It was hot on the dance floor, you had to scream like a mad woman to be heard. He didn't ask her a question. It must have been something in his eyes.
That forced her to stop so suddenly that her hot pink skyscraping heels almost kept on without her. Brought her up literally short right at his heart. Her line of sight pointed directly at his aorta, because nature had shaped them so.
For no reason at all he reached out and held her head gently in his large hand to steady her as she tottered for a few seconds.
Her dignity seemed important to him and fragile. Like an egg toss across the disco floor. Or a heart carried, ****** and beating, in a spoon, during a sack race, and he feared for her. So he reached out to hold her. Her cranium, cradled in his warm, gentle hand, that easily held her head tightly to his chest.
The breath left her lungs like a heavenly absolution.
Some of the dancers near them swear to this very day that they saw the heavenly host or a choir of angels, some even say they saw alien beings, all around the pair of them, a man and a woman, who didn't even know each other's names, holding on to each other so lightly, on the jam-packed dance floor.
It was in August, in 1971, and nobody who was there, or who ever heard the tale, will ever ever forget the meeting of Merry and Oliver. It was a moment that will live forever.