Free Dog Beach by John Fusco

over the hood. Coming down on the other side, he was face-to-face with Matty Ng, mugging for the camera in his hoody and hand wraps. They fired their exchange at full speed, but when Matty lost track and tried to improvise with an elbow, Louie stepped on his front foot, entered, and knocked him out. Cold.
    â€œCut!” Troy yelled, hurrying over.
    â€œLouie!” Dutch said, jumping out from behind the wheel.
    â€œI thought maybe he block,” Louie said kneeling over the Thai kid and checking his chin. “Hey. You. Okay?”
    Matty stirred and rolled over, touching his eye socket. “Fuck you, man,” he said. “That’s not in the script.”
    â€œElbow not in the script either,” Louie countered.
    Louie looked up at Troy. “You get the punch?”
    â€œYeah.”
    Louie winked. Troy smiled. T-Rich held up his HD camera to say he got a zoom angle on it too.
    â€œHong Kong fighting not for sissy,” Louie said to Matty as he helped him up.
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    Back at Dog House, Troy sat at his MacBook, earbuds in, writing into the night like he hadn’t done in a year. The day had fueled him, fired his passion again, and he was on a third-act rampage. Louie was right, he decided: The surviving bad guys would trap the beleaguered Cho in an old building, planning to blow it sky high. (Troy made a margin note: Check with Malone about rigging demolition charges .)
    In the final minutes of the movie, Louie Mo would time his most spectacular stunt of all time and jump, with no wires, from the building to the dinosaurian neck of a construction crane just as a bitch-load of controlled explosives blew out the top floor of the condemned structure, a fire trap they scouted in a bankrupt city north of Chinatown, toward Pasadena. ( Check with the city and fire department. ) Louie would then ride the steel cable downward and finish off his opponents in a smash-mouth sequence (NOTE: tight, claustrophobic, real-world shit ) intercut with flashbacks from the illegal cage fight that ruined his life. The movie would end with Louie walking alone across the desert outside Las Vegas, toward an uncertain future, like a gunfighter who’d outlived his era.
    Troy was so immersed in the scene that he forgot he said he’d meet his housemates for beers in Venice. Nor did he hear Zoe come in, her heels clicking, Prius keys landing on the countertop. “Hey, writer boy,” she said. “Working on my scene?”
    Troy turned, yanking at his earbuds. “Hey, Zee.”
    Zoe crossed the kitchen, went into the bathroom—and screamed. Louie Mo was sitting on the toilet thumbing idly through PC Gamer magazine. He covered himself and said, “Hello, I’m sorry,” in Cantonese.
    Troy sprung up, wheeled to meet her. “There’s a Japanese guy on the bowl,” she said, grabbing her keys in escape mode.
    â€œThat’s Louie Mo,” Troy said. “He’s my new stunt coordinator.”
    â€œJesus,” Zoe said, calming herself. When Louie came out, she was somewhat polite and apologetic. So was Louie, and she noticed his limp.
    â€œTroy, can I talk with you?” she said, cocking her head slightly toward the dark hall.
    In the bedroom, Troy latched the door, turned to face her. She was staring at his unmade bed, script pages scattered about.
    â€œEverything okay?” Troy said.
    Zoe pushed him over, awkwardly, onto the bed. With one quick zip of her tiny mocha-colored dress, she was naked, peeling it off over her strappy high-heeled sandals. Her body, lethally posed, nearly sent him into the kind of asthma attack he used to have in high school. “I want my character to kill the redhead,” she said, pulling a pin from her hair and letting it fall.
    â€œSay again?”
    â€œMy character, Troy. She kills fucking Alexis with a nine-millimeter.”
    Troy stared at her for a beat. “Alexis plays a