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little girl wobbled away on her repaired bike. Louie turned on his sneakers and walked casually, but quickly, back to the house.
    â€œHey,” he heard the big man say. “I want to talk to you.”
    Louie entered the house, closed the door. Took a breath. Then he jogged. He jogged the length of the hall, his gaze fixed on the back door, the light outside. In seconds though, one of the black men was standing there, crouching to look in. Quickly, he let himself inside and said, “Yo, Grasshopper.”
    Louie turned abruptly, entered a bedroom full of girls. They looked up, silently, but when he stepped up onto a bed and opened a window, they screamed. He laid a finger alongside his nose, urging silence. They screamed louder, huddling in a corner. Crazy fucking Chinese girls, he groaned to himself.
    Outside, he landed on his feet, like a cat on gravel. Then he winced. The hip, his elbow, the aging titanium screws in his lower back—all protested in one cruel spasm. But he had to run anyway, out toward the train tracks and the cluttered industrial area behind.
    In the drainage alley, he saw him. The big laowai . The two colored guys had gone around one side, Banazak the other. He had a direct path to Louie Mo. Smiling, his face flushed, he started toward him. Louie’s adrenaline kicked in:
    In the narrow alley between two crappy houses, he can run between, split the gap. Instead, he runs straight ahead for the opposite wall. Cheating gravity, he runs up the cement and siding. Not all the way up for a reverse somersault, just a few feet up so he can launch sideways, fire a hook kick. It hits Banazak in the ribs, throws him off course and into a stumble.
    Somehow the big laowai corrects the stumble, uses his momentum to twist and grab Louie, slam him against the cement. Louie tries to spin; Banazak comes in low and inside, pummels him like a hanging side of beef. Louie doesn’t know what the hell is happening; feels like he’s lost a step. But on the fourth punch, Louie traps it. The hard, powerful slap downward— pak sao in Cantonese—not only clears the big man’s fist, it jerks him forward and low. Louie hits with a vertical fist. Then another. Then a half dozen, all in a blistering chain of vertical blows. An average man would crumple. Not Banazak. He rocks back two wounded steps, covers up like a boxer. “I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU,” the steroid giant barks as Louie runs for daylight then side-shuttles onto a fire escape, goes upward. All the while, his backpack miraculously rides one shoulder.
    Over the rooftops, Louie Mo runs. He can see the tracks and wishes that, like in a movie, the train would come at the perfect time and he could jump onto it, ride away. But there’s no train, no first AD directing him in an ear speaker, just a brutal jump down to dead tracks and scattered paper trash. How the black guys got onto the roof so fast, he can’t figure. But when he sees how they move, he can tell: athletes. “GRASSHOPPER BOY,” one of them yells. Louie has no idea why he keeps calling him “grasshopper” but he assumes, in the rush of the moment, that it’s a black guy thing.
    They come at him, one on each side. One is in a tae kwon do stance and appears capable. Very capable. The other has a gun coming out of a waistband, and he’s yelling like a cop for Louie to get on the ground. Banazak is on the roof now, breathing like a winded, wounded water buffalo. He and Louie lock eyes. The big laowai catches his breath, says something about Jesus.
    He doesn’t charge, he rampages. Yelling. Blitzing. His eyes almost roll back in his head. Louie cyclones, back fists the brother with the gun, drops low and shin-rakes the second one. From his position on the ground, he rolls. It’s the roll that a stuntman hopes will put out a full-burn if the fire extinguishers aren’t doing the job. He rolls right off the roof. This time, he doesn’t