Page 5 of His Cruelest Moves

four

Alex had just finished mopping up the last of the tea that his clumsy cowboy had splashed all over his caravan. If that was his student, it was going to be a really long four weeks. But he needed this gig. Earning a good name as a fight choreographer and coach to the stars might more than fuel his business. It even had the possibility to be quite lucrative. The challenge, however, was that he had to show he could do it first. And that meant somehow teaching this uncoordinated clown dressed as a cowboy who had trashed not only his own but Alex’s caravan too.

That reminded him. Leaving his own caravan and walking over to the cowboy’s, he tried the door. Unlocked. Film workers tend to be pretty honest brokers, and Alex had never heard of anyone stealing on set, but if it had been him, he’d have locked his caravan while he was away. Taking the initiative, he went inside. His cowboy—Isard had he said his name was?—had left his things scattered throughout the interior. A large suitcase lay open and enough clothes and personal items for a month lay scattered around the caravan. Alex studiously tried to ignore his own curiosity, instead looking around for the fuse box. It was as he suspected, a simple blown fuse. Pulling out the blown one, he saw it had been wound with a long-enough length of wire for him to be able to unwind and rewire it. From fight choreographer to sparky: whatever it took to save his business.

As he stood there, engrossed in the intricate task of threading the wire through the narrow channels in the porcelain fuse, and rewinding the ends back onto the electrodes, he didn’t hear the door open, until a voice said:

“What are you doing?”

He spun, automatically assuming a defensive posture. His cowboy, Isard, stood in the doorway.

“Fixing your fuse.” He held up the piece to prove his intentions, in case the guy thought he had entered his caravan to steal from him or anything.

“Oh.” Isard stood there, watching him for a few moments, before saying, “thanks”.

Alex finished winding the last of the wire onto the fuse and plugged it back into the fuse board. He tried the mains switch. Instantly the caravan lights came on, the heater started blowing hot air, and music began to play from somewhere, the gravelly tones of Tammy Wynette.

“Stand by your Man?”

“I like her, and it felt right as a mood track for this film. Thanks for fixing the fuse.”

“That’s OK. It was that or risk having you trash my caravan all over again.”

His cowboy blushed bright red, which showed up very obviously on his pale complexion.

“I’m really sorry about that—”

“Stop apologizing. So just to confirm, you are Isard Muntaner, the student I’m supposed to teach?”

“Yeah, sorr—”

“Hey!”

“Apparently my agent, Dolors Marsella, told the director, Valentí Sampere, that I’m a black belt.”

“Oh no, really!”

“Yeah, sorry. We have about three weeks to get me up to speed.”

Alex leaned against the bench in Isard’s caravan and let his gaze travel out through the window to where the Pyrenees dominated the landscape. In the bright morning sunshine, the range glowed with a brilliance that almost hurt the eyes. Finally, he turned to Isard.

“Well, we better get started,” he said. “No time to lose.”

Isard resisted the urge to apologize again.

Isard stood facing Alex in a clearing within a pine grove a few minutes’ walk from the filming location. He had another sequence to shoot late in the evening, then they would both be driven down to Barcelona for a sequence in the city the next day. The contract Alex had signed with Dolors stated that he should shadow Isard’s shooting schedule, taking advantage of any and all breaks in filming to teach his student the skills required for the part. So, they had a window of three hours available for Isard’s first martial arts class before he had to go through make-up and costume once again, and then back onto set.

Alex looked formidable—and quite gorgeous—dressed in black and yellow tracksuit bottoms, and a gunmetal-gray sleeveless exercise top. His perfect muscles shone brown and burnished, and his short spiky black hair glistened like obsidian under the sun. Isard had now ditched his cowboy attire and was also wearing a full tracksuit, but his was white with crimson piping over a maroon tee-shirt. He tended to go for white and cream shades, believing they set off his pale complexion and dark hair more dramatically.

“OK, we’ll start with the siu nim tau, or ‘little idea’. It’s the most basic empty hand form, and its advantage is that you practice it stationary,” Alex explained. “Later I’ll take you over the Wing Chun philosophy, which is where we should really start, but with so little time, I wanted to get you moving and standing right straight off the bat. In the car, going down to Barcelona, I’ll talk you through the philosophy behind it.”

Isard nodded. He was freezing, but he resisted the urge to wrap his arms around himself. He didn’t want to appear weak or foolish before Alex, who seemed impervious to the cold. And Alex’s attitude—brisk, efficient, and knowledgeable—conveyed to Isard that he didn’t like time-wasters or weaklings.

“Wing Chun?” Isard asked nervously. It didn’t ring a bell. “Is that a type of kung fu or karate?”

Alex huffed. “Kung fu just means ‘learning’ in Chinese. We don’t use it. We’d say Zhongguo wushu. Bruce Lee? You know him?” he asked. “Wing Chun is his style, very filmic.”

Isard had the feeling that might have been strike four, but he kept his mouth shut. What to say that wouldn’t offend his buff martial arts teacher? He didn’t want Alex to stay angry with him. If they were going to be spending the next three weeks glued together, he needed to try and get the guy to like him a little, or at least not hate him as much as he had initially seemed to. So, he tried to focus on Alex’s words as he explained the first basic stance, yee jee kim yeung ma, or the goat-clamping stance, copying Alex as he explained and demonstrated how to get there: consecutively swiveling the feet outward from the toe then the heel until they were planted at shoulder width, the toes pointing slightly inward, and the knees clamped.