t begin to understand what had happened. None of it made any sense at all.

  Why would an old woman drop forty dollars in a restaurant for food she didn’t touch only to flee within minutes of arriving? Perhaps she messed up with a candle or some small firework for her celebration?

  As Jim considered this possibility he liked it more and more. Yes, this could be it. Some kind of malfunction when she lit the stupid thing and the smoke bothered Amos and the poor old lady got scared and fled the restaurant. She did pay for everything so she wasn’t a bad person then was she?

  As the miles passed along Jim tried to convince himself of the likelihood of his explanation. It would have to do he thought, he just hoped that he was right.

  When they got back to his shop Jim had to help Amos out of his truck and into the back of his building. The boy did not want anything to eat still and after being forced to drink a bit of water he went straight to bed on the couch where Alanah had been sleeping.

  Jim took his blood pressure and checked his temperature and his other vital signs. Everything was normal. His pulse, the sound of his lungs, his tongue wasn’t swollen.

  Jim got only find fault with his eyes which were hard to evaluate as Amos was fighting to keep them closed. What Jim was able to see was deeply concerning.

  The boy’s eyes were still quite bloodshot and the pupils were significantly dilated.

  Jim gave up on his failed birthday decoration theory and thought long and hard about the possibility of some kind of drug being used on Amos.

  “Dan, it’s Jim here from the Surplus. I’ve got an unusual request for ya. Can you tell me what kind of drug can be smoked that would cause dilated eyes, shortness of breath, no appetite and tiredness?”

  Jim, spoke on the phone for another five minutes with his supplier who provided him first aid gear and over the shelf medicines. This man was a wealth of knowledge and he had seen a great many things first hand as an Emergency Medical Responder before he had retired with this sales job.

  He thought it seemed likely that the old woman had somehow contaminated Amos with smoke from a methamphetamine. It would explain all of his symptoms except for the tiredness.

  “That bit doesn’t make much sense, that young boy should have been climbing the walls to be honest Jim but who knows, maybe he just reacts differently.”

  Dan had told him before promising to drop off a urine test kit the next day that would look for a number of common narcotics. “We’ll know soon enough what it was, don’t worry I am sure he will sleep it off just fine.”

  For the rest of the night Jim sat in the kitchen next to the open window smoking his pipe. It had been years since he had last smoked and the staleness of his pipe tobacco took some getting used to.

  It was still soothing for Jim as he took another pull with the orange dusk of the evening sky acting as a backdrop for the glowing ember in the bowl of his pipe. He exhaled while unconsciously handling his pipe with the same practiced motions from countless evenings before.

  This boy and the girl, how could he not include the girl? They had caused so much disruption to his life in such a short amount of time. None of it was ill intentioned, selfish or mean spirited and a lot of the time they were a joy to be around but still…

  He could not deny that trouble seemed to follow these two wherever they landed and at any moment, they could be facing a lot more than they could handle.

  The old man was at a loss at what to do. First things first, the boy needed to get well and then he would get them settled somewhere. Somewhere far from Boston if they wanted and then they would have a chance to start fresh. He was sure the boy would wake up feeling much better tomorrow, he just needed to sleep off whatever it was and then he would bounce back just fine.