A Friend Named Jan

Marianne has a friend named Jan whom we both admire, probably for the same reasons but not necessarily. We’d actually have to talk with one another to figure that out and we don’t do all that much talking. Intuiting and presuming, yes, and probably quite right in our conclusions, but one never knows. Jan was diagnosed with MS when she was in her late thirties. She’d had four kids by then and her husband, who couldn’t bear such a potent dose of reality, or didn’t share our view of Jan’s admirable character, had left her and their kids for a younger woman he met at his gym. I’d heard they moved to Florida but I didn’t get that involved. Only Marianne telling me from time to time that “that asshole Robert” had done something, or failed to do something that really hurt Jan and pissed Marianne off. I listened, but not too closely
Jan keeps body and soul together by sheer dint of effort that one can only stand in awe of. She is the executive director of a food bank. Raises money. Supervises staff. Keeps her Board happy. Raises the four kids, two of whom are in grade school and two in high school. Good kids too.
“I’m moving into a hotel room for a couple of weeks,” I tell Marianne.
“Right, no problem,” Marianne says. “You don’t need to explain to me what this is all about. You just move out for some unspecified period of time and you don’t have to bother telling me why, or what it’s about. You’re a nut case Joseph. You know that? I don’t want you going anywhere. And why should I?”
A good question my dear, a very good question. “Something has come up at work that has me frightened for my safety. I can’t run away. I don’t want to live at home and put you and the kids at personal risk. I just thought it would be safer.”
She looks at me trying to assess if what I am saying is real or true, if there is another woman, or another explanation. She is genuinely puzzled and not happy.
“Marianne, I just can’t explain this to you, and the less you know the better. You just have to trust me on this one.”
“No, Joe, that’s not going to work. It’s not the way this marriage and this relationship work. It is unacceptable.”

After we’ve fallen into bed together there is a haze that comes over the room. My mind itself seems hazy or drugged. Everything slows down. We kiss each other softly. Familiarly. I like her smell. I touch her everywhere I can: between her toes, between her thighs. She moans. I am far more into her pleasure than mine, playing her instrument. Ladies first, a philosophy that is always rewarded.