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.