The needle is blunt. Feel the vein flex as it penetrates.
Disintegrate into dyspraxia. [close-up in wing mirror] Of neon
city lights shifting in blurred super slo-mo. Constant rumble
of tyres on road. Romanski feels such dissolution of ephemeral
expanse, confluence of blood and sinew. The last strands of
his existence strung out across the sky. His body accelerated
into a million particles of ephemeral dust dispersed in
cosmos. [Soundtrack on car audio: The Doors’ Riders on the
Storm]

​

Up front Johnny Tabasco in silver eye-shadder, bleached jeans
and faded old Led Zeppelin t-shirt is amped up on amphetamines
at the wheel, his spaced out ping-pong ball eyes reflected in
rear view mirror. Romanski, speedfreak skinny lying across the
backseat drinking Jack Daniel’s, staring at reflections
shifting across rear winnder.

 

JUMP CUT TO:

​

Girl, naked, comes out of bathroom in seedy hotel drying
herself w/towel, dresses, puts on wig, reapplies make-up in
dressing table mirror. Camera panning around naked man in
catatonic state numb to sight or sound lying in fetal position
on bed (we cannot tell if he’s alive or dead) sound of
television permeating the thin walls from room next door.
There’s an empty beer bottle and half-eaten TV dinner on
bedside table. The room is illuminated in phantasmal light and
through the flimsy yellow drapes we see the Ford pull up
outside.

[insert shot] Chromium revolver, pearl handle, open chambers
w/shells therein. The girl’s painted fingertips, face [out of
focus] disguised in half-shadder, her bouffant blonde wig, red
lips, a phone number written in Kohl eyeliner on the back of
her hand.

​

JUMP CUT TO:

​

Narrow, fast-cutting shots of passing cityscape. The girl now
in passenger seat holding red leather handbag filled w/cash.
Johnny Tabasco passes the bottle of Jack Daniel’s back to
Romanski who takes it and drinks, looks out each of the
winnders in turn at orange street lights, occasional burst of
passing car headlights, reflections shifting across the car’s
gleaming black paintwork.

​

JUMP CUT TO:

​

Romanski and the girl sitting at table in all-night café.
Depressing shade of dishwater grey in stark strip lighting
bleeds into the frame. This was the colour palette of the
time; mid 1980s, everything a kind of pale washed out greyblue
and that’s how Romanski remembers it all.

The girl writing out postcards w/rocket-red lipstick, pack of
menthol cigarettes on table. (In this scene the colours are
all fluorescent, her face in close-up is starkly lit,
contrasted detail w/slight light-bloom effect) Small beguiling
scar visible on her cheek. Behind them Johnny Tabasco is
leaning against the wall inserting coins into payphone, tattoo
of a pink love heart pierced w/black arrow on his left
forearm. He looks fatigued, listening intently, receiver
pressed to his ear w/shoulder. Romanski and the girl exchange

deliberate glances, Johnny Tabasco shrugs and hangs up phone,
walks over to the pinball machine in corner.

​

FADE TO BLACK