Falls, looking in the mirror, said: ‘I am gorgeous.’ She sure felt it. Eddie told her all the time, and wow, she never got tired of it. For no reason at all, he’d touched her cheek, saying: ‘I can’t believe I found you.’ Jesus!
A woman dreams her whole life of such a man. If all his lines were just lines, so what? It was magic. She was sprinkled in Stardust. True, she’d tried the cliches, the mush on toast of trying out his name to see how it fit: ‘Susan Dillon.’
Mmm. How about Susan Falls Dillon?
Needed work.
Eddie Dillon rolled off Falls, lay on his back and exhaled. ‘The Irishman’s Dream.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘To fuck a policeman.’
After the dance, she’d asked him for a drink. He’d had her. In the hall, the kitchen, the sitting room and finally, panting, he’d said: ‘I give up — where have you hidden the bed?’
As they lay on the floor, knackered, the age-old divide between the sexes was full frontal. She wanted him to hold her and tell her he loved her, to luxuriate in the afterglow. He wanted to sleep. But new-mannish educated as he partly was, he compromised. Held her hand and dozed. She had to bite her tongue not to say ‘I love you.’ Then he stirred, said: ‘I’ve a thirst on me to tempt the Pope. I’ll give you a fiver to spit in me mouth.’
She laughed and, victim of the new emancipation, rose and got him a pint of water. After he’d drunk deep, he gave a huge burp, rested the glass on his chest, said: ‘Jaysus, a man could love a woman like you.’
Ah! The perennial bait, the never-fail, tantalising lure of the big one. Her heart pounding, she knew she was in the relationship minefield. One foot wrong and boom, back to Tesco’s pre-frozen for one. She said: ‘I hope you were careful.’ He tilted the glass slightly, said: ‘Oh yes, I didn’t spill a drop.’
When finally they went to bed, he slept immediately. Falls hated how much she wanted to be held. Later, she was woken by him thrashing and screaming, and then he sat bolt upright. She said: ‘Oh God, are you OK?’
‘Man, the flashbacks.’
‘What?’
‘Isn’t that what the guys always say in the movies?’
‘Oh.’
‘Jesus, it was some movie.’
As Falls settled back to uneasy sleep, she ran Tony Braxton’s song in her head — ‘Unbreak My Heart’.
Eddie had all the moves. After he’d spent a night at her flat, next day she’d discover little notes, tucked in the fridge, under the pillow, the pocket of her coat. All of the ilk: ‘I miss you already’, or ‘You are the light in my darkness’, And other gems. Mills and Boon would have battled for him. Walking together, he’d say: ‘Can I take yer hand, it makes me feel total warmth.’
A God.
And what a kisser. Finally, a man born to lip service. She could have come with kissing alone and did often.