"I didn't say it was effective," he said, further irritated, "just rehearsed."
"It was effective," she replied, "just like when I'm drivin' wit' the homeboys!"
Being compared to a 'homeboy' moments after being compared to a fussy three-year-old certainly wasn't on the British gentleman's list of usual things, and he seemed undecided between acting bewildered or insulted. Then he opted for amused, and his laughter was a short bark.
He said in a barely-not-mocking tone, "Miss Melendez, I commend you. You are formidable."
She could tell that this was almost high praise from such a man as her passenger, though after a moment she realized he was just acting the part he thought she wanted him to play. But she didn't care one way or the other.
"The hardest exteriors develop on those with the softest interiors," Alé answered without pretension.
"Oh, Miss Melendez, you are so right. It is rare that someone has struck me so with their insight. You have struck me to the core of my being. You see through me, Miss Melendez. I am, at my essence, a deeply sentimental man, so soft of heart that I must gird myself with plates of iron to protect myself. Pray, forgive me my rudeness. Do tell me more."
She just let his terse sarcasm run until he ran out of things to say, and then, quietly, she replied.
"You can be as rude as you like, mister, but you can do that from the side of the road," she said, unfazed by the sour taste of this man's attitude. He fit into a certain type she was well acquainted with, the type of unpleasant but self-important person who, when confronted with someone they believed too stupid to discern the difference between disingenuousness and sincerity, overtly lied with telling overtones of sarcasm.
With a huff, he changed the topic as easily as turning the pages of a book, not even bothering to argue that he had been entirely sincere; he could tell that he wasn't fooling her.
Strangely, she found that this reaction on his part was a tacit acknowledgement of her intelligence, and somehow she respected him a little bit more in return.
"So, you are a frequent visitor to gang territory," he said, not looking at her, and she sensed that they were progressing to a more mature level of conversation. "What on earth possesses you to pursue that line of work is beyond me; gang-banging is the most pointless game of which I've ever heard. Of course they're raised in a culture of poverty with no expectations or dreams..."
He laid his phone down and pressed the tips of his fingers together, drawing his hands near his face and letting his body relax as it lay back in the seat, apparently overcome with thought.
"I suppose you have a different name by which you gain entry to those circles?"
"La Perra Azul," Alé replied pleasantly, finding it funny that he would know anything about gangs. "In English, 'The Blue Bitch.'"
"Because you wear blue," he observed, turning his head and noting her jeans and denim jacket with disdain. Of course he would look down on her, with his svelte tailored shirt and elegant, wrinkleless trousers and his shiny leather shoes and his dapper blue scarf and his swelteringly-heavy wool coat. "How...imaginative."
"I got street cred, though," she replied, not caring that he wasn't impressed. "Anyway, I'm not alone. I have several 'partners in crime.'"
"A whole clan of social workers, I imagine. Did you graduate from university together?"
"Some of us," she admitted. "Most from USC."
"Mhm," he said, giving her a sideways glance of disbelief.
"Not me, though," she added with a slight smirk. "I'm a Bruin."
"That means...?"
She sighed, remembering he was not from the area, and realizing that he probably did not watch football. "I went to UCLA."
"Oh. That is more what I would expect," he agreed, apparently familiar with the universities' reputations, and she took his tone as one of approval, though she could have been wrong.
"So...yeah." She didn't know how to follow up further, so she took another sip of the glass-bottled vanilla frappauccino she'd bought at the convenience store and tried to swig it in a terrifyingly masculine manner.
He was apparently nonplussed at her impulsive intimidation tactic, possibly because she clanked the bottle against her front teeth a bit too hard and had to bite her fist against the pain.
"And so you're going to Santa Barbara late on a Friday night on behalf of a client because...?"
He didn't really have a right to ask, but the challenge in his voice followed a meekening humiliation, so she replied, rather pouty.
"It isn't a waste of taxpayers' money, if that's what you're implying. I'm not employed by the state."
"Not what I was saying at all," he replied, though he was beginning to get interested in his phone again. "Just curious."
She took a reasonable sip from her bottle of coffee and said nothing, focusing on the black road ahead of them.
Taking her non-response as a sign that she didn't believe him, he added, "The profession of social work in England, in my experience, is very tepid and involves furious middle-class women who've never seen a crime happen in their lives defending snot-nosed brats who broke some equally snot-nosed citizen's windows because it was the environment that somehow caused them to do it."
"That's a total misreading of the profession, mister, and I bet you know it."
He smiled with a smug superiority that confirmed his narcissism, managing at the same time to appear indifferent, his eyes attentive only to the demands of his mobile. "Then tell me how I'm wrong."
"You're not seeing the people in the field if all you're basing your knowledge on is people you see in court. That's just one kind of work, you know. Frequently relegated to the 'middle-class' females who were fine in school but can't bear to see a corpse splattered on the street."
"Indeed," he said, and put his phone in his lap, within reach but not in hand.
She glanced at it, since she could somewhat see the screen, and he turned it over firmly.
"There's so much more to social work than defending disadvantaged children in court and wresting children from their drug-addicted mothers."
"Oh yes," he noted, "that's something else that I've heard quite a lot about. Especially with many people who take themselves to be prospective clients."
"It seems you don't take that kind of work, then?" Alé asked to clarify.
"No. I do not take on missing persons or matters involving the judicial system or social services except in truly extraordinary circumstances."
"What constitutes extraordinary circumstances?"