Read Online Trouble by Kate Christensen - Free Book Online Page B

“She doesn’t need to; she’s indispensable to me and she knows it. Why does Mick call you ‘Shrink’?”
    “I lied to him last night and told him I was a painter,” I said. “You blew my cover. That’s why.”
    “You said you were a painter?”
    “He was hitting on me, and I was flattered.”
    “He’s a sleazeball. I think he’s a meth dealer, actually. It’s a good thing you didn’t go home with him.”
    I chose to ignore this little dig, hoping our prior conversation was just a hiccup and we’d naturally fall back into sync.
    “Aha!” I said. “I wondered how he supported himself. It certainly isn’t by writing operas. He was the boyfriend of an old client of mine. I let on to him last night that I knew her, and then I had to pretend not to be a shrink, so he wouldn’t realize that I was the one who convinced her to dump him.”
    When Indrani laughed, I laughed too, mostly with relief. “Oh my God,” she said. “What a weird coincidence.”
    “I know. You should have heard the things my client told me about him. The minute I realized who he was, I should have excused myself and walked away.”
    “How often does this kind of thing happen to you?” she asked.
    “Sometimes I see clients on the subway or in line for a movie. But something like this? Almost never.”
    Indrani reached forward, took a clementine from the bowl, and began to peel it. “Have you told Raquel yet that you’re leaving Anthony?”
    “You’re the only person I’ve talked to so far.” Peter was a stranger; he didn’t count.
    “I feel like a broken record, I know, but I’m worried about you. I can’t help it. And I’m worried about Anthony and Wendy, too.”
    “Thanks,” I said, but I didn’t feel grateful; I felt a bit insulted and nettled, although I wasn’t sure why. Had I really hoped she’d be excited for me? I must have, somehow.
    “Look at us,” she said, turning the peeled clementine in her hands like a tiny, naked orange brain, “you and me and Raquel. Remember we used to predict our lives and how we’d all end up? We had all those big ideas. I never thought I’d end up a single middle-aged professor, not in a million years. I was going to live in the country and write novels and have a bunch of kids with my perfect husband, remember? Did you ever think you’d end up a divorced middle-aged shrink?”
    “I’m not ending up just yet,” I said. “I don’t really see your point.”
    “And Raquel,” she said. “Sleeping with a twenty-whatever-year-old.”
    “Yeah?” I said. “So what?”
    “So,” said Indrani. “Maybe these are our so-called midlife crises. You leaving your husband, Raquel with a guy half her age …”
    “What about you?” I asked, trying to turn this into light banter instead of what it actually felt like, which was an unwelcome confrontation of some kind. “You’ve been alone since Vince. Isn’t it time for you to realize you’re gay and fall in love with a woman? Or maybe go to Jamaica and meet a native and—”
    “I think we’re all pretty pathetic,” said Indrani.
    “Indrani,” I said. “Come on.”
    “We are,” she said. “All three of us. What happened to us?”
    “Are you serious?” “Yeah,” she said.
    “But Indrani, we’re all doing just fine.”
    “Are we? Raquel is fucking someone who’s young enough to be her own kid, you just picked up some strange guy in a bar and you’re about to get a divorce, and I’m a lonely spinster with a terrace full of meth heads. I don’t know who’s a bigger loser here.”
    I laughed, relieved: she was kidding after all.
    “I’m not kidding,” she said, as if she were reprimanding all three of us, me, Raquel, and herself.
    I stared at her; I had seen this stern and somewhat puritanical side of Indrani before, of course, but not for a long time, not since we were in our early thirties. Back then, Raquel had just admitted to Indrani and me that she was a junkie; she had been taken to the emergency