Alex Austin's Blog - Posts Tagged "love"
The Seeds of Nakamura Reality
In February, 2016, The Permanent Press will be publishing my novel Nakamura Reality. All novels emerge from experience, and I'd like to share what inspired me to write the novel.
The closest friend of my son Chris is his identical twin Alex, but during Chris’s first years of elementary school in Los Angeles, a Japanese boy named Hideki ran a close second. Hideki’s sudden return to Japan confounded Chris, whose first response was to demand that we make him Japanese. Fifteen years later, Chris journeyed to Japan to live and work, separated for the first time from his inseparable twin.
In Tokyo he immersed himself in Japanese life, including joining a judo club, competing in numerous tournaments and earning a black belt. He also met and married—in a traditional Japanese ceremony—a Japanese woman named Masumi. When they returned to the U.S. with their son, they lived in our home for several years. Their stay was my introduction to many aspects of Japanese culture which included a polite reticence on Masumi’s part that conveyed much more than she actually said. Out of my son’s fascination with Japan and my efforts to decode Masumi’s intentions, a story was forming, though still unclear, like a morning swimmer coming out of the fog.
When my sons were somewhat younger than the twins Hitoshi and Takumi of Nakamura Reality, I took them to a beach in the aftermath of a Pacific storm. Though the waves were huge, I gave into their pleas and let them go into the surf and immediately regretted my decision. In their search for catchable waves, they reached a point where the currents seemed to take control, pulling them out to sea. I shouted, ran into the surf, and started a hopeless swim but was immediately knocked down by a breaker. Getting to my feet to try again I glimpsed them atop a wave. The sea was carrying them back to shore. Meeting them in the surf, there were no pleas to paddle out again for they too had been scared. They hadn’t felt guilty, though I did.
The memory of that day’s terror and the lingering guilt I felt would weave its way through a cultural experience to inspire and shape Nakamura Reality.
Will You Read This Novel?
To followers of my blog who review on Goodreads or elsewhere, I'd like to make available PDFs of the typeset novel. If interested, contact me at alaust70@aol.com
The following is from a letter Permanent Press is sending out to reviewers and agents.
"Many of you have seen earlier electronic versions of Alex Austin’s Nakamura Reality months ago, and so this update. Our pub date is mid-February 2016 for this astounding first novel. It has so many different currents travelling throughout body of this book. It weaves between realism ad surrealism, resentment by a world famous Japanese novelist (and a member of the Yakuza), for an American who married his daughter. It’s about ingenious scheming, cultural clashes. Yet—above all—it is also A FIRST RATE THRILLER that we will be nominating for all the major mystery awards as well as for the major literary prizes."
Nakamura Reality is a different kind of novel and tough to classify. I'm looking forward to opinions from both reviewers and readers.
Revision 286
The following is the first chapter from my new novel Moonlight Tandoori. I've revised it 286 times. So what do you think?
Chapter 1
Only the Moonlight Tandoori’s broad front window kept hell at bay. On the street, the temperature hadn’t budged from one hundred ten. Clouds of steam rose from overheated radiators and scattered before the searing desert winds that bent the queen palms and tore through the jacarandas. Ventura Boulevard, the San Fernando Valley’s great artery, lay clotted and arrhythmic, and the side streets led nowhere.
As Philip considered the dismal view, a figure approached the restaurant from the strip mall’s parking lot. Tall and rangy, he walked up to the Moonlight’s window and stared in. He had a ragged reddish beard and his long hair fell in wild ringlets. His shirt was torn and dirty, and his pants hung loosely, exposing several inches of flat belly. Philip met the man’s dark troubled eyes, but the eyes weren’t looking back at Philip. He didn’t appear to be looking at anything, and though his lips moved feverishly, he spoke only to himself. He was surely one of the innumerable homeless who wandered the boulevard, perhaps a veteran, though not old enough for Vietnam or young enough for the post 9/11 conflicts. The first Iraqi war? He needed help, but wouldn’t get it, perhaps didn’t want it. Philip smiled sympathetically and dug in his pocket for change, but before he could step outside and offer the alms, the man abruptly turned and moved on.
Philip lowered his eyes from the bleak panorama. He took his knife and fork from his plate and set them on the placemat. Behind him the restaurant’s kitchen door swooshed open. Someone shouted, “Fahmida!” Pots banged. Gas hissed.
“Finished?” asked Niya, who had stolen up behind Philip and now stood at his side, gazing down at him.
“Finished? Yes.”
Niya snatched up his plate, glided backwards toward the dome-shaped kitchen door and nudged it open with her hip. The warm, cumin-scented kitchen air escaped.
“Niya, wait. There’s something I want to ...” Philip’s voice trailed off as Niya vanished behind the door. Philip watched it close and muttered, “... to ask you.” He gazed at the lusterless gray entry and then across the room’s austere walls.
On that first night he walked into the Moonlight, he might have backed right out if he was looking for décor and atmosphere, but he only sought a chair on which to collapse. Something solid in his belly. But he was not so desperate that he chose it at random. He could have driven another mile down the boulevard to one of the restaurants he frequented, but at a stoplight he saw the restaurant’s name and beneath that the eatery’s description: Indian-Pakistani Specialties. Perhaps the scents drifted into the car from the Moonlight’s kitchen, but it seemed more of an unlocked memory, which in turn released the image of a bright hand ladling meat and vegetables onto his plate. A soft voice. The skin that was not then brown.
That night four years ago was less than a week after the bypass, when a twenty-yard turn took his breath and with any quick movement his head spun. His skin was gray and loose around the jaw, his eyes sunken, the green irises faded. Time would restore his leading man looks, but it was not just the physical damage. The heart attack had struck him at forty-five years old, two years into the breakthrough television role that had lifted him from journeyman actor to star in its current meaning: the public recognized him and he made fair money. The event and subsequent operation had sucked out what the French termed élan, and there was no better word to describe what he lost. It was not just that he was damaged goods, but he felt like damaged goods. And so after spending his life avoiding the memories, he saw the sign and was drawn into the Moonlight as a kite lost in fog is drawn back to patient hands. Without his saying a word, the young woman knew he had been in death’s sights. She may have been nineteen or twenty at the time, but without asking what ailment had brought him so low, she took command. She told him that she was going to choose his dinner. She knew what he needed. Healthy, he might have put up an argument, but her every choice was right, and in the weeks that followed, the food restored him and lifted his spirits.
There was no other explanation for her behavior—unless one shifted into the mystical realm— other than she was, as his father would have put it, a kind soul.
On the boulevard an ambulance screamed. Philip twisted to follow the vehicle through traffic and the package on his lap slipped to the floor. He pushed back his chair and gathered up the photo and gift that he planned to give Niya, a signed copy of Kenneth Grahame’s famous children’s book, The Wind in the Willows, a first printing with the original cloth cover. His book, his father’s book.
The kitchen door swung open. A busboy emerged.
Other than Philip’s only one of the Moonlight’s tables was occupied. At a window booth a man sat with a woman dressed in hijab and salwar kameez, similar to Niya’s. The woman’s face was as round as a pie plate, her eyes black, steady and implacable. Her husband was right out of Raymond Chandler—Mr. Brown: brown shirt, brown tie, brown pants and brown shoes. Mr. Brown patted his thick hair, straightened his spine, smiled as if checking his teeth in a mirror and looked inquiringly at Philip, as if to say, “Is he that actor?” Or perhaps that wasn’t what he was wondering.
Outside the restaurant someone bellowed.
Through the window, as if on a wide-screen television, a short man with pursed lips, upturned nose and a body shaped like a teapot, wailed at the heavens as he pushed a junk-filled shopping cart across the asphalt of the strip mall parking lot. The cart wobbled, its broken front wheel announcing each foot of progress.
Clunk, clunk, clunk ...
Like the bearded man, part of the landscape now, like the giant donut or the Hollywood sign.
Philip pressed two fingers of his right hand to his opposite wrist. From outside the restaurant came a clanging. Perhaps lodged in a pothole, the teapot-shaped man kicked his cart as if it were an exhausted horse. Poor hopeless—
“Mr. Raine, you are going to be a happy man.” Niya carried Philip’s entrée across the dining room. She set down the plate and turned her palms up, fingers inward, letting her hands hover above the table. Henna tattoos covered her hands from wrist to nail. Delicate elaborate patterns composed of curvy lines, flowers and whorls so dense that the design might never come off. But it did, for the patterns changed regularly and some nights her skin was bare. Did he really remember the other radiant colors and the hands’ warmth against his cheek?
Today he’d ask her.
“So, of all the Pakistani restaurants in the world ...” said Niya, who knew as much as Philip knew himself about the classic movies and would effortlessly drop a line from one into their conversation.
Philip sliced the chop. “Traffic.” He smiled up at Niya, set the knife down and tasted the meat. “Wow ...”
“Good, yes?”
“Delicious.”
“There’s always traffic. You should be in here every afternoon.”
“It’s a SigAlert to the second power. Terrible accident on the Ventura Freeway. Nothing’s moving. I can’t get to ... the theater. My play,” said Philip.
“You won the part?”
“I got a call back.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It means that I’m still in the running,” but it was no lock.
It wasn’t television or film, but it was a lead role. His series, Precinct X, on which he played the formidable Detective Leon, had been cancelled two years ago. Philip was hungry. The part as described by the production’s director was meaty, challenging. Unlike the usual equity-waver squalor, the Calabasas Theater was a newly built, state-of-the-art, five hundred-seat space. A premier, the play would run a minimum of eight weeks at Actors Equity rates. Several name actors were in the running. He certainly had a shot, a good shot. But if he failed to get that role, he feared he’d be getting in line for Viagra and hip replacement commercials, minor roles in straight-to-video zombie flicks.
“Your play,” said Niya, drawing Philip back from a grim thought, “what’s it called?”
“Gun Play.“”
Niya smiled slyly. “A play on words then.”
“Yes. A few words in the first act, but by the third they go off.”
“Chekhov, right?”
“We never did finish that conversation.”
He thought Niya was about to ask another question when her face turned from him. Philip followed her gaze to the window where the tall bearded man had appeared again. His mouth opened as if he were screaming, but if so it was as a scream in a vacuum, for Philip heard nothing. The man’s head shivered as he stepped back from the window, turned and vanished behind a parked SUV. Philip looked up at Niya. Her eyes grew distant and her lips tightened, but it passed so quickly that Philip doubted her expression had changed at all. Or perhaps it was Philip himself who glimpsed the future and altered her composure.
Her focus returned. “Please, Mr. Raine. Your dinner will get cold.”
“Is everything—”
She smiled. “Please, Mr. Raine.”
Philip drew his knife across the lamb and lifted the morsel to his mouth. He glanced up at Niya who smiled confidently at him, her tall slender frame now as composed as a model’s, her dark lips glistening, a faint glow on the dime-sized mark off the center of her forehead. Not a Bindi, Mr. Raine. That’s Hindu. I’m Muslim. Only a scar.
Philip put the lamb in his mouth, chewed rapidly and swallowed.
Niya nodded and then hovered nearby as she busied herself arranging napkins and silverware, gauging the salts and peppers. Observing her, Philip happily finished his lamb.
“Is our food almost ready?” asked Mr. Brown.
“Oh yes. Almost.” Niya smiled at the unhappy couple and then turned to Philip. Her eyes met his for a moment. Her lips moved but emitted no words. Her eyes drifted away. Something was on her mind. She pivoted toward the entrance as if someone had entered, but the door had not opened.
If he took his blood pressure now, a little heart with a zigzag line would light up on the monitor. Say it. Say it.
She turned back toward him. “Mr. Raine if I—”
But be didn’t let her finish. If he didn’t ask now, the question would die inside him. “Will you go with me to the Getty?”
The planet stopped turning. This simple, almost neutral proposal had been on his mind for months. He feared not just rejection, but the dissolution of their friendship.
“We are dying of starvation,” said Mr. Brown loudly.
“I’ll check on your dinners right now,” Niya said to the couple.
Philip gazed after Niya, gone without a yes or no.
It wasn’t the Getty, it was the Getty’s painting .
A landscape by Brughel the Elder that depicted the end of winter: the snow melting on the hills and rooftops, the first buds showing on the trees, the village and its people preparing for spring. The small canvas hung on the third-floor of the new Getty, where you traveled by a futuristic tram to go back in time. For Philip, the Brughel captured the promise of renewal. A few times each month, he’d visit the painting, stand a few feet away, immerse himself in that scene and forget about that hooded fellow with the scythe. He wanted Niya to see that painting. He wanted to stand at her side and take in that scene. That done, he would tell her everything.
A moment later Niya returned with the couple’s orders. While they inspected their plates, Niya turned to Philip.
“Oh, Mr. Raine—”
“Wait.” From his lap Philip drew up the manila envelope and gift-wrapped box. He undid the envelope’s copper clasp, slipped out a black-and-white headshot and handed it to Niya.
“The photo you asked for.”
Niya read the bold black writing at the bottom of the photo. “I ask only to spend eternity at your table eating chickpea and vegetable soup—Philip.” She sighed. “This is very nice of you, Mr. Raine, the best actor of all time.” She turned the photo over, scanned his resume and nodded. “Mr. Raine, if I--”
“Yes?”
“I’ll frame it and put it in my bedroom.” She turned toward the kitchen.
“This too.” Philip handed her the wrapped book.
Inscribed in blue marker on the gilt-colored wrapping was Under a weeping willow tree, the world lived up to its promise. Niya tapped on world, the echo of her spoken word.
“May I open it?” she asked, face glowing.
“Of course.”
Niya unwrapped the book. She held it at arm’s length and gazed at the cover of the four animals in the marsh, Pan hovering above them. She tapped her finger on each animal and said, “Toad, Mole, Badger and, my favorite: Ratty.” She opened the cover and then glanced at Philip. “It’s the same one, isn’t it? The one you—”
“On Saturday, maybe? The weather is supposed to cool off. It’s that painting I told you about...”
She looked at him like a physician with an unwelcome prognosis, clutched the presents to her breast and vanished into the kitchen.
She had been gone for what seemed ten minutes when Mr. Brown said, “Can anyone help us?” He stood up, threw his napkin on his chair and marched to the kitchen door. “Where is that girl?” he demanded and stormed back to his table.
The fuss was about the absence of a sauce. A moment later, Niya came out of the kitchen with a tray of sauces and presented them to the couple. Turning from the grim pair, she met Philip’s gaze, rolled her eyes and strolled to his table.
Behind Niya, the kitchen door rested open. Niya’s Uncle Farhan, the restaurant’s owner, stood in the doorway studying Philip and his niece.
“Niya?”
“Oh, yes.” The girl walked quickly to the kitchen door where the uncle lingered. Philip smiled at him, but got nothing back. The arched door closed.
In a moment Niya returned carrying a pitcher of iced tea. She stood before Philip’s table, the pitcher’s lip poised above his empty glass. Philip said, “It’s not a date or anything like that.”
Philip didn’t notice that her left hand was behind her until she held the photo and wrapped gift out to him.
“What’s the matter?” asked Philip.
Niya shifted her stance so that the curve of her hip shaped the tunic. “My uncle says I must not take your gifts and I can’t go with you anywhere.”
“Does he think it’s a night club or something? It’s a museum.”
“Nowhere, Mr. Raine.”
“What’s wrong with those two?” asked Mrs. Brown loudly,
The heat rose in Philip’s face. “Mind your own fucking—” He stopped. He saw that the woman stared out the window at the man with the shopping cart, who now tussled with the tall man. Sweat dripped down the men’s dirt-streaked faces.
Niya placed the photo and gift on Philip’s table. Her eyes swelled.
“Niya, what’s—”
Her glistening eyes escaped Philip’s as she turned away.
He set down his utensils. Two chops remained but he didn’t feel like eating. Had her uncle seen them together that day in the park?
The window rattled loudly.
The two grappling men had fallen against the window. The bigger man stepped back and pulled the other with him. He lifted the smaller, twisted him about and threw him against the glass.
Philip’s iced tea clinked.
He glanced at Niya’s hennaed fingers wrapped around the glass pitcher and then followed her eyes to the scene outside the restaurant. The short man leaned on the restaurant’s window, frozen in front of the affixed menu as if choosing his dinner. Chest heaving, he glanced over his shoulder at his assailant, who lurched toward him, arm extended and holding a pistol.
Philip gripped Niya’s wrist. “Get down!”
Niya resisted, Only her arm fell. The pitcher smashed against the table with an eruption of tea and glass.
Pop. Pop.
The restaurant window webbed. Glass fell in sheets. Something stung Philip’s shoulder.
“Niya, get on the floor!” Philip’s arm encircled her waist and drew her toward him. But Niya remained erect, as if set to do battle and now holding the jagged pitcher in front of her chest as if a weapon.
“Niya!” He tried to rise, to enfold her, but his body refused to follow his command, as if the signals had been jammed. Cover her. Get against her--
Two more shots. A hot wind swept the restaurant. Niya’s hip sunk against Philip’s shoulder, throwing her weight upon him. As she slid down, Philip grabbed her and held her tight as they tumbled to the floor.
When the shooting stopped, Niya lay in his arms, her face pressed to his chest. Her scarf missing, her hair unfurled, soaked red from the bullet that had struck her forehead just above her left eye. Above Philip, the busboy stared down, blinking, muttering prayers.
Niya whispered, “Detective Raine ...”
“Niya, it’s—”
“Detective Raine, if I go with you to the Getty, will you go with me to—” She took a shallow breath and then murmured, “Shangri-La?”
Her left eye swam in blood, her right eye was a brown quarter moon. Philip nodded. “That’s a deal, Niya. Shangri-La.”
“But I don’t know ... the address.”
“We’ll find it.”
“Where two are one...”
Soon, a half-dozen restaurant employees circled them. Hands shaking, Niya’s uncle dropped beside Philip, clamped his arms around his niece and tugged without reward. Only the beat of her heart through the bones of her back told Philip that Niya wasn’t dead. If he let her go, she’d be gone.
Through the shattered window the Santa Anas blew violently, throwing up napkins and menus and sugar packets so that the entire room seemed awhirl as if in a dust devil. Another set of hands joined Farhan. Above Philip, a sea of open mouths cursed and pleaded with him to let her go. But Philip held to the quiet little body that wanted his company in Shangri-La.
Chapter 1
Only the Moonlight Tandoori’s broad front window kept hell at bay. On the street, the temperature hadn’t budged from one hundred ten. Clouds of steam rose from overheated radiators and scattered before the searing desert winds that bent the queen palms and tore through the jacarandas. Ventura Boulevard, the San Fernando Valley’s great artery, lay clotted and arrhythmic, and the side streets led nowhere.
As Philip considered the dismal view, a figure approached the restaurant from the strip mall’s parking lot. Tall and rangy, he walked up to the Moonlight’s window and stared in. He had a ragged reddish beard and his long hair fell in wild ringlets. His shirt was torn and dirty, and his pants hung loosely, exposing several inches of flat belly. Philip met the man’s dark troubled eyes, but the eyes weren’t looking back at Philip. He didn’t appear to be looking at anything, and though his lips moved feverishly, he spoke only to himself. He was surely one of the innumerable homeless who wandered the boulevard, perhaps a veteran, though not old enough for Vietnam or young enough for the post 9/11 conflicts. The first Iraqi war? He needed help, but wouldn’t get it, perhaps didn’t want it. Philip smiled sympathetically and dug in his pocket for change, but before he could step outside and offer the alms, the man abruptly turned and moved on.
Philip lowered his eyes from the bleak panorama. He took his knife and fork from his plate and set them on the placemat. Behind him the restaurant’s kitchen door swooshed open. Someone shouted, “Fahmida!” Pots banged. Gas hissed.
“Finished?” asked Niya, who had stolen up behind Philip and now stood at his side, gazing down at him.
“Finished? Yes.”
Niya snatched up his plate, glided backwards toward the dome-shaped kitchen door and nudged it open with her hip. The warm, cumin-scented kitchen air escaped.
“Niya, wait. There’s something I want to ...” Philip’s voice trailed off as Niya vanished behind the door. Philip watched it close and muttered, “... to ask you.” He gazed at the lusterless gray entry and then across the room’s austere walls.
On that first night he walked into the Moonlight, he might have backed right out if he was looking for décor and atmosphere, but he only sought a chair on which to collapse. Something solid in his belly. But he was not so desperate that he chose it at random. He could have driven another mile down the boulevard to one of the restaurants he frequented, but at a stoplight he saw the restaurant’s name and beneath that the eatery’s description: Indian-Pakistani Specialties. Perhaps the scents drifted into the car from the Moonlight’s kitchen, but it seemed more of an unlocked memory, which in turn released the image of a bright hand ladling meat and vegetables onto his plate. A soft voice. The skin that was not then brown.
That night four years ago was less than a week after the bypass, when a twenty-yard turn took his breath and with any quick movement his head spun. His skin was gray and loose around the jaw, his eyes sunken, the green irises faded. Time would restore his leading man looks, but it was not just the physical damage. The heart attack had struck him at forty-five years old, two years into the breakthrough television role that had lifted him from journeyman actor to star in its current meaning: the public recognized him and he made fair money. The event and subsequent operation had sucked out what the French termed élan, and there was no better word to describe what he lost. It was not just that he was damaged goods, but he felt like damaged goods. And so after spending his life avoiding the memories, he saw the sign and was drawn into the Moonlight as a kite lost in fog is drawn back to patient hands. Without his saying a word, the young woman knew he had been in death’s sights. She may have been nineteen or twenty at the time, but without asking what ailment had brought him so low, she took command. She told him that she was going to choose his dinner. She knew what he needed. Healthy, he might have put up an argument, but her every choice was right, and in the weeks that followed, the food restored him and lifted his spirits.
There was no other explanation for her behavior—unless one shifted into the mystical realm— other than she was, as his father would have put it, a kind soul.
On the boulevard an ambulance screamed. Philip twisted to follow the vehicle through traffic and the package on his lap slipped to the floor. He pushed back his chair and gathered up the photo and gift that he planned to give Niya, a signed copy of Kenneth Grahame’s famous children’s book, The Wind in the Willows, a first printing with the original cloth cover. His book, his father’s book.
The kitchen door swung open. A busboy emerged.
Other than Philip’s only one of the Moonlight’s tables was occupied. At a window booth a man sat with a woman dressed in hijab and salwar kameez, similar to Niya’s. The woman’s face was as round as a pie plate, her eyes black, steady and implacable. Her husband was right out of Raymond Chandler—Mr. Brown: brown shirt, brown tie, brown pants and brown shoes. Mr. Brown patted his thick hair, straightened his spine, smiled as if checking his teeth in a mirror and looked inquiringly at Philip, as if to say, “Is he that actor?” Or perhaps that wasn’t what he was wondering.
Outside the restaurant someone bellowed.
Through the window, as if on a wide-screen television, a short man with pursed lips, upturned nose and a body shaped like a teapot, wailed at the heavens as he pushed a junk-filled shopping cart across the asphalt of the strip mall parking lot. The cart wobbled, its broken front wheel announcing each foot of progress.
Clunk, clunk, clunk ...
Like the bearded man, part of the landscape now, like the giant donut or the Hollywood sign.
Philip pressed two fingers of his right hand to his opposite wrist. From outside the restaurant came a clanging. Perhaps lodged in a pothole, the teapot-shaped man kicked his cart as if it were an exhausted horse. Poor hopeless—
“Mr. Raine, you are going to be a happy man.” Niya carried Philip’s entrée across the dining room. She set down the plate and turned her palms up, fingers inward, letting her hands hover above the table. Henna tattoos covered her hands from wrist to nail. Delicate elaborate patterns composed of curvy lines, flowers and whorls so dense that the design might never come off. But it did, for the patterns changed regularly and some nights her skin was bare. Did he really remember the other radiant colors and the hands’ warmth against his cheek?
Today he’d ask her.
“So, of all the Pakistani restaurants in the world ...” said Niya, who knew as much as Philip knew himself about the classic movies and would effortlessly drop a line from one into their conversation.
Philip sliced the chop. “Traffic.” He smiled up at Niya, set the knife down and tasted the meat. “Wow ...”
“Good, yes?”
“Delicious.”
“There’s always traffic. You should be in here every afternoon.”
“It’s a SigAlert to the second power. Terrible accident on the Ventura Freeway. Nothing’s moving. I can’t get to ... the theater. My play,” said Philip.
“You won the part?”
“I got a call back.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“It means that I’m still in the running,” but it was no lock.
It wasn’t television or film, but it was a lead role. His series, Precinct X, on which he played the formidable Detective Leon, had been cancelled two years ago. Philip was hungry. The part as described by the production’s director was meaty, challenging. Unlike the usual equity-waver squalor, the Calabasas Theater was a newly built, state-of-the-art, five hundred-seat space. A premier, the play would run a minimum of eight weeks at Actors Equity rates. Several name actors were in the running. He certainly had a shot, a good shot. But if he failed to get that role, he feared he’d be getting in line for Viagra and hip replacement commercials, minor roles in straight-to-video zombie flicks.
“Your play,” said Niya, drawing Philip back from a grim thought, “what’s it called?”
“Gun Play.“”
Niya smiled slyly. “A play on words then.”
“Yes. A few words in the first act, but by the third they go off.”
“Chekhov, right?”
“We never did finish that conversation.”
He thought Niya was about to ask another question when her face turned from him. Philip followed her gaze to the window where the tall bearded man had appeared again. His mouth opened as if he were screaming, but if so it was as a scream in a vacuum, for Philip heard nothing. The man’s head shivered as he stepped back from the window, turned and vanished behind a parked SUV. Philip looked up at Niya. Her eyes grew distant and her lips tightened, but it passed so quickly that Philip doubted her expression had changed at all. Or perhaps it was Philip himself who glimpsed the future and altered her composure.
Her focus returned. “Please, Mr. Raine. Your dinner will get cold.”
“Is everything—”
She smiled. “Please, Mr. Raine.”
Philip drew his knife across the lamb and lifted the morsel to his mouth. He glanced up at Niya who smiled confidently at him, her tall slender frame now as composed as a model’s, her dark lips glistening, a faint glow on the dime-sized mark off the center of her forehead. Not a Bindi, Mr. Raine. That’s Hindu. I’m Muslim. Only a scar.
Philip put the lamb in his mouth, chewed rapidly and swallowed.
Niya nodded and then hovered nearby as she busied herself arranging napkins and silverware, gauging the salts and peppers. Observing her, Philip happily finished his lamb.
“Is our food almost ready?” asked Mr. Brown.
“Oh yes. Almost.” Niya smiled at the unhappy couple and then turned to Philip. Her eyes met his for a moment. Her lips moved but emitted no words. Her eyes drifted away. Something was on her mind. She pivoted toward the entrance as if someone had entered, but the door had not opened.
If he took his blood pressure now, a little heart with a zigzag line would light up on the monitor. Say it. Say it.
She turned back toward him. “Mr. Raine if I—”
But be didn’t let her finish. If he didn’t ask now, the question would die inside him. “Will you go with me to the Getty?”
The planet stopped turning. This simple, almost neutral proposal had been on his mind for months. He feared not just rejection, but the dissolution of their friendship.
“We are dying of starvation,” said Mr. Brown loudly.
“I’ll check on your dinners right now,” Niya said to the couple.
Philip gazed after Niya, gone without a yes or no.
It wasn’t the Getty, it was the Getty’s painting .
A landscape by Brughel the Elder that depicted the end of winter: the snow melting on the hills and rooftops, the first buds showing on the trees, the village and its people preparing for spring. The small canvas hung on the third-floor of the new Getty, where you traveled by a futuristic tram to go back in time. For Philip, the Brughel captured the promise of renewal. A few times each month, he’d visit the painting, stand a few feet away, immerse himself in that scene and forget about that hooded fellow with the scythe. He wanted Niya to see that painting. He wanted to stand at her side and take in that scene. That done, he would tell her everything.
A moment later Niya returned with the couple’s orders. While they inspected their plates, Niya turned to Philip.
“Oh, Mr. Raine—”
“Wait.” From his lap Philip drew up the manila envelope and gift-wrapped box. He undid the envelope’s copper clasp, slipped out a black-and-white headshot and handed it to Niya.
“The photo you asked for.”
Niya read the bold black writing at the bottom of the photo. “I ask only to spend eternity at your table eating chickpea and vegetable soup—Philip.” She sighed. “This is very nice of you, Mr. Raine, the best actor of all time.” She turned the photo over, scanned his resume and nodded. “Mr. Raine, if I--”
“Yes?”
“I’ll frame it and put it in my bedroom.” She turned toward the kitchen.
“This too.” Philip handed her the wrapped book.
Inscribed in blue marker on the gilt-colored wrapping was Under a weeping willow tree, the world lived up to its promise. Niya tapped on world, the echo of her spoken word.
“May I open it?” she asked, face glowing.
“Of course.”
Niya unwrapped the book. She held it at arm’s length and gazed at the cover of the four animals in the marsh, Pan hovering above them. She tapped her finger on each animal and said, “Toad, Mole, Badger and, my favorite: Ratty.” She opened the cover and then glanced at Philip. “It’s the same one, isn’t it? The one you—”
“On Saturday, maybe? The weather is supposed to cool off. It’s that painting I told you about...”
She looked at him like a physician with an unwelcome prognosis, clutched the presents to her breast and vanished into the kitchen.
She had been gone for what seemed ten minutes when Mr. Brown said, “Can anyone help us?” He stood up, threw his napkin on his chair and marched to the kitchen door. “Where is that girl?” he demanded and stormed back to his table.
The fuss was about the absence of a sauce. A moment later, Niya came out of the kitchen with a tray of sauces and presented them to the couple. Turning from the grim pair, she met Philip’s gaze, rolled her eyes and strolled to his table.
Behind Niya, the kitchen door rested open. Niya’s Uncle Farhan, the restaurant’s owner, stood in the doorway studying Philip and his niece.
“Niya?”
“Oh, yes.” The girl walked quickly to the kitchen door where the uncle lingered. Philip smiled at him, but got nothing back. The arched door closed.
In a moment Niya returned carrying a pitcher of iced tea. She stood before Philip’s table, the pitcher’s lip poised above his empty glass. Philip said, “It’s not a date or anything like that.”
Philip didn’t notice that her left hand was behind her until she held the photo and wrapped gift out to him.
“What’s the matter?” asked Philip.
Niya shifted her stance so that the curve of her hip shaped the tunic. “My uncle says I must not take your gifts and I can’t go with you anywhere.”
“Does he think it’s a night club or something? It’s a museum.”
“Nowhere, Mr. Raine.”
“What’s wrong with those two?” asked Mrs. Brown loudly,
The heat rose in Philip’s face. “Mind your own fucking—” He stopped. He saw that the woman stared out the window at the man with the shopping cart, who now tussled with the tall man. Sweat dripped down the men’s dirt-streaked faces.
Niya placed the photo and gift on Philip’s table. Her eyes swelled.
“Niya, what’s—”
Her glistening eyes escaped Philip’s as she turned away.
He set down his utensils. Two chops remained but he didn’t feel like eating. Had her uncle seen them together that day in the park?
The window rattled loudly.
The two grappling men had fallen against the window. The bigger man stepped back and pulled the other with him. He lifted the smaller, twisted him about and threw him against the glass.
Philip’s iced tea clinked.
He glanced at Niya’s hennaed fingers wrapped around the glass pitcher and then followed her eyes to the scene outside the restaurant. The short man leaned on the restaurant’s window, frozen in front of the affixed menu as if choosing his dinner. Chest heaving, he glanced over his shoulder at his assailant, who lurched toward him, arm extended and holding a pistol.
Philip gripped Niya’s wrist. “Get down!”
Niya resisted, Only her arm fell. The pitcher smashed against the table with an eruption of tea and glass.
Pop. Pop.
The restaurant window webbed. Glass fell in sheets. Something stung Philip’s shoulder.
“Niya, get on the floor!” Philip’s arm encircled her waist and drew her toward him. But Niya remained erect, as if set to do battle and now holding the jagged pitcher in front of her chest as if a weapon.
“Niya!” He tried to rise, to enfold her, but his body refused to follow his command, as if the signals had been jammed. Cover her. Get against her--
Two more shots. A hot wind swept the restaurant. Niya’s hip sunk against Philip’s shoulder, throwing her weight upon him. As she slid down, Philip grabbed her and held her tight as they tumbled to the floor.
When the shooting stopped, Niya lay in his arms, her face pressed to his chest. Her scarf missing, her hair unfurled, soaked red from the bullet that had struck her forehead just above her left eye. Above Philip, the busboy stared down, blinking, muttering prayers.
Niya whispered, “Detective Raine ...”
“Niya, it’s—”
“Detective Raine, if I go with you to the Getty, will you go with me to—” She took a shallow breath and then murmured, “Shangri-La?”
Her left eye swam in blood, her right eye was a brown quarter moon. Philip nodded. “That’s a deal, Niya. Shangri-La.”
“But I don’t know ... the address.”
“We’ll find it.”
“Where two are one...”
Soon, a half-dozen restaurant employees circled them. Hands shaking, Niya’s uncle dropped beside Philip, clamped his arms around his niece and tugged without reward. Only the beat of her heart through the bones of her back told Philip that Niya wasn’t dead. If he let her go, she’d be gone.
Through the shattered window the Santa Anas blew violently, throwing up napkins and menus and sugar packets so that the entire room seemed awhirl as if in a dust devil. Another set of hands joined Farhan. Above Philip, a sea of open mouths cursed and pleaded with him to let her go. But Philip held to the quiet little body that wanted his company in Shangri-La.
More Moonlight
Moonlight Tandoori: The Battle (to get this story right) Continues.
Chapter 2
Through the hospital room’s window, Philip watched the two white grazing beasts, the slender branches of the hilltop willow stroking their wide backs. Four years ago, in recovery from his operation, he gazed in amazement at the hill and the animals. It was almost identical to the background of a photo taken of his mother as a young woman in Pakistan. As a child, he'd brought the photo to bed with him. The hill, the two Brahman cattle, his mother in the foreground. He could almost see her standing there. The glass shuddered under a sudden gust, and a dust cloud shrouded the scene. When the dust settled, the girl was gone. Nadia— or Niya?
If I go with you to the Getty, will you go with me to Shangri-La?
Niya must have seen the old movie Lost Horizon. Shangri-La was the film’s fabled Himalayan valley, a kind of Eden, cut off from the outside world and almost impossible to get to and just as difficult to escape. But once there, why leave?
Philip winced and turned from the hospital’s view to the doctor’s intense dark eyes behind silver framed lenses, her gaze on the tweezers that probed his shoulder under a bright beam.
After a cursory examination in the emergency room—full from the overflow of other facilities still dealing with the victims of the horrendous 101 crash—he’d been taken to a room on the third floor, where the doctor gave in to Philip’s request to sit up during the procedure. The center had its fair share of vistas. If he had a view, he wanted to see it. He shifted against the pillow.
“Are you doing all right? Not feeling faint?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said as a drop of blood oozed from his sliced skin, which under the intense light seemed to him little different from Niya’s.
The doctor had removed eight slivers of glass from Philip’s neck and shoulder. On the metal tray, the fragments formed a pointed leaf, similar to one of Niya’s henna designs.
A nurse entered the room carrying Philip’s shirt, which he’d left in emergency in one of the hospital’s large plastic bags. She set the bag alongside the bed’s rail, exposing the dark spots of his and Niya’s married blood. Somewhere down the maze of corridors, the surgeons were asking for clamps and sponges. By now, they’d be deep into Niya’s flesh ... He looked again for the girl on the hill.
He saw only the animals.
Cattle perhaps—at this distance, Philip was uncertain. They fed on a small carpet of yellow grass, for in mid-summer the hill was largely bare and dry. If the creatures moved quickly, dust would cloud about their hooves, but they seemed content in their golden patch, rubbing up against each other like drunken friends steadying each other on the way home. At the top of the hill the reddish tile roof of a Spanish-style home, largely hidden by saguaro, scrub oak and mesh fencing, served as a pedestal for the fierce setting sun.
The physician lifted the tweezers whose tips held another gem. “I think we’ve just about got it all ... umm.”
Not quite all. As the tweezers again prodded his flesh, he focused on the hill and the animals. The low sun sent the beasts’ shadows to the base of the slope and into the street that separated the hill from the medical facility.
“Do you know what those animals are, Dr. ...” Philip glanced at her ID badge. “Dr. Farnooz?”
Her tweezers probing Philip’s shoulder, the doctor either didn’t hear Philip’s question or chose to ignore it.
Four years ago he’d first seen the hills under a midday sun. The mounds were bleached white, so the cattle—if cattle they were—seemed at first a piece of the earth itself. But then the undifferentiated white wavered, evolved into a shape, then two. He’d asked several of the nurses and orderlies to identify the animals, but even when he pointed, few saw them, and none offered a name.
On the day of his discharge, hoping for a closer look, he’d had his daughter drive him by the hill, a huge parcel of land enclosed by a high metal fence with every gate locked, but the animals were not there...
“… and I think that’s it.” The doctor dropped the last sliver on the steel tray. “I’ll get someone to clean it out and cover it.” She scribbled on a pad, ripped off the sheet and handed it to a nurse waiting nearby. “You’ll need an antibiotic and some painkillers.”
“Do you know anything about her—the young woman, Niya?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. She’s still in surgery.”
Philip heard a distant buzzing, which grew louder as he looked at the walls, ceiling and floor as if to find the sound’s source.
She shook the tray as if panning for gold or reading tea leaves. Philip followed her eyes as she glanced up at Philip’s chest, her eyes tracing the thin white line that ran vertically down the center.
“Heart surgery?”
“Bypass.”
“You’re young for that. How long ago did you have it?”
“Four years this September. Right here at this hospital.”
“Well. You’re set for life.”
Philip nodded. After Philip’s operation, his thoracic surgeon assured him the same thing. Initially he felt elated but upon consideration wary. An open path through the woods, but behind the trees something treaded. The nurse cleaned the wounds. Just outside the door, someone prayed to Mother Mary. Shadows overran the hill.
“I liked your show. It was quite entertaining,” said Farnooz.
“Oh, thank you.”
“Except the final episode. Too many loose ends.”
“Yeah, I hear that a lot.”
“Perhaps the series will return?”
Philip held up crossed fingers. The doctor mimicked his gesture, smiled and turned.
“Do you have any idea how long Niya will be in surgery?”
But Doctor Farnooz had moved on.
Philip returned to the emergency room to sign papers and then used the restroom. Taking his shirt out of the plastic bag, he shook the garment a couple of times, ran water over the bloodied neck and dried it under the hand drier, leaving it damp, wrinkled and only a little less discolored. He wet his hair and combed it with his fingers. Tamped down his eyebrows. There were some gray hairs in them, same as his head. No complaints about his skin. Still smooth. Shiny. Leading man looks. Some thought he used a tanning machine. Of course the town was filled with men with leading man looks; few led, many followed.
At the entrance to the third floor waiting room, a neighborhood lay crushed and smoldering on the television. “Drone Strike Misses Target,” read the caption. Beneath the TV, a handful of children played with chipped blocks, scarred reptiles and disheveled dolls.
“I do not know,” said a familiar voice.
Deeper in the room, Niya’s uncle Farhan, his employees and several family members were gathered around two uniformed police officers and another man in plainclothes whom Philip took for a detective. There were no shy actors, but there were impervious audiences.
Philip approached Niya’s uncle and clasped his shoulder. “How is she?”
“Fuck off.” Farhan tossed off Philip’s hand.
Philip stepped back. He shouldn’t have touched the man. Some proscription against ... how can one know? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Please leave, sir.”
“I just wanted to know how Niya was.”
“That is none of your business.”
Philip nodded and turned toward the exit, which seemed to waver as if made of paper. His shoulders tightened. Farhan’s anger was not justified. Philip faced the man. “I tried to save her.”
“Oh, you shielded my niece? You even tried?”
“I didn’t—there wasn’t—”
“Good enough to serve you—but not save. Oh, we understand. Thank you. Now get out.” Farhan slammed his fist into Philip’s chest. Right into the spot where the wires held his sternum together before the bone knit.
Philip grabbed Farhan’s wrist. Farhan stepped away, jerking violently to break the hold.
“I tried,” said Philip, squeezing hard enough to feel the man’s bone.
Farhan whipped Philip sideways. “Get out!”
“Whoa, whoa,” said one of the uniformed officers, clamping Philip’s wrist, to create a tripod of limbs. “Calm down, both of you.”
Lips shining as if gathering saliva to spit, Farhan said, “You have nothing to do with her, understand? She is promised. We know what you want.”
A hand caught Philip’s shoulder, turning him. It was the plainclothes officer. “Hi, I’m Detective Elbon. I’d like to speak with you, Mr. Raine. Outside.” Elbon, who was tall and blond, guided Philip into the hall.
“Mr. Jahangiri is pretty shaken,” said Elbon. “She’s his niece, you know. He’s responsible for her.”
“She’s a friend, for Christ’s sake!”
“Imagine if it were your daughter or niece. Would you want a stranger inserting himself?”
“Inserting? I just asked—” What was he getting at?
“They see it as an intrusion,” said Elbon.
“Fine, I get it. It’s nonsense, but I get it.”
“So you like Indian food? Eat there every night?” asked Elbon.
No, not every night. Thursdays. In four years, he had only missed his Thursday dinner with Niya when a production held him late, or he took a part for the run of a play, or his daughter called for the cavalry. The previous Thursday was one of those nights. A new neighbor, Ms. Vergust, was about to split open one of the Vergust children’s heads.
Philip made it simple. “I like Indian food, but not every night. Usually I’m there Thursday.”
“Today’s Tuesday.”
“I was coming from an audition in Studio City and headed to another one in Calabasas, but there was a traffic jam. I decided to wait it out at the Moonlight.”
“It was convenient,” said Elbon.
“Right.” That was the truth. Why did he feel like it wasn’t?
“You like the girl though? She’s a good waitress?”
Elbon was staring. Provide the simple, easily digested answer. The detective didn’t need family history. Who did? “She’s efficient. Pleasant.”
Elbon glanced away. “Nothing intimate?”
Philip waited until the detective met his eyes. “No. Nothing intimate.”
Elbon pointed to Philip’s neckline, where the bandage was showing.
“Some glass,” said Philip. “Niya was pouring from a pitcher ... nothing really.” And compared to what they had done inside his chest, the smash and grab, or to Niya’s wound, it was nothing.
Philip and the policeman watched a gurney squeak by.
“So tell me how it happened,” said Elbon. “The shooting.”
“I’ve already—”
“Please.”
As Philip spoke, Elbon took notes.
“So Teapot—the short and stout one—was the target and Charlie the shooter?” Elbon asked when Philip had finished his account.
“I said he looked like Charlie Manson.”
“Until we establish his name, let’s go with Charlie. It’s convenient.”
“Yes, Charlie was the shooter, and Teapot—“
“Let’s call him Danny DeVito.”
“He didn’t look like Danny DeVito.”
“It’s convenient. I’m big on mnemonics. So what were Charlie and Danny wearing?”
That was easy. An actor’s specialty. “Rags. Layered rags. Street people.”
“Ethnicity?”
“The tall one—Charlie—who knows under all that hair? His beard was a little red. Irish maybe. The shorter one—Danny— was dark skinned.”
“African American? Hispanic?”
“No. Mideast maybe. Indian, Pakistani.”
“Pakistani. Like the restaurant.”
Philip shrugged. “It’s a guess.”
Elbon regarded him for a moment, lingering almost sensuously over Philip’s face. “Her uncle thinks you could have done more, but these split second things ... well, I wouldn’t worry ... Thanks for your help,” said the detective, his study finished.
Ten minutes later, disregarding the detective’s advice, Philip returned to the waiting room where Farhan and the other men held something in their fists.
“Farhan, if I’ve said or done anything—”
“We don’t want you here,” said one of the restaurant’s servers, stepping forward and opening his fingers. A small flat oval lay in his palm. Did the man fetch the stone in case Philip returned, or was it just his pet rock?
Didn’t they see he was sincere? He had no bias. How could he? “I’m trying to apologize.”
“Don’t bother.”
“You understand that she could have died if I hadn’t—”
“If Allah hadn’t,” interrupted another server, opening his fist to reveal a stone. “We don’t need white heroes.”
“Saving little colored girls,” added someone at Philip’s back.
Philip twisted, face burning. Can’t you see?
“This is for family only. Please leave and forget about my niece.”
“Have you no respect?” asked another.
“You cannot be in her room,” said Farhan, stepping forward, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. “Please leave.”
They were the ones who were being unfair to him. Philip spread his arms. “This, this is a waiting room. I can wait, can’t I?”
“Shut up!” said the first man who had spoken, and who now gripped his stone tightly, showing its edge. The talk died. In the silent interval, the room seemed to expand and grow darker. In a moment, they’d all disappear.
But he hadn’t stood ...“I’m sorry,” Philip muttered, uncurling his fingers. On the back of his right hand was a large bruise as if he’d pounded his antagonist. But likely he’d only brushed it against something hard earlier. The statins and aspirin thinned his blood. His hand bruised as easily as a ripe peach. He turned from the phalanx of men to the exit. The fight had been lost before it started.
****************************
As Philip pulled up in front of his home, a raised ranch house that had seen better days, his cell phone beeped. He turned off the engine, and the car’s interior soon sweltered. He stood outside in the unrelenting heat, insects gathering in the light of his phone, and called for his messages. One was from Lilia, the assistant director of the play, wanting to know why he hadn’t shown. A second message was from the pharmacy informing him that his prescription was ready. The third message was empty but for static. The caller’s ID was unavailable.
His anger and disappointment with Farhan had not diminished. He leaned against the car and gazed at the heavens, hoping that the stars might draw out some of the poison, a starry poultice. It didn’t work, but poison notwithstanding , he was drained.
Before the front door was half open, Cyclops twisted between his ankles “Hey, girl.” He picked up the tawny cat, let it cling to his shoulder and scratched the slender neck. “Hungry, huh? Sorry. A long bad night.” He kissed the cat on the forehead, above where the skin had virtually closed above the lost left eye, and then, though he had never done it previously, put his lips to the sealed wound.
He carried Cyclops to the kitchen, set her down and opened a can of cat food. He watched her eat from her bowl. He found her a year ago. She clung to a tree branch ten feet above the ground. Dried blood matted her face. Likely a coyote had taken a bite out of her. Too weak to resist, the cat let Philip climb to her and lift her from the branch. He took her home, cleaned and attended to her wound the best he could. The next day he took her to a veterinarian. The vet sutured and dressed her wound. He could do nothing for the lost eye. He provided Philip with the phone number and address of the SPCA, but Philip responded that he would take the cat home, try to find its owner and failing would keep her himself.
So he now had a one-eyed cat.
Cyclops finished her meal, purred contentedly and excused herself for her evening pursuits.
Philip showered, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and poured out his pills: the statin, the alpha-blocker, the antidepressant. He considered a Xanax, the five remaining tablets looking forlorn at the bottom of the orange container, but he recapped the bottle. He turned on the news. Ten minutes of bloodshed was enough. He then turned the television off, and then read twenty pages of a Simenon novel, but resisting its dark twists, set it down.
Normally, the person he shared the house with, Sonny, would be watching the talk shows, Conan or Fallon or whomever. But Sonny was out of town for a few weeks. If Sonny were here, Philip would have put on his headphones, listened to Bach for an hour before going to bed. But in his empty house, he put on the stereo and let the music fill the room. He picked up the book again and waited for the music to transport him. Bach’s intricacy and depth, the nests within nests, never failed to move him. But tonight it was as if hands clamped his ears. Perhaps the uncle was right. Maybe he could have done more. If it were his daughter or grandson, would he have found a way to take the bullet? Philip was imposing himself on a family tragedy. His relationship with Niya was no more than friendship, and he had never imagined it going beyond that. But from the outside it would be the same old suspicion: a middle-aged man lusting after the hot exotic babe. Was asking her to accompany him to a museum even outside the bounds? She couldn’t care for him. What did his bar buddy once say? They don’t even see you.
But then what was that question about?
Why would she want to go to Shangra-La with him? For an instant, like some underground stream that had found its way to the surface, he remembered love—pop song love, popcorn love. He thought he had spent his love on Yvonne. Blonde Yvonne, fair as a white peach. He thought he’d emptied his pockets on Yvonne. Were there a few coins left?
Why does the lamb love Mary so? Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know.
After twenty minutes, he turned the music down and called the hospital.
Niya was out of surgery and in a recovery room.
He didn’t have to feel his pulse to know his heart had not slowed to its normal resting beat. Though the air-conditioned temperature in the house was comfortable, when he slipped into bed he turned on his heating pad, a habit that he had acquired since his operation. He placed the pad between his thighs, quickly feeling the warmth against the shells of the stolen arteries. He could sleep if he could just keep his mind on Tarzan.
Edgar Rice Burroughs had built the house, which Philip had bought when the Precinct X money was overflowing his bank account. In the backyard was a reproduction of Tarzan’s treehouse, from which a rope hung. Philip kept the blinds retracted on his bedroom window to watch the thick rope. When the Santa Anas blew, the rope swung in a wild wide arc, and would slip where it was tied around the high limb to make a high-pitched sound like an animal’s screech. Philip would watch the rope like a silver chain dangled by a hypnotist, superimposing on the pendulum one of the many Hollywood Tarzans swinging on his vine from tree to tree.
Johnny Weissmuller or Buster Crabbe or Christopher Lambert gliding through Malibu jungle: Philip’s soporific. This night, Alexander Skarsgard, the new Tarzan (the ape man never got dated), effortlessly held his swinging vine. Skarsgard rose toward a sturdy limb, but he didn’t quite reach it, so he drifted in ever diminishing arcs. Coming to a dead stop perpendicular to the ground, Skarsgard twisted, faster and faster until he spun like a top. Skarsgard dropped it, but the line continued to swing as if someone were pushing it. Philip drew off his covers, slipped from bed and stepped over to the window. Standing by the rope was a tall man in a cowboy hat. The man grabbed the rope and swung it, setting it in motion again.
Was this one of the homeless, come down from his shelter in the hills? They sometimes passed over the property on their way to the boulevard. The man appeared to be gazing at Philip’s window, at Philip. Or was it someone sent by Farhan? A warning to stay away from his niece? There was another possibility. At the height of Precinct X’s popularity, more than a few of the show’s fans had followed him. Some merely wanted an autograph. Others wanted time to tell him their story. Men and women with a crush. There was never any real problem, and admittedly it was an ego booster. But when the show ended, that kind of interest dwindled to an occasional glance of recognition. Although in the last few months, there were times when he caught sight of strangers who seemed to be approaching him. When Philip stopped to make himself available, they promptly vanished.
The cowboy pushed the rope again, leaving it swinging as he withdrew into the darkness. Screech, screech, screech.
Philip pulled on his pants and shoved his cellphone into his pocket. Downstairs, he grabbed a brass candle holder—Jesus, it did happen—and started towards Sonny’s bedroom to alert him, and then remembered that his roommate was gone. He went out the front door and stole silently along the side of the house.
In the backyard, the rope had come to a stop. Philip listened and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He heard only the rustling of birds on dead leaves. He saw nothing that shouldn’t have been there.
“You out there, pardner?” shouted Philip into the dense brush that covered the foothills behind the home.
Philip pushed the rope. He waited until its period matched the beat of his heart. He breathed deep into his abdomen, holding it for a count of ten and exhaled, and then turned toward the house.
In his bedroom, he looked once again out the window. The yard was empty and the rope still and straight as an exclamation mark. He wondered if he had imagined the cowboy as he imagined his cast of Tarzans. He lay in bed sleepless, fingering the bandage on his chest. He willed the Tarzans, but Farhan sent the intruder. His fingers slipped from the fabric to his chest. It was a small price to pay, wasn’t it?
Will you go with me to Shangri-La?
Why, Niya?
Chapter 2
Through the hospital room’s window, Philip watched the two white grazing beasts, the slender branches of the hilltop willow stroking their wide backs. Four years ago, in recovery from his operation, he gazed in amazement at the hill and the animals. It was almost identical to the background of a photo taken of his mother as a young woman in Pakistan. As a child, he'd brought the photo to bed with him. The hill, the two Brahman cattle, his mother in the foreground. He could almost see her standing there. The glass shuddered under a sudden gust, and a dust cloud shrouded the scene. When the dust settled, the girl was gone. Nadia— or Niya?
If I go with you to the Getty, will you go with me to Shangri-La?
Niya must have seen the old movie Lost Horizon. Shangri-La was the film’s fabled Himalayan valley, a kind of Eden, cut off from the outside world and almost impossible to get to and just as difficult to escape. But once there, why leave?
Philip winced and turned from the hospital’s view to the doctor’s intense dark eyes behind silver framed lenses, her gaze on the tweezers that probed his shoulder under a bright beam.
After a cursory examination in the emergency room—full from the overflow of other facilities still dealing with the victims of the horrendous 101 crash—he’d been taken to a room on the third floor, where the doctor gave in to Philip’s request to sit up during the procedure. The center had its fair share of vistas. If he had a view, he wanted to see it. He shifted against the pillow.
“Are you doing all right? Not feeling faint?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said as a drop of blood oozed from his sliced skin, which under the intense light seemed to him little different from Niya’s.
The doctor had removed eight slivers of glass from Philip’s neck and shoulder. On the metal tray, the fragments formed a pointed leaf, similar to one of Niya’s henna designs.
A nurse entered the room carrying Philip’s shirt, which he’d left in emergency in one of the hospital’s large plastic bags. She set the bag alongside the bed’s rail, exposing the dark spots of his and Niya’s married blood. Somewhere down the maze of corridors, the surgeons were asking for clamps and sponges. By now, they’d be deep into Niya’s flesh ... He looked again for the girl on the hill.
He saw only the animals.
Cattle perhaps—at this distance, Philip was uncertain. They fed on a small carpet of yellow grass, for in mid-summer the hill was largely bare and dry. If the creatures moved quickly, dust would cloud about their hooves, but they seemed content in their golden patch, rubbing up against each other like drunken friends steadying each other on the way home. At the top of the hill the reddish tile roof of a Spanish-style home, largely hidden by saguaro, scrub oak and mesh fencing, served as a pedestal for the fierce setting sun.
The physician lifted the tweezers whose tips held another gem. “I think we’ve just about got it all ... umm.”
Not quite all. As the tweezers again prodded his flesh, he focused on the hill and the animals. The low sun sent the beasts’ shadows to the base of the slope and into the street that separated the hill from the medical facility.
“Do you know what those animals are, Dr. ...” Philip glanced at her ID badge. “Dr. Farnooz?”
Her tweezers probing Philip’s shoulder, the doctor either didn’t hear Philip’s question or chose to ignore it.
Four years ago he’d first seen the hills under a midday sun. The mounds were bleached white, so the cattle—if cattle they were—seemed at first a piece of the earth itself. But then the undifferentiated white wavered, evolved into a shape, then two. He’d asked several of the nurses and orderlies to identify the animals, but even when he pointed, few saw them, and none offered a name.
On the day of his discharge, hoping for a closer look, he’d had his daughter drive him by the hill, a huge parcel of land enclosed by a high metal fence with every gate locked, but the animals were not there...
“… and I think that’s it.” The doctor dropped the last sliver on the steel tray. “I’ll get someone to clean it out and cover it.” She scribbled on a pad, ripped off the sheet and handed it to a nurse waiting nearby. “You’ll need an antibiotic and some painkillers.”
“Do you know anything about her—the young woman, Niya?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. She’s still in surgery.”
Philip heard a distant buzzing, which grew louder as he looked at the walls, ceiling and floor as if to find the sound’s source.
She shook the tray as if panning for gold or reading tea leaves. Philip followed her eyes as she glanced up at Philip’s chest, her eyes tracing the thin white line that ran vertically down the center.
“Heart surgery?”
“Bypass.”
“You’re young for that. How long ago did you have it?”
“Four years this September. Right here at this hospital.”
“Well. You’re set for life.”
Philip nodded. After Philip’s operation, his thoracic surgeon assured him the same thing. Initially he felt elated but upon consideration wary. An open path through the woods, but behind the trees something treaded. The nurse cleaned the wounds. Just outside the door, someone prayed to Mother Mary. Shadows overran the hill.
“I liked your show. It was quite entertaining,” said Farnooz.
“Oh, thank you.”
“Except the final episode. Too many loose ends.”
“Yeah, I hear that a lot.”
“Perhaps the series will return?”
Philip held up crossed fingers. The doctor mimicked his gesture, smiled and turned.
“Do you have any idea how long Niya will be in surgery?”
But Doctor Farnooz had moved on.
Philip returned to the emergency room to sign papers and then used the restroom. Taking his shirt out of the plastic bag, he shook the garment a couple of times, ran water over the bloodied neck and dried it under the hand drier, leaving it damp, wrinkled and only a little less discolored. He wet his hair and combed it with his fingers. Tamped down his eyebrows. There were some gray hairs in them, same as his head. No complaints about his skin. Still smooth. Shiny. Leading man looks. Some thought he used a tanning machine. Of course the town was filled with men with leading man looks; few led, many followed.
At the entrance to the third floor waiting room, a neighborhood lay crushed and smoldering on the television. “Drone Strike Misses Target,” read the caption. Beneath the TV, a handful of children played with chipped blocks, scarred reptiles and disheveled dolls.
“I do not know,” said a familiar voice.
Deeper in the room, Niya’s uncle Farhan, his employees and several family members were gathered around two uniformed police officers and another man in plainclothes whom Philip took for a detective. There were no shy actors, but there were impervious audiences.
Philip approached Niya’s uncle and clasped his shoulder. “How is she?”
“Fuck off.” Farhan tossed off Philip’s hand.
Philip stepped back. He shouldn’t have touched the man. Some proscription against ... how can one know? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Please leave, sir.”
“I just wanted to know how Niya was.”
“That is none of your business.”
Philip nodded and turned toward the exit, which seemed to waver as if made of paper. His shoulders tightened. Farhan’s anger was not justified. Philip faced the man. “I tried to save her.”
“Oh, you shielded my niece? You even tried?”
“I didn’t—there wasn’t—”
“Good enough to serve you—but not save. Oh, we understand. Thank you. Now get out.” Farhan slammed his fist into Philip’s chest. Right into the spot where the wires held his sternum together before the bone knit.
Philip grabbed Farhan’s wrist. Farhan stepped away, jerking violently to break the hold.
“I tried,” said Philip, squeezing hard enough to feel the man’s bone.
Farhan whipped Philip sideways. “Get out!”
“Whoa, whoa,” said one of the uniformed officers, clamping Philip’s wrist, to create a tripod of limbs. “Calm down, both of you.”
Lips shining as if gathering saliva to spit, Farhan said, “You have nothing to do with her, understand? She is promised. We know what you want.”
A hand caught Philip’s shoulder, turning him. It was the plainclothes officer. “Hi, I’m Detective Elbon. I’d like to speak with you, Mr. Raine. Outside.” Elbon, who was tall and blond, guided Philip into the hall.
“Mr. Jahangiri is pretty shaken,” said Elbon. “She’s his niece, you know. He’s responsible for her.”
“She’s a friend, for Christ’s sake!”
“Imagine if it were your daughter or niece. Would you want a stranger inserting himself?”
“Inserting? I just asked—” What was he getting at?
“They see it as an intrusion,” said Elbon.
“Fine, I get it. It’s nonsense, but I get it.”
“So you like Indian food? Eat there every night?” asked Elbon.
No, not every night. Thursdays. In four years, he had only missed his Thursday dinner with Niya when a production held him late, or he took a part for the run of a play, or his daughter called for the cavalry. The previous Thursday was one of those nights. A new neighbor, Ms. Vergust, was about to split open one of the Vergust children’s heads.
Philip made it simple. “I like Indian food, but not every night. Usually I’m there Thursday.”
“Today’s Tuesday.”
“I was coming from an audition in Studio City and headed to another one in Calabasas, but there was a traffic jam. I decided to wait it out at the Moonlight.”
“It was convenient,” said Elbon.
“Right.” That was the truth. Why did he feel like it wasn’t?
“You like the girl though? She’s a good waitress?”
Elbon was staring. Provide the simple, easily digested answer. The detective didn’t need family history. Who did? “She’s efficient. Pleasant.”
Elbon glanced away. “Nothing intimate?”
Philip waited until the detective met his eyes. “No. Nothing intimate.”
Elbon pointed to Philip’s neckline, where the bandage was showing.
“Some glass,” said Philip. “Niya was pouring from a pitcher ... nothing really.” And compared to what they had done inside his chest, the smash and grab, or to Niya’s wound, it was nothing.
Philip and the policeman watched a gurney squeak by.
“So tell me how it happened,” said Elbon. “The shooting.”
“I’ve already—”
“Please.”
As Philip spoke, Elbon took notes.
“So Teapot—the short and stout one—was the target and Charlie the shooter?” Elbon asked when Philip had finished his account.
“I said he looked like Charlie Manson.”
“Until we establish his name, let’s go with Charlie. It’s convenient.”
“Yes, Charlie was the shooter, and Teapot—“
“Let’s call him Danny DeVito.”
“He didn’t look like Danny DeVito.”
“It’s convenient. I’m big on mnemonics. So what were Charlie and Danny wearing?”
That was easy. An actor’s specialty. “Rags. Layered rags. Street people.”
“Ethnicity?”
“The tall one—Charlie—who knows under all that hair? His beard was a little red. Irish maybe. The shorter one—Danny— was dark skinned.”
“African American? Hispanic?”
“No. Mideast maybe. Indian, Pakistani.”
“Pakistani. Like the restaurant.”
Philip shrugged. “It’s a guess.”
Elbon regarded him for a moment, lingering almost sensuously over Philip’s face. “Her uncle thinks you could have done more, but these split second things ... well, I wouldn’t worry ... Thanks for your help,” said the detective, his study finished.
Ten minutes later, disregarding the detective’s advice, Philip returned to the waiting room where Farhan and the other men held something in their fists.
“Farhan, if I’ve said or done anything—”
“We don’t want you here,” said one of the restaurant’s servers, stepping forward and opening his fingers. A small flat oval lay in his palm. Did the man fetch the stone in case Philip returned, or was it just his pet rock?
Didn’t they see he was sincere? He had no bias. How could he? “I’m trying to apologize.”
“Don’t bother.”
“You understand that she could have died if I hadn’t—”
“If Allah hadn’t,” interrupted another server, opening his fist to reveal a stone. “We don’t need white heroes.”
“Saving little colored girls,” added someone at Philip’s back.
Philip twisted, face burning. Can’t you see?
“This is for family only. Please leave and forget about my niece.”
“Have you no respect?” asked another.
“You cannot be in her room,” said Farhan, stepping forward, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. “Please leave.”
They were the ones who were being unfair to him. Philip spread his arms. “This, this is a waiting room. I can wait, can’t I?”
“Shut up!” said the first man who had spoken, and who now gripped his stone tightly, showing its edge. The talk died. In the silent interval, the room seemed to expand and grow darker. In a moment, they’d all disappear.
But he hadn’t stood ...“I’m sorry,” Philip muttered, uncurling his fingers. On the back of his right hand was a large bruise as if he’d pounded his antagonist. But likely he’d only brushed it against something hard earlier. The statins and aspirin thinned his blood. His hand bruised as easily as a ripe peach. He turned from the phalanx of men to the exit. The fight had been lost before it started.
****************************
As Philip pulled up in front of his home, a raised ranch house that had seen better days, his cell phone beeped. He turned off the engine, and the car’s interior soon sweltered. He stood outside in the unrelenting heat, insects gathering in the light of his phone, and called for his messages. One was from Lilia, the assistant director of the play, wanting to know why he hadn’t shown. A second message was from the pharmacy informing him that his prescription was ready. The third message was empty but for static. The caller’s ID was unavailable.
His anger and disappointment with Farhan had not diminished. He leaned against the car and gazed at the heavens, hoping that the stars might draw out some of the poison, a starry poultice. It didn’t work, but poison notwithstanding , he was drained.
Before the front door was half open, Cyclops twisted between his ankles “Hey, girl.” He picked up the tawny cat, let it cling to his shoulder and scratched the slender neck. “Hungry, huh? Sorry. A long bad night.” He kissed the cat on the forehead, above where the skin had virtually closed above the lost left eye, and then, though he had never done it previously, put his lips to the sealed wound.
He carried Cyclops to the kitchen, set her down and opened a can of cat food. He watched her eat from her bowl. He found her a year ago. She clung to a tree branch ten feet above the ground. Dried blood matted her face. Likely a coyote had taken a bite out of her. Too weak to resist, the cat let Philip climb to her and lift her from the branch. He took her home, cleaned and attended to her wound the best he could. The next day he took her to a veterinarian. The vet sutured and dressed her wound. He could do nothing for the lost eye. He provided Philip with the phone number and address of the SPCA, but Philip responded that he would take the cat home, try to find its owner and failing would keep her himself.
So he now had a one-eyed cat.
Cyclops finished her meal, purred contentedly and excused herself for her evening pursuits.
Philip showered, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and poured out his pills: the statin, the alpha-blocker, the antidepressant. He considered a Xanax, the five remaining tablets looking forlorn at the bottom of the orange container, but he recapped the bottle. He turned on the news. Ten minutes of bloodshed was enough. He then turned the television off, and then read twenty pages of a Simenon novel, but resisting its dark twists, set it down.
Normally, the person he shared the house with, Sonny, would be watching the talk shows, Conan or Fallon or whomever. But Sonny was out of town for a few weeks. If Sonny were here, Philip would have put on his headphones, listened to Bach for an hour before going to bed. But in his empty house, he put on the stereo and let the music fill the room. He picked up the book again and waited for the music to transport him. Bach’s intricacy and depth, the nests within nests, never failed to move him. But tonight it was as if hands clamped his ears. Perhaps the uncle was right. Maybe he could have done more. If it were his daughter or grandson, would he have found a way to take the bullet? Philip was imposing himself on a family tragedy. His relationship with Niya was no more than friendship, and he had never imagined it going beyond that. But from the outside it would be the same old suspicion: a middle-aged man lusting after the hot exotic babe. Was asking her to accompany him to a museum even outside the bounds? She couldn’t care for him. What did his bar buddy once say? They don’t even see you.
But then what was that question about?
Why would she want to go to Shangra-La with him? For an instant, like some underground stream that had found its way to the surface, he remembered love—pop song love, popcorn love. He thought he had spent his love on Yvonne. Blonde Yvonne, fair as a white peach. He thought he’d emptied his pockets on Yvonne. Were there a few coins left?
Why does the lamb love Mary so? Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know.
After twenty minutes, he turned the music down and called the hospital.
Niya was out of surgery and in a recovery room.
He didn’t have to feel his pulse to know his heart had not slowed to its normal resting beat. Though the air-conditioned temperature in the house was comfortable, when he slipped into bed he turned on his heating pad, a habit that he had acquired since his operation. He placed the pad between his thighs, quickly feeling the warmth against the shells of the stolen arteries. He could sleep if he could just keep his mind on Tarzan.
Edgar Rice Burroughs had built the house, which Philip had bought when the Precinct X money was overflowing his bank account. In the backyard was a reproduction of Tarzan’s treehouse, from which a rope hung. Philip kept the blinds retracted on his bedroom window to watch the thick rope. When the Santa Anas blew, the rope swung in a wild wide arc, and would slip where it was tied around the high limb to make a high-pitched sound like an animal’s screech. Philip would watch the rope like a silver chain dangled by a hypnotist, superimposing on the pendulum one of the many Hollywood Tarzans swinging on his vine from tree to tree.
Johnny Weissmuller or Buster Crabbe or Christopher Lambert gliding through Malibu jungle: Philip’s soporific. This night, Alexander Skarsgard, the new Tarzan (the ape man never got dated), effortlessly held his swinging vine. Skarsgard rose toward a sturdy limb, but he didn’t quite reach it, so he drifted in ever diminishing arcs. Coming to a dead stop perpendicular to the ground, Skarsgard twisted, faster and faster until he spun like a top. Skarsgard dropped it, but the line continued to swing as if someone were pushing it. Philip drew off his covers, slipped from bed and stepped over to the window. Standing by the rope was a tall man in a cowboy hat. The man grabbed the rope and swung it, setting it in motion again.
Was this one of the homeless, come down from his shelter in the hills? They sometimes passed over the property on their way to the boulevard. The man appeared to be gazing at Philip’s window, at Philip. Or was it someone sent by Farhan? A warning to stay away from his niece? There was another possibility. At the height of Precinct X’s popularity, more than a few of the show’s fans had followed him. Some merely wanted an autograph. Others wanted time to tell him their story. Men and women with a crush. There was never any real problem, and admittedly it was an ego booster. But when the show ended, that kind of interest dwindled to an occasional glance of recognition. Although in the last few months, there were times when he caught sight of strangers who seemed to be approaching him. When Philip stopped to make himself available, they promptly vanished.
The cowboy pushed the rope again, leaving it swinging as he withdrew into the darkness. Screech, screech, screech.
Philip pulled on his pants and shoved his cellphone into his pocket. Downstairs, he grabbed a brass candle holder—Jesus, it did happen—and started towards Sonny’s bedroom to alert him, and then remembered that his roommate was gone. He went out the front door and stole silently along the side of the house.
In the backyard, the rope had come to a stop. Philip listened and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He heard only the rustling of birds on dead leaves. He saw nothing that shouldn’t have been there.
“You out there, pardner?” shouted Philip into the dense brush that covered the foothills behind the home.
Philip pushed the rope. He waited until its period matched the beat of his heart. He breathed deep into his abdomen, holding it for a count of ten and exhaled, and then turned toward the house.
In his bedroom, he looked once again out the window. The yard was empty and the rope still and straight as an exclamation mark. He wondered if he had imagined the cowboy as he imagined his cast of Tarzans. He lay in bed sleepless, fingering the bandage on his chest. He willed the Tarzans, but Farhan sent the intruder. His fingers slipped from the fabric to his chest. It was a small price to pay, wasn’t it?
Will you go with me to Shangri-La?
Why, Niya?
After five years of hard labor
I recently sold my novel End Man, a techno-thriller, to Cursed Dragon Ship Publishing. The novel will be released in October 2022. Here's a link to the interview I did for the publisher's blog: https://curseddragonship.com/2022/02/...
Thanks,
Alex
Thanks,
Alex
Is there anyone out there?
I have no idea if my posts die on the vine. Well, if this gets through to anyone, I'd like you to know that my new novel End Man has just been released. Please check out the novel and the reviews. https://www.amazon.com/End-Man-Alex-A...
