Then Jamal hears the buzzing, sees the greenish cloud in his peripheral vision. Hive is attacking, too. This must be some joke attack, some mystery challenge, Hearts against Clubs, with the Discards thrown in for good measure. Jamal tries to turn, to see the cameras, but is still frozen.

  Hive's voice speaks from the cloud. "We're not after you, Stuntman. We want him." Weird; Jamal didn't know Hive could talk in this mode.

  Jamal can already feel the fluttering at his back—Brave Hawk swooping overhead from behind, like a bird of prey.

  Or, rather, prey itself. Hive's cloud envelopes him, forcing the winged Apache to flutter to a stop . . . long enough for Drummer to grab him with his upper arms, hold him fast with the middle pair, and start jabbing him with the lower. Brave Hawk struggles, but no one can stand up to a Drummer Boy solo, especially with Hive swarming and stinging. Jamal hears the crunch and crack of broken bones, the agonized groans. Why is this happening? Where are the goddamn producers?

  Miraculously, even though he is blinded by his own blood, his ribs visibly broken, Brave Hawk frees himself, unleashing a kick that staggers even the giant Drummer Boy. The winged Apache climbs up the railing of the deck, about to launch himself across the arroyo when he staggers and falls forward.

  A bloodied baseball rolls to Jamal's chair. "Got him!" Curveball, the snot-nosed kid whose only talent is throwing things, smirks at the edge of the deck. "Hey, Stuntman, you used to play ball—catch this!" Curveball raises her arm, about to fire again. But Jamal can't move! Curveball's arm whips forward and the deadly ball fills his vision.

  "You're going down, Stuntman."

  Jamal blinks. There is no ball. No invasion by rogue members of Hearts. Just Brave Hawk standing to his left, his fake wings obscuring the sun rising over the Santa Monica Mountains.

  A stupid bounceback dream.

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence." Jamal doesn't like Brave Hawk. He would have enjoyed seeing him beaten up by Drummer Boy and Hive, his head crushed by a superhot Curveball missile.

  "Look at yourself. How long have you been out here?"

  "Since last night."

  "When there's a perfectly good bed inside. Bad sign, my friend."

  Jamal could easily explain bounceback, the need for his body to thrash itself back into shape after being crushed by a safe that had become the object of an underwater tug-of-war between two aces. Not only would he have torn up the bed, he would have literally been bouncing off the walls. Tough on the room, even tougher on the rest of the Clubs who were trying to recover from their lackluster performance.

  No, it was better for Jamal Norwood to bounceback in the open, even if it meant chills, bug bites, and hallucinatory dreams.

  "What's this?" Brave Hawk bends to pick up a paperback dropped next to Jamal's chair. "Helter Skelter?" Clearly the Apache has never heard the title. "You're sulking out here, killing time reading. Going. Down."

  Jamal stands for the first time in hours. Stretches. It feels so good it's almost orgasmic. "So let me go. Why do you care?"

  "A, I'm your teammate. So I need you." One of the many things Jamal finds annoying about Brave Hawk is his tendency to state the obvious—and to break it into handy categories, as if his listeners were terminally stupid. "B, I have a proposal."

  "A," Jamal says, knowing Brave Hawk will miss the sarcasm, "our team is one bad challenge from being broken into spare parts. We are not competitive, so get used to it. And B, I can't imagine what kind of proposal would interest me." To make sure Brave Hawk notes his indifference, Jamal searches for the large drinking glass he left under the chair. Bounce-back always leaves him thirsty.

  "We need to team up."

  There's the glass. Empty.

  Now Jamal sees that the ever-present camera crew of three, led by crazy Art the producer, with silent Diaz the operator, has followed Brave Hawk onto the deck. All of them are yawning, resentful of the early call. "You guys need a beverage?"

  "No, no, that's okay," Art says, flapping his hands nervously. Jamal has already noted Art's terror at any violation of the fourth wall—the entirely fictitious notion that these wild cards are really conspiring, flirting, or fighting together unobserved. "Just pretend we're not here."

  "Too late, Art," Jamal says. But he turns back to Brave Hawk and tries to act. God knows he's had practice. But now the brave Apache has everyone on hold while he talks on his cell phone.

  The Clubs Lair sits near the spine of Mulholland Drive, surrounded by dry pines and junipers that in this hot, dry season require nothing more than a discarded match and the kiss of the Santa Ana winds to explode into flame. It hasn't happened here, yet some part of Los Angeles is on fire. Jamal can smell the smoke in the air. He coughs frequently. The pages of the paperback book blur as his eyes water.

  Bounceback complete, he could go back inside the house. But he would rather bear discomfort here on the hardwood deck than share space with the other Clubs at this moment—not to mention the camera crews.

  Besides, he is an L.A. native: the curves, drops, and hidden mansions of Mulholland are as familiar and comforting as well-worn sneakers. He knows, for example, that the A frame to the west belongs to a notorious Hollywood detective named after a dead musician. That the estate below him—its pool still shadowed by the hills—was where a former governor used to party with pool boys while publicly dating female rock stars.

  For all its rugged beauty, the setting is anything but peaceful: the smoke, the glare, the accumulation of irritants can make the most easygoing man turn violent.

  Brave Hawk finishes his call. "My girlfriend," he announces, as if Jamal could possibly care. "She's been reading the blogs and sees other alliances being formed. She says we need to team up, too."

  "Wise up, Cochise. All this game strategy stuff is that asshole Berman doing some 'viral promotion'." Michael Berman is the network executive for American Hero. Jamal has seen the Armani-clad dungeon master lurking at every audition, prep meeting, challenge announcement . . . seldom speaking, but clearly more in charge than the actual producers. "And what is 'everything'? Is she seeing who's going to win? What the next challenge is going to be? If your gal pal has that, let me know."

  Brave Hawk is persistent. "You think because you work in Hollywood, you know everything, but you don't, Stuntman. You and I—" here Brave Hawk makes a completely fruity gesture of clasped hands "—we could be an awesome team!"

  Jamal sees a nugget of truth in this—at least in the concept of teaming up against the other Clubs. But with this creature who looks like a John Ford Indian with wings? "Why me? Did Holy Roller already turn you down?"

  This is all the encouragement Brave Hawk needs. He leaps up on the railing of the deck. "I never asked him! And it wouldn't work—not as well as Stuntman and Brave Hawk. We're two of a kind, man!"

  Whenever Jamal hears that kind of talk from Brave Hawk, the pleasant images of his evisceration reappear. "We're both breathing. We both got talked into this project. I don't see what else we have in common."

  Voices behind him signal the emergence of Jade Blossom and Diver from the house, both indecently perky and girly at this hour—and dressed for a swim. Diver might as well not exist—Jamal only sees Jade, her eyes, the way she moves. Her mouth. He has become infatuated with her mouth, the way her lower lip slides forward whenever she is about to speak.

  Which she does, calling to Jamal, "What are you two doing over there? Scheming?" She and Diver start laughing, flirting with the camera team. It's all a big joke. Nevertheless, Jamal wishes Jade would approach him. They would make a great team.

  "Think about it, Stuntman," Brave Hawk says, insistently. "We're both people of color . . ."

  Jamal almost laughs out loud. People of color? Jamal is dark enough and has always known he was tagged as "black," but Brave Hawk? His wild card aside, Brave Hawk is no more ethnic in appearance than an Italian American. "And do what? Call ourselves The Red and the Black?" Jamal has read the novel; he knows without asking that Brave Hawk has never heard of Stendahl.

  In fact, Brave Hawk loves the phrase, jabbing his finger at Jamal like a fourth-grade teacher whose student just finished the multiplication tables. "That's the idea. Make these producers and judges think twice before they vote us off."

  "You mean play the race card, you and me."

  "Everyone else is using what they've got. Those girls are giggling and snuggling up to the judges and camera crews. Have you seen the way Curveball's been flirting with John Fortune? Rosa and Tiffani are even worse, and Pop Tart . . ."

  Jamal doesn't want to admit it, but Brave Hawk is correct. He's sure he's seen Pop Tart having the kind of intimate conversations only lovers have . . . with Digger Downs. "Why shouldn't we use the tools God gave us?" Brave Hawk says.

  But Jamal can already hear his father, Big Bill Norwood, the pro ballplayer, sneering. "The baseball doesn't care what color you are. Can you hit or not? That's all." He's heard that all his life—and unlike some of the pronouncements Big Bill has made—believes it. He knows he's put in the "black" category, but he can't honestly say it's held him back.

  "Wouldn't we be smarter to just win the fucking challenges?"

  "Yeah, how is that working for us?"

  Jamal barely manages to get the words through his teeth. "I just don't see how you and I singing 'Kumbaya' is supposed to stop the bleeding."

  Brave Hawk looks over his left wing at the crew—he is the worst actor Jamal has ever seen, and he's seen some bad ones—while slipping his right wing over Jamal. Even though the wings are an illusion, Jamal still feels enveloped in a smelly, scratchy blanket. "We agree not to vote each other off, for one thing. And if we find ourselves—oh, hell, trapped underwater or buried in quicksand—we share the oxygen tank."

  Jamal can't believe that the Apache ace believes what he's saying. "I tell you what, Brave Hawk. I will absolutely cross-my-heart promise not to club you over the fucking head with the tank. That's the best I can do." He slips out from under the protective wing. "Grow up, Cochise."

  As Jamal walks away, his legs finally working, he hears Brave Hawk say, "You'll be the next one out, Stuntman."

  Jamal can't resist. Right in front of Art and the camera crew, he pivots. "If it means getting away from you, sign me up."

  For a moment Brave Hawk doesn't react. Then, strangely, he bursts out laughing. He actually claps his hands together, like a happy infant. "Outstanding! God damn, Stuntman, you're good!" Then Brave Hawk looks past Jamal to the camera crew. "Did you guys get that?"

  "Yeah," Art says, "but don't point us out, okay?"

  "As long as you got it," Brave Hawk says, striding across the deck, daring to slap Jamal on the back. "Just another heated, interpersonal, real-life moment for the viewers of American Hero, right?"

  "You suck, Brave Hawk."

  For an instant, the Apache looks wounded. "The offer was genuine, Stuntman. I just made use of your rejection for the good of the show."

  And now Jamal really wants to kill him.

  What troubles him most is the realization that Brave Hawk is essentially correct: Stuntman has no offensive weapons, no arrows in the old quiver. He can only be reactive.

  Another reason to be bitter about what happened to him.

  He still remembers the night his wild card turned—far out in the Valley, so far out that the hills were rising again. It was the spring of his senior year at USC, where he was majoring in film and television. Part of the experience there was to work on everyone's student project. Who knew the pimply twenty-year-old serving as director might turn out to be the next Bryan Singer, and your ticket to a career on his crew.

  The other goal was to become the first Jamal Norwood—a Denzel Washington or Will Smith for the twenty-first century. And when Nic Deladrier asked him to play the badass joker in his student film, Jamal knew—just knew—it was the first step. Deladrier was not only the most skilled of all the senior year directors, he was ambitious as hell. He had friends in the business, an uncle working at Endeavour . . . this student film would be shown at festivals, and Jamal Norwood's name and face would be known throughout that strata of the business where young assistants and junior agents share bodily fluids, job recommendations, and gossip.

  The script called for Jamal, dressed in a leather outfit and mask as Derek Knight—wealthy amateur astronomer who, in the 1940s, discovered the approaching Takisian ship and tried to warn a skeptical America—to leap from the top of a water tank that had been painted the same color as the alien ship.

  The team had built a platform covered with foam rubber six feet below Jamal's launch point—out of frame. Jamal had practiced the leap four times, twice in daylight. He was ready to do it for Deladrier's camera.

  But as often happened in southern California in the spring, it had rained that day. Not just rained Seattle-style, but poured torrentially, like a typhoon. The surface of the tower was too slick for Jamal's boots. When he made the leap, he slipped—and missed the platform.

  The water tower was on a hillside. The drop to the base of the hill was, Jamal later learned, over a hundred feet. The base was jagged rock—not that he hit directly, he slammed into several tree branches before cartwheeling onto the rocks.

  What he remembered was the confusion of slipping, reaching for the platform—the horrified look on Deladrier's face as the director flew upward from Jamal's point of view.

  That was followed by the roller-coaster moment of freefall—no panic, just disbelief.

  Then a blinding, gasping impact, like being hit by a speeding truck. Shock mercifully suppressed the pain for a few moments. Long enough for Jamal to realize he had fallen ten stories onto the rocks and was still alive.

  He couldn't be certain. He was blind, deaf, without feeling in his arms and legs. For an eternally terrible moment he thought this was death.

  But then his vision returned, at least to where he could see the flash-lights of rescuers searching for him. As the roaring in his ears died down, like the temporary damage from a heavy metal concert, he heard voices, boots crunching on brush.

  A face appeared upside down above him—male, white, middle-aged, bearded. "He's here!" a voice called, far away. "Jesus Christ."

  The face turned away, and even through his damaged ears, Jamal could hear the man retching.

  Jamal Norwood lived; his wild card had turned. He was now an ace, albeit an ace whose power simply seemed to be the ability to bounce back from extreme violence, usually within twenty-four hours. The greater the damage, the longer his recovery.

  The accident changed his life in more subtle ways: in true Hollywood fashion, Nic Deladrier survived the near-disaster to land an assignment as director on Halloween Night XIII—and whether motivated by guilt or just the practical value of having an ace for a stuntman, the first thing he did was hire Jamal Norwood.

  Jamal resisted, until the pile of money got too high—and the offers to act never materialized.

  For the past five years he has gone from one gig to another, one set of gags—stunts—to another, well-paid, usually falling from a great height wearing pinhole cameras for that close close-up experience. He had been flung off a spaceship in One Against the Legion, dropped to the bottom of a pit and then buried under tons of cement in Hoover Dam, crushed by the giant stomping feat of a war machine run amok in the remake of Kronos. . . .

  Such was his life. It was almost Shakespearean, for God's sake. To fall, to almost die . . . and, painfully, to bounce back.

  Showered, with no visible signs of yesterday's damage, dressed, Jamal is ravenous. He heads downstairs for the kitchen.

  The Clubs are not expected to cook for themselves, any more than they are expected to choose wardrobe. "It's like we're back in grade school," Spasm had sneered, first day in the place. That was before they'd lost the second challenge, and voted his sorry ass off the team.

  Even so, meal times are fixed, and Jamal has missed breakfast. Nevertheless, he has been living on his own for five years and he is capable of cooking a meal. He begins searching through the refrigerator and cupboards for eggs, bacon, pans, cups, a process made more difficult because the mansion housing the Clubs has been designed for its visual imprint, not utility. To begin with, the kitchen has been painted a primary blue, a color that makes all food look unappetizing. And nothing is where it would logically be.

  He has managed to locate a frying pan when Jade Blossom enters. To Jamal's immense disappointment, she has exchanged the startling bikini for a tank top and baggy shorts, as if she were off for a morning at the mall. Still, she looks adorable. "That's ambitious," she says, noting Jamal's obvious search for the makings of a meal. "If you're looking for food after Holy Roller's been through here, good luck."

  "I'm just amazed the guy even fits in the building."

  "Or through the canyons."

  "They got him inside the truck. It was the truck that had to get up the narrow road." Jamal will never forget the comic insanity of Clubs move-in day . . . the face of the elderly female neighbor whose shiny Jag had to wait while the American Hero convoy of camera limo, Club Humvee, and moving van negotiated the hairpin curve just outside the gate. Riding with Jamal and Toad Man, Spasm had thought to have some fun with the woman. "What do you think, should I give her a little thrill? When was the last time she popped?"

  "You shouldn't distract the lady while she's driving," Toad Man had said with great indignity, beating Jamal by milliseconds. (There were useful wild card powers, and then there were the ridiculous ones: Spasm's ability to make other people orgasm or sneeze at will struck Jamal as proof that life made no fucking sense. Jamal wouldn't miss Spasm, now that he had deservedly joined the Discards.)

  Getting Roller out of the truck and into the mansion had taxed even the great minds of the American Hero team: ramps had been built to allow the gigantic ace to shuffle his way to the front door, but getting all five hundred pounds of the man out of the truck . . . well, it took both camera crews and a lot of sweating and cursing. "They should have used a crane," Toad had said, in all seriousness. "Isn't that what movie people use?"