The Unprofessionals by Julie Hecht Read Free Book Online Page A

know it at the same time.
    I knew nothing about illegal drugs. I’d never taken any, I didn’t go to Hollywood movies, and I turned off the news if it was about that subject. How it’s done I didn’t know, other than bits of what I’d witnessed in transactions right out in public in Washington Square Park. Sometimes when I had no choice other than walking along the park side, unsavory-looking youths would call out in my direction, “Loose joints.” Since I was used to hearing things called out to me and other young women, things like, “Short skirt,” “Long hair,” “Long legs,” “Cool boots,” I assumed the unsavory ones were commenting on the way we were walking.
    â€œI get to the restaurant and everyone is well dressed and I’m a delivery boy,” he said. “They’re giving me glances to that effect.”
    â€œHow well dressed could people be at a place called California Chicken?” I asked.
    â€œThis is what they do in L.A. They have nothing else to do but dressing up and associated chores. Oh, by the way, did I tell you who sat next to my mother and I last week at lunch in Beverly Hills?”
    â€œâ€˜My mother and me,’” I said.
    â€œIt sounds wrong—I know it’s right. My mother and me. Wait’ll you hear this. The one from the murder trial.”
    â€œThe prosecutor?” I didn’t want to think about her face.
    â€œNo, you know who, the one with all the plastic surgery,” he said.
    â€œThat’s all of them, I thought.”
    â€œNo, the worst one. The one who looks like a suntanned monkey,” he said.
    â€œIs she an actual person?”
    â€œYes. It’s unbelievable but true. She was with two friends, all with facial work, the kind of women who look like rich men’s mistresses. And they were all three on cell phones at the same time.”
    â€œThree? I’ve never seen that,” I said. “What were they talking about?”
    â€œNothing. Appointments for manicures and trainers. One had to go outside to finish the conversation. It sounded like an illegal transaction.”
    I tried to picture the boy, a person, in a restaurant, sitting next to these caricatures of people.
    â€œSo be that as it may,” he continued, “I get the lunch after waiting around in embarrassment for half an hour, I pick up the car, and go there and back in an hour. I’m back at the lot, I drive up in the Porsche. They’re all sitting outside with the costumes, and not one person has come to buy anything the whole day. One Puerto Rican woman from the neighborhood stopped to look at some things.” The hot, dry, dusty poignancy of the scene was getting through to me.
    â€œSo I take the lunch in and they’re all going through the order with anticipatory glee and this one director who’s kind of a pretentious intellectual and a nerd combined but thinks he’s great even though look at what he’s directing, he’s from New Jersey like everyone in California—did I tell you this? When my parents first moved here, I’d tell people I’m from New York and they would say, ‘Me, too,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, what part of New York?’ and they’d say, ‘Englewood, New Jersey.’ Or, I tell them I live near Gramercy Park and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, Greenwich Village. I used to hang out there.’ Anyway, this director comes out and sees the staff standing hovering at the lunch order and he says, ‘What’s this? California Chicken? Why wasn’t I informed?’
    â€œThey’re like, ‘Oh, we couldn’t find you,’ and he says, ‘Hmm, well there’s something they have there that I really love—rosemary chicken.’”
    These two words together always gave me a jolt. One, the green herb, the other, a dead bird—cooked together and served on a plate.
    â€œHe has the