Trouble Read Free

raucously passionate and tenderly thoughtful, like an improbable, best-of-both-worlds cross between Janis Joplin and Keely Smith, both of whom had, not coincidentally, been her greatest formative influences. The Shitheads had started performing her sultry, inventive jazz/rock songs at coffeehouses and at the student union; then they’d played at a couple of Friday-night socials, then started getting gigs downtown at a club called Satyricon. In our senior year, they were signed to a recording contract with a local label; the summer after graduation, they went on tour with a few other bands on their label and became college-radio favorites. After graduation, Indrani and I moved to New York, Raquel to Los Angeles with her band.
    Of the three of us, only Raquel, not surprisingly, had made it as any sort of artist. I, with typical pragmatic efficiency, instead of getting a shitty day job and using every spare moment to paint, which I wanted to do but knew I had no real talent for or future in, got my Ph.D. in psychology and became a shrink. Indrani, who knew she was too reserved and thin-skinned to be a journalist, had likewise gone for a Ph.D. and now taught English at Columbia.
    Meanwhile, Raquel lived in Silver Lake in an airy bungalow with a view. Her name was as familiar as Bonnie Raitt’s or PJ Harvey’s. Every time we saw her photo or name in an online review or article, Indrani and I sent it to each other by E-mail, our messages often crossing in midair in cyberspace. Even though she had never won a Grammy, her first solo album, Big Bad , had gone platinum in 1992; two more albums had quickly followed, and, although she’d been lying low, to put it politely, for the past decade or so, she was still a rich and famous rock star who looked a lot younger than forty-five. Not that Indrani and I looked like cows, ourselves, and not that we did nothing whatsoever to maintain our own looks as far as possible past their natural expiration dates, but Raquel was expertly professional about it in a way Indrani and I didn’t have to be. She’d had Botox and Restylane injections and got regular facial peels and dermabrasion treatments; she ate a stringently ascetic diet and followed disciplined regimes of Pilates and yoga and strength training. She both needed and deserved to look as good as she did.
    “Is she as crazy as they say?” Mick asked.
    “Every bit,” I said. “She’s cuckoo.”
    “Josie!” said Indrani, laughing.
    “Well, isn’t she?” I said, laughing, too. “Not that we don’t love her. Not that she’s not smart as hell. But she’s a whack job!”
    “You should know,” said Indrani merrily. “You’re the shrink.”
    There was a very brief silence.
    “Shrink,” said Mick. “I thought you were a painter.” “She’s just kidding,” I said without looking at Indrani. If I had said that to Raquel, she would have picked up on it right away.
    But Indrani said, true to form, “Are you really still painting, Josie? That’s great! I thought you’d quit all that a long time ago.”
    I looked directly at Mick. “I’m a painter manqué,” I said with rueful, flirtatious bluntness. “The closest I get to actually being one is telling fibs to handsome men at parties.”
    “I accept the compliment,” said Mick, “but the necessity of fibbing puzzles me. A shrink, is it.” I could see by the glint in his eye that he was not puzzled at all.
    “It’s a living,” I replied.
    “Yes, I’m sure it pays far better than painting. It was a pleasure to meet you, Doctor.” And then he slipped off into the kitchen.
    “What was that all about?” Indrani asked. “Is he afraid of therapists or something?”
    “I think I’d better go,” I told her. “I’ve had too much wine.”
    “Poor Josie,” she said anxiously, “but please don’t go. Do you want some seltzer or coffee?”
    “I don’t think they’ll help,” I said. “I have a wicked headache. I’m sorry, Indrani, I just need to lie