Graceful Abaddon

Tiananman Square (8)

9:18pm

When Susan sweeps towards the kitchen, like a timid breeze, Adam turns to watch her leave. Her dress, he thinks, is very disappointing. Floral patterns more at home upon a 50s-housewife apron wholly mask her figure. Her juicy butt cheeks, bulging firmly, dance their sensual majesty behind the blanket of her dress. The cleft of her arse is barely discernible. Really, this is a good thing. It means less distraction; less torture of his lustful mind. One cannot help being wistful though.

His strained position as her covered figure waddles off extends to impropriety. Reluctantly he turns his head around and back to Ivon. She wears a white, tousled, long-sleeved shirt – it looks like something Kate Bush might have worn in the 1980s; her sleek grey dress pants really look bizarre, only you can see the clear outline of her thong whenever she turns around. Like a tightrope into heaven, it dives deep between her cheeks. Adam yearns to bend her over his bed, slip his finger underneath the flimsy cotton, pull it back and feast on her until her pussy swells, the lips curved out like juicy folds of ravaged fruit.

Ivon is talking about something Adam gives no shit about.

"You know that album?"

"Sorry?" he sighs.

"Forbidden. The last album before Ozzie came back".

"Oh, uh, I didn't know he left them in the first place".

"Oh, yeah," Ivon nods. "Yeah. Like, fans were awfully dirty about it. And most people say Forbidden was their worst album. But, if you were to ask me, I'd say it's incredibly underrated".

"The only song I really know is Iron Man," Adam says. At this Ivon winks, like a secret joke has passed between them. God, don't ever wink, Adam cringes inwardly.

Ivon now starts to sing the opening guitar track on the one Black Sabbath song Adam knows and faintly likes. "Do do dooo, do do, do-dooo".

Adam hasn't bothered to tell her he really isn't into all that hard rock kind of stuff. Fucking AC/DC, Guns n Roses, Metallica – he can't stand any of them. He prefers the gentler stuff. Superficial bravado got him nowhere in school.

Had he wanted to encourage conversation with Ivon, he might have told her how much he hated the lads from his band now. How he felt they butchered his songs – lamenting meditations on despair and loneliness – corrupting them with thrashing drums, fuzzy distortion, fake machismo.

"Honestly though," says Ivon. Susan paces back into the room. "I think you would like their work. Like I said, they're playing in Bristol next week".

Susan wrings her hands distractedly. "I do hope nothing's happened," she says. She paces to the window looking out upon the street. She draws aside the curtain. "It's pouring like the end of the world out there".

"Have you checked your messages?" Adam asks.

"Of course I've checked my messages, Adam".

"There has to be a logical reason," adds Ivon, the helpful one.

On the staircase, tromping down, Chris moans "this is getting bloody ridiculous. I haven't eaten since breakfast, babe. Why don't we just start without them?"

Chris had set the table two hours earlier. Ivon tailed close behind him, gingerly adjusting the placemats and cutlery as he laid them down, grinning playfully when he raised his eyebrows at her.

"My wife thinks I can't differentiate between a soup soon and a spatula," he said awkwardly. Ivon just giggled, touching him lightly on his trousered hip.

Now, looking towards her husband standing at the bottom of the stairs, Susan is about to tell him off. She inhales, décolletage rising, then remembers Adam and her sister are here. She breathes out again.

On the couch and armchair, both Ivon and Adam sit there, watching her and Chris expectantly. For a moment it strikes her how dependent, how pathetic they both seem. There is almost something adorable about it. There they sit, awaiting her to call the shots. Like a couple of children.

With striking, though not alien force, an old pain hits Susan. She keeps her upright posture, but feels certain she will lose her feet. It feels almost like a crippling roll of sudden diarrhoea. Look at me, I'm old, she thinks. I'm an adult. I'm a wife. I'm a mother for crying out loud. No more Suzie Pett: the girl who shaved her legs each morning, who gave head to Phillip Ronson out behind the fence in Lake Grove Park.

She actually felt beautiful back then. Her tummy: flat and flawless like a baby's. The skin around her eyes was smooth and lineless. She had hair like glistening auburn, fiery in the russet splash of fading winter sun.

Now the whole world sees her differently.

A familiar urge creeps over Susan. She wants to run upstairs, to shut herself in the bathroom. Jab her fingers hard against her tonsils. Breathe the fumes of the toilet bowl – half chemical, half distant fart – and spill her guts. Then cry, then laugh, then cry and laugh again.

Susan swallows, deciding she will tell her husband just what he can eat if he's hungry. This is her night, and she wants to wait until her friend comes. No one is laying a finger on that roast until then. She opens her mouth, about to speak.

Then the doorbell rings.