LAST CALL
[The Talisker. Lacey Drummond's local in Dundee. A small, low-ceilinged pub on a side street off Perth Road, the kind of place where the music is whatever the bartender feels like and the carpet has been the same since 1987. Tuesday night. Late, but not last orders yet. Three regulars at the bar. Football highlights on a muted screen in the corner.
LACEY DRUMMOND is at the stool nearest the taps. Black hoodie over a Dundee FC training top, jeans, scuffed Doc Martens. Pint of 80 Shilling in front of her, half down. Phone in her left hand. She is reading something on it with the specific facial expression of a woman who is not impressed.
TAM, the bartender — sixties, working a glass with a towel — has been watching her not be impressed for about three minutes.]
TAM: That's the third time ye've snorted at yer phone, Lace.
LACEY: Aye.
TAM: Anything in it?
LACEY: Long bit of writing from a German woman about how she's gonnae beat me.
TAM: She not see the belt then.
LACEY: She seen it. She thinks it's an accounting error.
[Tam stops working the glass. The regular at the end of the bar — older, in a flat cap, nursing a whisky — half-turns.]
REGULAR: When's the match?
LACEY: Don't know yet. Federation's working on it.
REGULAR: She any good?
LACEY: Aye, she's good. She took me to twenty minutes at Ignition. The lassie can fight. I'm not pretending she cannae.
[She taps the phone screen. Scrolls. Snorts again. Sets it down face-up so Tam can see if he wants to.]
LACEY: It's the document, Tam. It's the document I cannae get past. She's written a fuckin' document. Nine numbered paragraphs. Schedule by the hour. Wrote down what time she's gonnae brush her teeth.
TAM: Champ.
LACEY: Mm?
TAM: When was the last time ye wrote anything down before a fight.
LACEY [thinks for a moment]: I wrote my name on the Ignition contract.
TAM: That's the lot of it?
LACEY: That's the lot of it.
[Tam laughs — short, quiet. Pours her another half without being asked. She nods at him.]
LACEY: It's no' that she's wrong about the math. She's right about the math. The match is the math. Time, weight, body, geometry, all that, aye. The bit she's wrong about — the bit she keeps missing — is that the math is no' what makes the difference between us. The math is what's the same between us.
[Beat. She picks the phone back up. Reads another line. Sets it back down.]
LACEY: She wrote two pages about my left wrist she thinks I'm protecting.
REGULAR: Are ye?
LACEY: Aye. Auld injury. Six years. Plays up when I sleep wrong.
REGULAR: She know that bit?
LACEY: She thinks she's figured out something secret. It's no' a secret. It's a Wikipedia page. I gave a Glasgow paper an interview about it in 2021. The lassie could've Googled.
[She lifts the pint. Drinks. Sets it down with a soft clack.]
LACEY: I'll tell ye what I'm no' gonnae do, Tam. I'm no' gonnae write a document back. I'm no' gonnae number her paragraphs and put little ticks beside them. I'm no' gonnae produce a counter-thesis. There's no thesis at this end of the bar. There's a pint and a champion and a Tuesday night, and that's the whole of it.
TAM: Champ — what are ye gonnae do, then.
LACEY: I'm gonnae go home in about twenty minutes. I'm gonnae sleep wrong on the wrist. I'm gonnae wake up tomorrow and go to the gym. The federation's gonnae give us a date and a venue and the lassie's gonnae walk to that cage with a clipboard and a hairnet and a clean white outfit. I'm gonnae walk to it with what I've got.
LACEY: And then we'll see whose math holds.
[She raises the glass briefly. The regular at the end of the bar raises his in return without saying anything. Tam keeps working the glass.
She picks the phone up again. Scrolls. Stops. Reads something. Snorts a fourth time.]
LACEY: Tam.
TAM: Aye.
LACEY: She wrote down what time she's having breakfast. Six in the morning. She's eatin' her cereal at six in the morning before our fight. Document says so.
TAM: That right.
LACEY: I'm no' eatin' breakfast that day, Tam. I'm no' eatin' breakfast that day on principle.
[She drinks. Tam pours the next half without being asked. She doesn't pick up the phone again.
End scene.]