Pecking Order, page 10
“You call me and we’ll talk. Okay, Ivan? Because I need a new partner.”
The more she said his name, the more normal it sounded.
Ivan heard her out and nodded, while holding her business card in hand.
“Okay,” he mumbled. And he still had no response to her question.
Five
Family Ties
AFTER LUCINA’S SWIFT EXIT, Ivan continued to think to himself in silence.
Black money or money money? he pondered. But money is all green, he argued to himself. He continued to sit there at the table with her business card in hand.
“What was that all about?” someone asked him from behind. Ivan had begun to flip Lucina Gallo’s business card over and over in his right hand. But when he recognized Ida standing there beside him in her tasteful black dress, he slid the card into his jacket pocket.
“Oh, she was just asking what my plans were in party promotions.”
“She wants to partner up with you?” Ida assumed.
Ivan nodded. “I guess so.”
Ida studied his thoughtful posture. “So…what are you planning to do?”
Ivan was thinking more about Lucina’s questions than an immediate partnership with her.
He shrugged. “Well…I guess I’ll investigate it first.”
Ida nodded to him and grinned. “She’s been a part of some big parties in San Diego. I’ve seen her around before. You’re gonna have to step your game up to deal with her,” she challenged him.
Ivan laughed it off nervously. “Yeah, I think I know that already.”
Ida said, “Well, make sure we talk before you leave tonight, okay?”
He nodded to her and stood back up from the table to rejoin the crowd, only for Thomas Jones to pull him aside again.
“Now, this right here is more your style, Ivan. Get used to this kind of party and do it more often,” he commented.
Ivan grinned, but his mind was already traveling elsewhere. The fact was, he still couldn’t turn much of a profit while throwing polite business functions. Like Lucina had told him, virtuous affairs often didn’t make money. But Ivan wasn’t ready to express his thoughts on any of it yet. He continued to think it all over.
AT THE END OF THE EVENING, Ivan stopped to chat with Ida, like he had promised her he would.
“All right, I’m ready to head on home now,” he told her.
“Wait a minute,” Ida responded to him with a raised index finger. She waited for more privacy before she continued. People were still saying their good-byes near the doorway. When the opportunity presented itself, she asked Ivan, “You feel like having any company tonight, or are you on empty?”
Ivan was shocked. He stopped and stared at her before he commented. “Are you sure you don’t have to make any runs before or after?” he asked. He had become leery of Ida’s disappearing acts. He had little faith in any of her intentions. It was already approaching eleven o’clock.
Ida smiled and told him, “I’m taking off of work tomorrow.”
Yeah, but I’m not, Ivan thought. Since he was curious and surprised by her spontaneous proposition, he asked her, “Are you sure you’re not on empty tonight? I don’t wanna start something we can’t finish,” he hinted.
He figured he would be as bold as he needed to ward off any disappointments.
Ida grinned at him. “I guess we’ll find out,” she said, and left it at that.
IDA FOLLOWED HIM back to his apartment complex in La Mesa. During the drive, Ivan continued to wonder what had sparked her sudden assertiveness. He kept wondering if she would call him up on the cell phone with a change of heart again. But she never did.
“My place is not even ready for this,” he mumbled to himself behind the wheel. He still had flyers, tax paperwork, food, and clothes that littered his apartment from the week’s work.
Then he began to think of his image. Although his apartment complex wasn’t all bad, he figured a successful accountant and party promoter should have a snazzier place to rest his head at night.
To make things worse, when they arrived in the parking lot of his complex, Ivan spotted his neighbor Julio, smoking another blunt on their second-level walkway.
“Shit!” Ivan grumbled to himself. Now I gotta walk past Julio with her, with weed smoke all in the air. But it’s too late to do anything about it now. She’s here.
Ivan had turned down his neighbor’s offers to smoke another one after the first time, but he hadn’t had company since then, either. So as he climbed out of his car, before Ida could climb out of hers, he attempted to make eye contact to tell Julio to clear out of the way for him.
Julio caught Ivan’s eye and understood his gesture of concern immediately. He could tell by their dress that it was an elegant affair. So with a nod and a knowing grin, Julio calmly put out his blunt and walked back inside his apartment. He agreed to allow Ivan to walk by with his dressed-to-impress date in peace.
As soon as Ida reached the second level of the apartment complex beside Ivan, she was still able to smell the lingering smoke of the weed.
To Ivan’s surprise, she inhaled deeply and commented, “Somebody has some strong reefer around here.”
Ivan chuckled guardedly. He joked, “It sounds like you want some.”
Ida looked at him and grinned, with no verbal response.
What does that mean? Ivan asked himself. Does she smoke…?
He ignored his question and made it inside his apartment with her.
Once inside, he clicked on a dim lamp in the living room to maintain an evening mood.
Ida noticed the laptop, pizza box, tax papers, and old work clothes that were strewn around his living room floor, sofa, and coffee table, and chuckled at it.
“Looks like somebody’s been working overtime in here.”
Ivan grinned. “Yeah.”
Ida walked over to inspect the family photos that Ivan had set out on the open spaces of his entertainment center.
“Your mother and brother?” she asked him.
“Yeah,” he answered, while cleaning up his work area.
“Looks like those eyes of yours run in the family,” she mentioned. “How much older is your brother?”
She could tell that his brother was the oldest by the swagger in his stance and the seriousness of his grille.
Ivan answered her while cleaning up. “He got me by five years.”
“That makes him thirty-three?”
Ivan joked, “Yeah, so you want him now instead of me?”
Ida picked up the sarcasm and read the story inside of the joke. “So, your brother’s the real player,” she assumed. “And let me guess; he’s been stealing all of your girlfriends since your late high school years?”
Ivan laughed while walking off toward his bedroom. He carried old clothes in hand.
“Not exactly,” he told her. When he returned empty handed, he added, “But he has had his share of women.”
Ida continued to stare at his family photos. She said, “But your mother still gave you the bulk of her attention.” She concluded that from the smiles that Ivan and his mother held in the picture, while his taller and older brother looked too bothered to smile.
Ivan hesitated. “Well…I guess you could say that,” he conceded. “But not really. She just gave us attention in different ways. But he would probably say that,” he admitted to her.
“So, in his eyes, you were the spoiled little brother who got a chance to go away to college,” she assumed again.
Ivan grimaced and turned his scowl into a grin. “How are you coming up with this?” he asked her.
Ida walked toward him and away from the photos when she answered him. “Well, I notice that he has the tattoos and such on his arms, with a long, counterculture hairstyle, while you’re pretty much a clean-cut corporate college boy all the way.”
Ivan laughed. But he didn’t like all of her insinuations. He felt he needed to add a bit of spice to his image for her.
“I’m not that clean-cut,” he told her as she approached him.
Ida walked right into his face. “I wouldn’t want you to be.” She took ahold of his waist to get closer to him. She said, “But I’ve been watching you, Ivan. And I do like what I see.”
He stood his ground and looked into her dark eyes with his light ones as they closed in on each other.
“Sometimes I couldn’t tell,” he told her. “Seems like you wanted to run away from me.”
Ida finally kissed him on the lips and moaned, “Mmm, I had to make sure first.”
Ivan kissed her back. “Make sure of what?”
“That you were who I thought you were,” she answered. “So I had to wait you out. But I liked you. And I see that you’re very determined and focused.”
She kissed him again.
Ivan asked her, “You couldn’t tell that from the beginning?”
She stopped and stared at him. “Men can seem like a lot of things in the beginning, things that don’t pan out in the end. But now I’ve been around you enough to know. You’re stable. And I like that. But let’s not talk anymore. Your cologne is killing me.”
She went after his neck with a passionate tongue, while reaching with her hungry hands to unbutton his black shirt.
Ivan responded by reaching his hands around to her firm ass to caress both of her cheeks.
She probably likes it a little rough, he assumed from her assertiveness. So he reached down to the bottom of her dress and pulled it up enough to grab ahold of her thong panties.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” he told her.
“I know,” she moaned. “Me, too.”
Ida stepped out of her thong while still kissing him. Once she had unbuttoned and pulled off Ivan’s dress shirt, she went after his pants.
In minutes, they were both naked and dripping with lust, right there in his living room.
Ida pulled out her own protection from her handbag to roll down on his throbbing erection. And instead of them hiking back to the bedroom, Ivan took the initiative to bend her over his living room sofa and take her from behind.
“Ivan, what are you doing?” she moaned. “We can’t do it like that. I’m a lady.”
However, she failed to put up a fight to stop him. So Ivan ignored her and continued his rough play.
“Yeah, and I’m a man,” he told her with his first stroke inside.
Ida moaned and took his pounding from behind, moaning louder with every stroke. “Unh! Unh! Unh! Unh…”
As it began to feel good to him, Ivan poured on the heat with more speed and pressure, grabbing her firmly by the hips with both of his hands.
“Oh, I-van! Oh, I-van…” she moaned to him as he continued to pound into her. But as Ida began to call out his name in both of its syllables, Ivan flashed back to his brief conversation that night with Lucina Gallo.
I-van Da-vid, I’m Lucina Gal-lo, he heard her voice addressing him again. In a flash of mental distortion, Ivan began to imagine that he was taking Lucina Gallo from behind instead of Ida. And he began to talk to her.
“You want me, don’t you? You want me.”
“Yes, Ivan. Yesss!” Ida squealed.
“I know you do. But you were fronting on me, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she told him. “I had to make sure first. Ooooooh,” she moaned to him, and shook in her stance.
Ivan held on to her and closed his eyes, still thinking of Lucina.
God, this feels good! he told himself. He could feel the pressure of his climax beginning to mount. With his eyes closed, the image of Lucina’s stern, seductive glare was crystal clear to him.
I want you so bad, girl, he imagined telling Lucina, while he continued to push himself inside of Ida from behind. I want you as bad as you want me.
When the climax hit him, Ivan lost control of his stroke and began to bounce on his toes in a hot, naked, and sweaty convulsion.
“Oooohh, shit, baby,” he moaned back, gritting his teeth and squeezing Ida’s body into his. The climax was so strong it felt as if he would fill up her entire body from the tips of her fingers down to the curls of her toenails.
Ida squeezed her own eyes so tightly that tears of joy leaked down her face.
When it was over, Ivan slumped limply over her body, exhaling loudly from the back of the sofa.
“Okay, Ivan, let me get up,” she told him.
She pushed him away and straightened up. She headed toward his hallway bathroom. “Do you have a washcloth and a towel I can clean up with?”
Ivan stretched back up himself to answer, “Yeah.”
He headed toward his closet to get her what she needed.
When Ida closed the bathroom door to take a shower, Ivan stood naked inside his living room. He began to shake his head at how insane his thoughts had been.
“This is crazy,” he mumbled to himself. That damn girl got me wide open. And I don’t even know her like that.
He was referring to Lucina. He then thought about the obvious disrespect to Ida, who had waited patiently for him in vain.
Ivan shook his head, knowing himself. If I’m already thinking about someone else on my first time with her, then Ida don’t have a chance in hell at keeping my attention.
“Damn,” he grumbled. “That’s just fucked-up timing.”
After Ida took her shower and joined him naked in bed, Ivan remained conflicted with guilt. Nevertheless, with a naked woman in his bed all night, he took full liberties with her body whenever he found himself aroused again.
IN HIS CUBICLE at the offices of Hutch & Mitchell the next morning, Ivan continued to feel guilty and confused about Ida. His thoughts had even distracted him from his work. He had been going over the same pile of paperwork at his desk for an hour.
There’s nothing I can do about how I feel, he argued to himself. If you slow, you blow.
He now thought, nonstop, about a possible business and pleasure relationship with Lucina Gallo. How exactly would that work?
A woman like her probably has a man already. Then again, maybe she’s strictly a businesswoman, he told himself.
So I could end up doing a partnership with Lucina and still have Ida right in the middle of things, collecting money at the door. How would Ida take that? Would she care? I know she has to feel some way about it. Lucina would end up being her boss.
As he continued to be distracted that morning, Dwayne Bellamy approached him at his cubicle and broke through his ruminations.
“Hey, Ivan, can I see you in my office a minute?” he asked.
Ivan looked up and snapped out of it. “Oh, yeah, just give me, ah, a few minutes.”
Dwayne nodded and walked off toward his office.
Ivan gathered himself for the meeting. I wonder what he wants.
As soon as he entered Dwayne’s office, he was told to close the door behind him.
Right outside of the door, Chip Garrett walked by and noticed the privacy. He wondered what was going on as well.
Ivan sat down in the chair across from Dwayne’s desk and continued to imagine what he was there for.
Dwayne, wearing a typical dark blue business suit, looked over at Ivan across his desk and nodded stoically. “So, what have you been up to lately, Ivan?”
Ivan shook his head, still wondering where Dwayne was going with this.
“Nothing much, man. Business as usual,” he answered.
“That’s not what I hear,” Dwayne commented. “I hear that you’re the new party man around town. IDPromotions.com, right?”
Dwayne was all smiles with it. But Ivan had no idea what his smile meant. His heart leaped into his chest as he felt blindsided. The last thing on his mind was the guys at the job figuring out his extra hustle that morning. Every other morning he had been prepared for it.
It figures. As soon as I let my damn guard down, I get the hammer, he thought. This is great fucking timing!
He played it cool and said, “Oh, yeah, well, you know, it’s a pretty good way to meet other professionals in San Diego.”
Dwayne continued to smile and nod. “I see,” he commented.
Ivan wondered if the fellow black man felt slighted. Ivan hadn’t invited him out to any of his functions. So he continued to wonder where Dwayne was going with this.
He said, “Yeah, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it at the office. I didn’t want it being a distraction to anyone at the job concerning my work. Because I always get my work done,” he quickly defended himself.
Dwayne sat there and continued to grin, while watching Ivan squirm. Finally, the middle manager chuckled. He said, “I know you carry your weight well around here, Ivan. You don’t have to defend your work record to me. That’s why I always lean in your direction to set examples for the other staff members. You’re not one of the complainers. You just get it done.”
Ivan nodded to him. “Thank you.”
Then Dwayne let him have it. “I’m just wondering why you never invited me out.”
Ivan felt another sack of guilt tossed on his back to carry around that morning.
He said, “Well, can I be frank here?”
“That’s why I asked you to close the door,” Dwayne told him.
Ivan nodded. “Okay, well, you know, you and I haven’t really had that kind of relationship here, and I felt that if I invited you out to something and not Chip and Mike…You know what I mean? So I just decided not to go there.”
Dwayne heard him out and continued to nod. He said, “I understand. Trust me. I often go through that dilemma myself. Am I a black man today or just a professional accountant? Am I a professional accountant today or just a black man? It still gets confusing sometimes. I just figured I would ask you about it, that’s all. I was curious.”
“Yeah, well, it was nothing personal against you, or any of the other guys at the office. But at the same time, like I said, I didn’t want anyone complaining about me doing a little something extra after work,” Ivan explained.
Dwayne said, “Well, that’s why I called you into my office. It seems you brought in a few new clients from your network parties, and we’re still discussing it with a few others.”
