Takedown at Take Two

"You've got to be kidding me," Murray said.

He was standing at the entrance of the old roller rink with a duffel bag over his shoulder and a laminated crew pass clipped to his jacket. The production office had sent him an address and a call time and nothing else. Nobody had mentioned that the location was a shuttered skating rink that smelled like nacho cheese and floor wax, or that there would be a bumper car parked next to the craft services table like it was normal.

Noah, the director, came over clapping his hands. "Murray! Great, you made it. Noah." He shook hands fast. "You're the movement guy. Friend of Dominic's said you're the one who gets actors to stop moving like furniture."

"That's sorta my thing, yeah," Murray said.

"Good. We got a fight scene in the second act and it looks like two mannequins falling down stairs. Fix it." Noah walked off before Murray could answer.

Murray set his bag down and looked around. Cables everywhere. Foam walls. A camera dolly parked where the skate rental used to be. He was forty-two years old and had taught yoga in strip malls for fifteen years, and getting hired onto a movie set still made him feel like a substitute teacher.

Then he saw her.

Across the rink, kneeling by a stuntwoman in a harness, tightening straps with quick practiced hands. Short dark hair, broad shoulders, that way of moving like her body knew exactly where it was at all times. Steph. Thirty-nine now, ten years since the cable show in Wilmington, and she looked exactly the same except calmer, which somehow made it worse.

His stomach dropped. He actually considered walking back out the door.

She looked up. She saw him. Of course she saw him, she had eyes like a hawk and she'd always caught everything. Her whole face opened up into a grin and she waved him over with one hand while still holding a strap with the other.

"No way," she said, loud enough to carry. "No way they got the yoga guy!"

"Hey, Steph."

"Still got that nervous laugh, huh?" She finished the harness, stood, and looked him up and down without any hurry about it. "God, you're grayer."

"You're not," he said, which came out wrong, and he laughed the nervous laugh, which proved her point.

"So they hired you to fix the fight scene." She picked up a water bottle and drank. "That's funny. Real funny. Dominic didn't warn you I was here, did he."

"He did not."

"Well." She smacked his shoulder, harder than necessary. "Welcome to Quad Damage, Murray. Try not to fall over."

He fell over. Not right then, but within the hour.

The first fight rehearsal was two stunt performers and the lead actor, who could not throw a punch that looked like anything. Noah wanted a move where the lead catches a punch and redirects it. So Murray, because he was the movement consultant and because Steph was watching with her arms crossed and a little smile, decided to demonstrate it himself.

He got through the catch fine. Then he stepped in for the redirect, caught his heel on a cable taped down at the edge of the frame line, and went sideways. He grabbed the nearest thing to steady himself, which was a light stand, which was not rated for a hundred and ninety pounds of yoga instructor panicking. The whole thing came down on top of him with a clang that stopped the rink.

There was a silence. Then Steph's voice. "Ten out of ten on the commitment, buddy. Point off for the landing."

Murray lay on the floor under the stand with his ears ringing. "I'm fine," he said. "It's foam."

"The stand isn't," she said, hauling it off him and then hauling him up by the forearm like he weighed nothing. Her grip was warm and she did not let go right away. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Pride's dinged mostly."

"Your pride's been dinged since Wilmington," she said, and walked off to reset the performers.

At lunch, Nicky, the production assistant, came around with a box of wraps and a clipboard. She was thirty-five and had the tired patience of someone who had been asking people what they wanted on their sandwich since nine in the morning. She gave Murray a peanut chicken wrap and said, "You're the guy who ate the light stand, right? Steph said to give you the one without onions. She said your mouth was already suffering enough."

"She's got jokes," Murray said.

"She's got jokes about you specifically," Nicky said, and moved on.

Then Steph sat down across from him on an upturned crate, unwrapped her own lunch, and pointed at him with a tortilla chip.

"So. He's gonna tell it or I am," she said to Nicky, who had drifted back over.

"Tell what?" Nicky said.

"The wrap party. Ten years ago. Cable show called Night Patrol, total garbage, best job I ever had. Wrap party at a karaoke bar in Wilmington." She took a bite and talked through it. "And there's this yoga instructor on set teaching the lead actress how to breathe, very serene, very calm, and I decide, you know what, last night of the shoot, I'm gonna kiss this man."

"Oh no," Nicky said.

"Oh yes. I walk him out to his car. I'm standing right there. Close enough. And this man," and here she pointed the chip at Murray again, "goes, 'Well, I should really get home, early class tomorrow.'"

"You did not," Nicky said.

"He did. Early class. At six a.m. On a Saturday. Then he drove off with his blinker on for like two blocks."

"The blinker thing is not true," Murray said.

"It is absolutely true and I have witnesses. Anyway. Ten years later the universe puts him on my set so I can watch him fall down for money." She was