Free Dog Beach by John Fusco Page A

zombie. She’s undead. She’s supposed to kill you at the end.”
    â€œWhatever that bitch did to get that role, I can do better.”
    â€œJesus.”
    â€¢Â Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â Â â€¢
    Louie Mo was trying to get upstairs to the little bedroom that faced the ocean. He had been going up and down those stairs quite easily, but tonight, after a long day of shooting, it was an effort. Less than halfway up, he felt himself sweating from the pain. The moderate gag he had done was nothing compared to his lifetime of daredevil achievements; most of the shoot was of him walking across the empty lot like a sullen antihero. But the shoulder roll across the hood of the Chevy did a number on his hip. The knee was fine, never an issue, really. In fact, he had done some of the wilder jumps that Ringo Chou couldn’t do in the late ’80s because his much-younger ACLs were starting to give. The hip was another matter; his pelvis felt torqued, the nerve canal raw all the way to his heel.
    On the sixth step he took an oxy—that made two in an hour—then kept climbing. Sweating. He used to run the steps of mountain temples; how could these rickety beach house steps feel insurmountable? Oh, to be young again and riding those bedsprings like naughty Troy down there, having a time with the dark beauty who walked in on him in the bathroom. That was another thing: He’d been on that seat for forty-five minutes and hadn’t moved his bowels because his organs felt jammed up. He’d felt like maybe he was getting somewhere when the pretty girl had entered and screamed.
    Onward, he climbed. Up to his Malibu room with a view of the sea. The bed caught him cleanly, took the pain off his joints. A quarter moon hung over the gentle surge of water. He wished he could just relax and enjoy the first-class shelter from the storm this kid Troy was offering him. But it all felt so perishable, and too little too late.
    The moon made him remember a girl . . .
    â€¢Â Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â Â â€¢
    It was 1993 and he was standing on the set of City on Flame , a giant tungsten moon hanging a fake glow over Victoria Harbor. He was already notorious among stuntmen, had already outlived the Shaw Brothers’ ’70s and the buddy-cop ’80s. He had earned the scars and a reputation as high-­flying Louie Mo, the guy you brought in when some arrogant A-lister wet his drawers two hundred feet up on a skyscraper, deciding that doing his own stunts wasn’t such a good idea after all.
    Louie stood on the docks, restless energy jittering in his legs, taking a hit off a cigarette, cracking a joke with the crew. Depression, like his two ex-wives, had been dogging him a little. Wine sometimes made it darker. His forbidden affair with Rebecca Lo, the Cantonese pop singer, sitting inside her movie star trailer at this very moment, made it deeper. But pulling off a big stunt—especially one where the movie star chickened out—filled some kind of dark hole inside, made him feel valued. There was no feeling like running seconds out ahead of explosions, knowing how many things could go wrong with pyrotechnics. If he tripped and Sammy the Fire Man sparked it off at the wrong time, he’d be torched in a ball of flame and shrapnel. That was one of the triggers to unleashing the Creature in his bloodstream: knowing how many things could go wrong.
    On that night, lingering by the sheltered waters of the harbor—every now and then glancing toward the lights in Miss Lo’s trailer—he was getting himself mentally prepped for the “Burning Boat” scene. As he paced and smoked, a set PA brought him a bulky cell phone. Call for Louie Mo. Louie took the call, hoping it wasn’t a lawyer tracking alimony. And then wishing it had been.
    â€œLeave the set, my friend,” Uncle Seven said in Cantonese. “These assholes are not playing fair, we’re shutting