INT. THE NIGHTCLUB. NIGHT.
MIKE, SAM, GENO and SMILEY are sitting at a table now. SAM is trying to roll a joint but she’s extremely high on the amphetamine cocktail that GENO gave to her. GENO keeps a wary eye on her as they talk and drink, and smoke the other joint that is being passed around.
SMILEY
Anyway Mike, I wouldn’t sweat it if I were you. Being scared of heights is a respectable phobia. Well they’re fucking dangerous aren’t they? I knew this girl at school, who was it? Can’t remember her fucking name. Laura Scott or something.
GENO
Smiley, for fuck sake, either be on planet Earth or go to Mars but make your mind up, yeah? Do you hear what I’m saying?
SMILEY
No, but listen. This girl right, what was she scared of?
MIKE
You probably, if she had any sense.
SMILEY
No. Cotton wool.
General noises of disbelief and derision from SMILEY’S friends. SAM laughs too hard.
SMILEY
I’m telling you straight. She was scared of it big time. It’s psychological, innit? A totally irrational fear of cotton wool. She couldn’t go near the stuff, I mean she’d start screaming, really fucking screaming like it was a masked murderer or something.
Everybody’s enjoying the story.
SMILEY
Coming to get her with a great big knife – that’s what she sounded like. She would totally freak, big style. Cotton wool! The most harmless fucking substance known to man.
MIKE
Oh yeah, like you know anything about harmless substances.
SMILEY
So any way, you know what we did?
SAM
Oh you bastards, something tight, obviously. What did you do?
SMILEY
Well it was summertime yeah, and it was really hot, too nice to stay in school right?
Still enjoying the story SAM gives up on trying to roll her joint. She passes it to MIKE and he gives her the joint that is lit. She tokes on it hard between giggles and bursts of laughter. When she isn’t smoking or laughing she’s drinking beer.
SMILEY
So we all wagged it and went down to Throstles. And we’re lying there in the sun going on about how hot it is, yeah? So then we take our shoes off and dangle our feet in the canal, start making all these noises of pleasure and saying how nice it feels. So she falls for it a hundred percent doesn’t she? She takes her shoes off and dangles her feet in the water, and she’s going “oh this is lovely isn’t it”, and all the time, while she’s not looking, we’re filling her shoes with cotton wool. She had DMs on so we stuffed it all the way down.
SMILEY lets everybody laugh for a bit before continuing.
SMILEY
As soon as she puts a boot on we jump on her don’t we? And at first she doesn’t know what’s happening and we pull her other boot on and she just thinks we’re being silly or something. But she can tell there’s something in her boots and she’s wriggling her toes around, working out what’s in there, and we tie her laces with these whacking great big double knots, they’re fucking rock hard, you’d need a fucking chain saw to get them off, and then she realises that her boots are filled with cotton wool. Jesus, you’ve never seen anyone go ape-shit like that. This scream came out of her and it curdled my fucking blood, I can’t tell you. She lay on the floor screaming like crazy and she was thrashing her feet back and forth, ten to the fucking dozen, but she couldn’t even bring herself to touch her laces, she was that terrified. She just lay there having hysterics with her feet paddling back and forth like she’d done a ton of fucking speed.
Everybody’s laughing. SAM is almost in tears with laughter.
SMILEY
I swear, if we’d put her on her feet at that moment she would have done the fastest hundred metres ever in the world. Couldn’t believe it!
SAM
You tight bastards! So what did she say after she got her boots off?
SMILEY
I don’t know. We just left her there didn’t we? She was going fucking mad. She’s probably still there now.
SAM
You evil bastard.
SMILEY
She probably rolled into the fucking canal.
They all laugh. SAM can’t stop, although she is beginning to feel unwell. The DJ has put on David Holmes’ “GRITTY SHAKER”. SAM likes it. She drags MIKE onto the dance floor. They start to strut their stuff. The whole club is heaving now to the music. Coloured lights play over the crowd, strobes flash intermittently. SAM is losing herself ecstatically in the smoke and the lights and the music. She is spending a huge amount of energy in her dancing and she is sweating profusely. The music continues beneath the following scenes.
