Power Slide

by Susan Dunlap

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  To Megan and Sean

  1

  “WHERE THE HELL is Guthrie?”

  “He’ll be here by call. He always is, Jed.”

  The second unit director nodded, and I subtracted a big bite from my account in the Stunt Doubles Bank of Trust. This gag was part of a sequence in the planning for over a month. I’d been to the preproduction meeting, noted the storyboarding, and choreographed my part. My name would be in the credit roll. I always want gags to go right, but this one was special: it could make or break my future. Not to mention my neck.

  We’d had a top-notch wheelman in on the planning and ready with his truck, but he’d downed some bad crab last night and it’d been all he could manage to lift the phone this morning. So I’d called Damon Guthrie. I’d vouched for him, promised he was a quick study, had a good resume, and, most important now—was reliable.

  “You’ve known him a long time?”

  “Never missed a call.” That I know of. “He’s on his way.”

  “Driving the rig?” A flash of fear—economic fear—whitened Jed Elliot’s already pale face. I’d worked with him before—turned a busted fire gag into a showstopper and left him grinning ear to ear. Still, every time I saw him I was struck by what a worrier he was. So, I swallowed a retort and went for over-the-top reassurance.

  “Guthrie’ll get here. Listen, he’s the best. He’s modified that rig of his till it’s like a Swiss watch. He hits a button and the payload swings like a salsa dancer’s butt. He’s invested everything in that truck. He’s not going to blow this chance to recoup.”

  “Yeah, but rehearsals—”

  “Tell him what you want and he’ll make it happen.”

  “Minimally, he’s going to need to scope the layout.”

  “Sure. But we’re on a loading dock here. It’s an easy drive. He comes full speed around that corner onto the pier, starts toward the ship. I’m riding the bike, catch the tire in a rut, and do a fall, go into a power slide. He jackknifes and I go straight under his truck. He’ll handle it.”

  Jed shot a glance at the second unit crew—the camera operators, lighting guys, wardrobe mistress, and landscapers making final adjustments to an arbor that would hide a camera—along with everyone else hanging around, waiting for the truck to arrive and the day’s shoot to finish up. If Guthrie threw off the schedule and sent the shoot into tomorrow, paying the Port of Oakland for an extra day would pretty much blow the entire second unit budget, if we could get the dock at all.

  Already the lighting tech was eyeing the bank lights he’d used for a dusk shot, and it didn’t take a mind reader to know he was gauging how long he could stretch “daylight” without losing continuity. We might squeeze out another quarter of an hour if we shot against the beige buildings rather than the cargo ship, but then there’d be no point in being on the dock.

  The photographer from the Oakland Tribune who’d been clicking away when I did the first half of the gag had left, but the woman from the San Francisco Chronicle was after the city angle: San Francisco Girl Makes Good. She wanted to catch me coming out of the slide, and I wasn’t about to turn down publicity.

  Jed was staring at something on his clipboard. “I don’t know, Darcy. It’s a split-second gag. If he screws up, there’s no leeway. Without rehearsals—”

  “We’ll handle it.”

  Jed looked dubious, as well he might. A moment passed before he said, “It’s your head. The rate this fog’s flooding in, we’re not going to get more than one shot.”

  “I need to do a final run-through.” Need to get out of this conversation and hope to hell I’m right about my good friend Guthrie.

  I loped toward the end of the pier. Mo Mason, in the camera cart that would be running next to me for the close-up, tooled it alongside me now. At the end of the dock, he cut in front and started bitching about Guthrie. “You sure about the guy?”

  “Never seen him fail.”

  “You know him . . . well.” It wasn’t a question.

  I thought we’d been more subtle.

  “Listen, I’ve worked with Guthrie before,” he went on, “but that doesn’t mean I know him. Nobody does . . . except maybe you?”

  I stared down at him. “He’s always shown up, right? Always aced the gag, right?”

  “Yeah, but used to be he’d cut it close, then pull out the gag, and afterwards he’d take the crew out for a beer. By the end of the night he was everybody’s best friend and no one remembered that half hour cooling our heels. But the last couple of times, it was just shoot and I’m out of here. No drinks, no jokes, all business . . . like he was a different guy, you know?”

  “Actually, I don’t. Haven’t seen him in a year.”

  “But you’re the one who vouched for him. Aren’t you two—”

  “No.” I forced a grin for him. “It’s complicated. And anything but full-time. But I love the guy even when he’s off my radar. Uh-oh, look at the fog!”

  The startling wall of white was banked thick and high behind San Francisco across the Bay. Only the Sutro Tower was holding it back. Jed Elliot was right: in a few minutes it’d stream over Twin Peaks and flood down the hills into downtown. Then, in a flash, it’d be across the Bay and turning our shoot into mush.

  Where the hell are you, Guthrie? No problem, you said. You’d be on the road by ten, here by four.

  I understood there was a wildness about him. But I’d always been a sucker for that in a guy, something I wasn’t about to admit at this particular juncture. Guthrie’s intensity burst out full force when he plotted a stunt, tossing out ideas like Frisbees to see which would be caught and brought back in, hunting down the cable with the least give or the most, finding an angle no one had tried, pushing the limits with each gag. But he’d always kept that wildness under some control, like a thoroughbred in a fenced pasture. And as far as I knew, he had never, ever, blown a gag or held up production.

  Until now. Where are you? It’s my neck on the line here!

  And it’d be my body if I didn’t do just what I told Jed I’d come down here to do—mentally run through the gag one last time. I had the feeling Mo was thinking similarly. Driving the camera cart wasn’t the same as doing the stunt, but it wasn’t tooling along the freeway, either. You had to be alert for obstacles, figure where to move in close, gauge your speed, all the while keeping your target front and center. More than one cart guy had ended up on the paramedics’ gurney.

  Enormous metal cranes stand at this end of the Port of Oakland loading docks as if ready to take the Bay in three steps and devour San Francisco. I’d see them when I drove the Bay Bridge; I thought of them as Trojan birds, though the last thing they could have done was hide anything in
their bellies. They hadn’t eaten the city, but they’d made a meal of its port. Now San Francisco piers held shops and restaurants, while lowly Oakland sported the fifth-largest container port in the country.

  My ride, an old fat-wheel bicycle, was lying at the tip of the dock where the last scene had ended. I balanced astride it, let my eyes go blank, and felt the wind snapping my hair, icing my bare neck. I heard the slap of the Bay, the whoosh of water as distant boats cut through the briny smell. For a moment I didn’t name the sounds or smells, merely met them, as I’d do on the cushion in the zendo. There, it wasn’t a centering technique but an outcome of zazen, for no purpose but itself. Here, though, it shifted my focus away from Guthrie—away from Guthrie and me—to the gag.

  It was a timing gag. Easy. Guthrie and I had done this kind of thing together three or four times before, made it look deadly. Then celebrated after. And the next morning before dawn, one of us would be gone.

  I glanced down the dock, at the massive ship alongside, the boarding slips, the train tracks and, above it all, the giant gantry cranes. Twenty-two stories tall, with one guy in the cab up there grabbing and plunking down containers, thirty to the hour. From a distance they’d been Trojan birds. Now, from the ground, all I saw was two huge white metal slabs twenty-five feet long and the same distance apart.

  I’d already done the first part of this sequence in two sections—jumping on the bike, going across the tracks, and riding up to and around the base of the crane. It had taken four days—an hour or so for four afternoons. Today I’d redo that ride, but only as lead-in for the payoff, the straight shot from the crane to the truck and the power slide underneath. I would have felt a lot better if I could have eyeballed the truck.

  The first part was in the can. Still, I needed to visualize the whole thing. I put down the bike, stood against a pillar, let my eyes close, and pictured—at first pictured, but almost instantly felt—myself at the starting point five yards behind the bike. Me doing a shamble run to simulate the desperate heroine, then a mini-pause, a glance behind, a stumble-and-save, before the double take at the sight of the bike. I felt myself lunging, grabbing the handlebars, yanking up the bike, running to get momentum to fling my leg high over the bar. Next my legs were pumping the pedals, my head down apparently oblivious to the crane, the bike weaving, me looking over my shoulder, tires catching in the track, making the save. Suddenly, the reversal: a major double take when I saw the crane, a quick cut to the left to skirt the crane, dropping my shoulders in an exaggerated “Whew!” Now right the bike, lean hard forward into all-out speed position. I could “see” Guthrie’s truck rounding the corner, feel my gaze drop to spot the track, see Guthrie jackknife, feel my shoulders thrust left to catch the tire on the track. I’d fall off the bike, shooting it left as I shoved right to land in the middle of a pad that would be a yard from the truck. As if it were happening, I felt my hands grab the raised back edge of the pad and push off, sending me straight ahead under the truck and midway between the tires. The entire business would take less than a minute, the portion we were shooting twenty seconds.

  I did another mental run-through but wasn’t reassured. Stunt work is illusion, relative safety masquerading as danger. But it only works that way with meticulous preparation. I’d done mine; I wanted Guthrie here to do his. If he blew it, he’d be sorry.

  I’d be dead.

  “Can’t even see San Fran any more.” Mo was staring across the Bay at the thick white cover hiding everything but the tops of a couple of high-rises and the tip of the Transamerica Building. “What do you figure? Fifteen minutes?”

  “Max.”

  Together we started back toward the crane.

  We heard the cheer before we saw Guthrie’s truck.

  A second later he jumped down from the cab, looking like he always did. And all the doubts of the last half hour might never have existed.

  2

  GUTHRIE COULD HAVE been born in that big semi-trailer truck of his, at least that’s how he looked. Red plaid shirt, lined; white T-shirt, jeans, boots. The only thing missing was a signature hat. He’d been vain about his hair, admittedly, then worried, and now the whole issue had receded—into an ear-level rim of brown fuzz and a silly-looking ponytail. But, it all just seemed background to those startling dark brown eyes that searched me out as if to say there was us, and then, way down the ladder, everything else. For a guy pushing fifty, he looked damned good. “Sorry! Really, sorry,” he said. “Accident on 980. Two rigs. I didn’t think we’d get the one guy out at all. Ambulances took forever. There still light?” He meant for the gag.

  “Just.” Jed looked like he was downshifting emotional gears, from fourth to third and now first.

  “You want me to do a slow drive around the corner to the mark, so you can get the oncoming shot?” And so he could do a slo-mo run-through for himself.

  Jed gave a curt nod. Even with doing that to check for angles, trolley speed, lighting, it’d be asking the camera crew to perform a miracle. The run-through was what he’d have ordered, but he’d wanted to give the order. Jed was a good director, but he wasn’t a saint, and Guthrie had turned more than one director into a martyr. He usually didn’t start this soon, though.

  He loped over, bending as he hugged me, muttering, “Thanks.” He was back at the cab before he had a chance to feel me go stiff.

  The dim light veiled changes in Guthrie’s face, but his ribs were bony to the touch in a way they hadn’t been the last time I’d had a serious feel of them. His heavy shirt flapped around him all too freely as he darted across the pier and sprang up into the cab.

  Till that moment I hadn’t realized how tense I was. Jed had wanted to give him the order; I just wanted to smack him, heroic performance on the freeway or not. What were cell phones for?

  Don’t get into that! This is a dangerous gag. Concentrate!

  He backed up the big rig as if it were a VW Bug. Driving slowly forward, he rounded the corner and jackknifed the trailer before he came to the stop mark. I ran through my gag, factoring in when I’d spot the truck, where it had to be when I skirted the crane. Then there was the angle of the trailer when I tossed the bike and the angle when I slid forward under it, between the rolling tires. Most of the reasons for rehearsing are aimed at bringing the unknown into the light before it’s too late. No one wants to do a gag cold.

  “How’d you manage that, man?” One of the gaffers was staring at the tires on the trailer. “It’s like they skidded, but they couldn’t have.”

  “Trade secret,” Guthrie said, grinning.

  “Okay,” Jed snapped. “We need to get this in one take. Fog’s to the end of the dock. Darcy, Mo, there just isn’t time for rehearsal. Can you handle it?”

  I need you to, he meant.

  I nodded and headed for the start mark. Behind me I could hear Jed giving Guthrie his start signal.

  The bike still lay at the end of the dock. The start mark was a couple yards away. In the few minutes since I’d stood there the temperature had dropped sharply and now the damp of the fog brushed my back. Ahead, lighting techs did final checks and Mo revved the camera cart. He’d be running mostly a couple yards in front of me. If he ended up in the still camera shots, he’d be edited out later.

  “Ten seconds!”

  I inhaled, then exhaled with care to pull in my attention.

  “Live on the set! Action!”

  I ran, scooped up the bike, swung on, hard-pedaled toward the container ship, overcompensated, and skidded back right. Straightening with my head down over the handle bars, I thrust my body with each downward push. Mo’s motor ground ahead: doin’ good, doin’ good, doin’ good. At the crane I jerked into the double take, swerved, did the “relief” shoulders drop, looked at the truck, and did a bigger double take—a real one.

  The trailer was out of position!

  It hadn’t jackknifed.

  It wasn’t in front of me. No way could I do the easy slide. The cab was almost at the stop mark.
/>   No time!

  Mo’s cart engine roared; he was cutting right.

  I jerked, tossed the bike, hit the pad, caught the raised edge, and flung myself to the right as hard as I could. Then I skidded toward the front tire, caught the lug, and swung myself under the trailer.

  Not hard enough. The truck was moving. I was sliding ever slower. The rear tire would crush my feet. I needed to grab, but I had no leverage.

  I crunched my abs, lifted, caught a pipe—hot!—pushed off harder than I’d ever done, and shot out the far side of the truck.

  The rear wheel ran over my hair.

  I was clear.

  Usually, after a big, final stunt, there’s a moment’s silence and then the whole second unit crew applauds. Now they stood silent. They looked as stunned as I was. I glanced over at the cameraman. He was still on his dolly a couple of yards in front of the truck. Fog had dampened his shoulders, but he seemed oblivious. Jed was eyeing him questioningly. The only sound was the click of the newspaper photographer’s camera.

  Guthrie jumped down from the cab. In an instant he was standing over me. His face was dead white. “You okay? I’m sorry. . . I . . . shit. I don’t know what . . . You okay? Omigod! Your hands, they’re burned!”

  The camera clicked again. This was not the picture I wanted in the paper! Not in a field where reputation is everything. “Shh! They’ll be okay.”

  “I . . .”

  “Shut up! I’m fine. Just shut up! I vouched for you, dammit. Don’t blow it!”

  Guthrie was still staring at my hands. The camera clicked again.

  “Give me your jacket. Now!”

  He nearly ripped the thing getting it off and trying to wrap it around my shoulders. I didn’t dare think about the wheels, how close—I couldn’t feel my hands; didn’t dare look at them. I jammed them through the sleeves and into the pockets. Then I turned to the photographer and grinned.

  “Great shot!” Mo yelled. “Way better! And that last grab, Darcy: terrific! I thought you were being sucked into the chassis. It’s gonna make the scene!”