Pecking Order, page 16
Lucina said, “You mean at the Padres party outside of the Market Street Hotel in the early summer? You were standing on the sidewalk trying to get in. And you were wearing a striped light blue shirt, dark blue jeans, and brown leather shoes.”
Ivan was ready to jump up from the table. He lost all of his business savvy and blurted, “Get the fuck out of here! No fuckin’ way! There’s no way possible you can remember me from just a look on the sidewalk with all these new people you meet.”
He started shaking his head again with an even bigger grin. He mumbled, “Naw, naw, naw, that’s just…that’s just…” She had to have some kind of trick up her sleeve. Had one of her girls taken a picture of him that night without him noticing? Her story was outright freakish, and Ivan had run out of words to express it.
Lucina told him, “I have a way of looking at people without them knowing that I am looking. And I take a mental picture. I have been doing it for years. And I can remember them down to their fingernails. It is a gift from God, so I learned to use it. But when I first saw you, I had no reason to know you yet. You were not even in the party crowd. But I could see in your eyes that you were searching for something more in your life. So I told myself right then and there, That man has a look and determination about him that can take him many places if he decides to go there. I said, But right now he is still undecided.”
She continued, “So, once I sat down with you at the wine house and I realized who you were and what you were doing, I told myself that I would save this conversation for when I need it. And I knew that you would be impressed. So hopefully, Ivan, now that you know all of this about me, you will take my advice and go as far as you can go.”
All Ivan could do was stare across the table at her in a child’s wonder.
He cracked another smile and thought, Yo…they have no idea. This girl is just…fuckin’ dangerous! Or maybe she’s just fucking with me. Either way, I guess I’ll find everything out soon. Because she can’t keep saying all the right things forever.
Eight
Deeper & Deeper
WHEN IVAN DROVE HOME from his long fact-finding dinner with Lucina, he was still on a natural high from their conversation.
“That girl’s something else,” he told himself.
The whole time, she had managed to dodge answering any specific questions about the operations of her “girls.” And although Lucina may have been well experienced in handling the advances of popular and wealthy men, Ivan could easily see that a number of her girls would not be as well prepared.
Nevertheless, her inspired speech on the subject of a woman’s disadvantage to men made him think of apologizing to Catherine. So he called her cell phone on his way home, only to get her voice mail.
At first he hesitated. He could call her back at a much earlier hour the next day. But he decided to leave her a message instead.
“Hey, Cat, this is Ivan. I hate to call and leave you a message so late on a weeknight, but I just wanted to apologize to you for how we’ve fallen apart as friends. I mean, I know it’s a cold world out here for a girl, but…it ain’t that easy for a guy, either. It’s a lot of tough decisions that gotta be made, day after day. Anyway…call me. Let’s chit-chat.”
By the time Ivan pulled into his apartment complex, Catherine was calling him back.
He read her number and answered, “Hey.”
“Hi, Ivan, I just wanted to call you back to tell you that I’m all right,” she responded. “I understand what you’re up against out there. And I wish you all the best of luck. But your brother pretty much explained everything to me. I was being a typical spiteful woman. But at the end of it all, you just gotta do what you gotta do. And I need to respect that.”
That all sounded good to Ivan, everything but the brother part.
He said, “My brother explained everything to you?” That didn’t sound right, unless the explanation led past words. That was more his big brother’s style: use whatever you have to use to hit the skins.
Catherine answered, “Yeah, that night at the party. I mean, I really got messed up, so he basically had to drive me home that night. And on the way, he told me everything that you were trying to do, you know, with taking care of his family and whatnot. I mean, he really explained a lot of stuff. And he’s proud of you and what you’re doing. So I really had to back up and understand the position you’re in.”
Ivan was at a loss for words. He thought, Damn! My brother’s proud of me? And he told her everything about his three sons and three mothers. That’s crazy! I must be really doing something, then.
He said, “So…D. told you all of that?”
Catherine chuckled. “Yeah. Why, you don’t think he should be proud of what you’re doing?”
“I mean, I guess. But you thought I was tripping when I first started talking about throwing parties.”
“It was just so different for you, that’s all. You never were even a party person. But it’s late, so…I’ll just talk to you tomorrow or whatever.”
“Okay. Have a good sleep.”
“You, too.”
Ivan hung up his phone, climbed out of his car, and felt great. Everything was falling into place for him. So when he spotted Julio up on the second level of the complex, smoking a cigarette instead of a blunt, he remembered to ask him about his cousin in the Dr. Dre camp.
“Hey, Julio, what it is, what it is, man?” he asked, extending his hand for a shake.
Julio shook his hand and smiled. “You’ve been pretty busy around here, man. I’ve been busy, too,” he commented. It was a little too chilly out to wear no shirt that night, so Julio wore a black sweatshirt with black jeans.
Ivan looked over his neighbor’s low haircut and thought again about Lucina’s comments on cutting his hair down.
“Hey, man, how long have you had your hair cut low like that? How long can it grow?” Ivan asked him out of the blue.
Julio grinned and said, “My hair would grow all the way down my back if I let it. But I don’t feel like dealing with my hair that much every day. It kept getting way too dirty in the landscaping business. Too much flying dirt, and plants, trees, cut grass. It’s a lot easier to wash all that shit out if I keep it low. Plus it makes me look like a badass. More macho, you know.”
Ivan said, “How do you think it would make me look?”
Julio stopped and stared at him. “Ahh…I don’t know, man, those funny-colored eyes of yours would probably pop out more or something.”
Ivan nodded. “So you think they would stand out more?”
Julio took another drag from his cigarette and nodded back to him. “Yeah. You would have nothing else to look at,” he answered with a chuckle.
“And what if I put a diamond stud in my left ear?” Ivan asked him next.
Julio looked at his ear and imagined it. He smiled and said, “That would be pretty cool on you. Especially if you bought one of those diamonds with the colors and shit in them. Like…like those blue and yellow diamonds and shit. That would go real well with your eyes. But me and my dark eyes, I might as well get a hard white diamond.”
He asked Ivan, “Why, are you trying to change your look now or something? What would the people at your job say?”
“Man, fuck the people at my job,” Ivan snapped. “I’m just thinking about me right now.” It just came out that way. He figured Julio thought too much about authority.
Ivan’s raw response made his neighbor laugh.
Julio said, “Hey, man, that’s the way you gotta be sometimes. No more Mr. Nice Guy.”
Just as Julio said that, his wife poked her head out from their apartment door.
“Papi, are you coming in to bed soon?”
Julio looked irritated. “Yeah, I’ll be in in a minute.”
His wife paused inside the doorway. “Okay, but you said that before, thirty minutes ago.”
Julio said, “Yeah, but it’s still minutes, it’s not hours. I’ll be there. Damn, I’m catching a smoke out here.”
His wife looked ready to say a few more things, but then she looked at Ivan and decided not to.
“Hi,” she said to him. She was a pretty woman, but extrasmall. She barely stood at five feet. Julio stood at least eight inches taller.
“How are you doing?” Ivan responded to her.
“I’m good,” she said. And she closed the door.
Ivan joked, “You better get on in there, man.”
Julio took a drag from his cigarette, shook his head, and slid the closed fist of his right hand up and down near his torso to simulate masturbation.
Ivan laughed and said, “Yo, man, I actually wanted to talk to you about getting in touch with your cousin Mike Elizondo. I want to see if I could hook up with some of the musicians they produce to bring them down for a San Diego party or something.”
Julio got excited. “Yeah, man, how are your parties going now? I heard your ads for the Chargers party on the radio. I really wanted to make that one. I.D. Promotions is blowing up now, hunh?”
“Not if we can’t keep the momentum going,” Ivan said, leveling with him. “We need to start bringing in celebrities now.”
“Well, just say the word, man, and I’ll call Mike,” Julio told him. He said, “You know, I don’t really bug him a lot because he’s busy all the time, but if you wanna talk business, that’s different. We can call him right now.”
Ivan said, “Well, just get some party price tags for now. Like, how much would some artists charge just to be at the party as a guest DJ or something? And I could just have the artists tell the DJ to play their favorite new songs while they chill and drink.”
Ivan already had it worked out in his mind. A celebrity would sit in the VIP section with plenty of hot girls and his or her entourage, and he or she could get on the microphone whenever he or she felt like it. But if the artist was asked to play a favorite song or two, most likely he or she would suggest some of their own music and possibly go into an impromptu performance. Jeff and Paul or another cameraman would then be sure to catch it all for the website.
Julio said, “You got it, man.”
Ivan smiled at him. “You do that for me, and you got VIP all night long with a free bottle of wine in your hands.”
“And two honeys,” Julio added without whispering.
Ivan chuckled. “Now, you know we got that. But let me get on in bed and get some rest for tomorrow.”
“All right, I’ll get back up with you once I talk to my cousin.”
They shook hands on it and ended their night.
INSTEAD OF INVESTING in another big party, Ivan used the thousands of dollars he had made from the Chargers event to contact the best law firms in San Diego to represent his interests. It was easy to secure top-notch representation when you could afford the up-front retainers. The best representation would make it easier for Ivan to sleep at night when engaging in so many fast-moving deals. He even had the lawyers set up the payment terms for the mothers of Derrick’s three sons.
After his new calculations, with website costs, the lawyers, and his brother on the payroll, Ivan estimated an overhead budget of seven thousand dollars a month. He added another three thousand to pay himself each month, tapping out at ten thousand. Between the website advertisements on IDPromotions.com and party promotions with Lucina, Ivan figured he could triple that in profit and shell away his Hutch & Mitchell salary without needing to touch it.
Then I can move into a nicer place to live by the end of the year, he thought. Or better yet, buy a house near the university to use as an office. That way Jeff and Paul—or whoever runs the site—can have all of the sales and editorial staff right there with them.
As a long-term goal, Ivan continued to think about the homes above Interstate 5.
“Damn, this feels good!” he told himself inside the bathroom at the Hutch & Mitchell offices. He washed his hands at the sink and finally felt in control of his life. He then stared into the mirror at his hair, wondering how he would look with a low cut. While he stood there, Mike Adams walked in.
He caught Ivan staring at himself and said, “Yeah, you look good.”
Ivan chuckled as Mike hit the urinal to the left of the sink.
“I’m trying to decide if I should go with a new look or not,” Ivan commented.
Mike did his business and responded casually, “Everything’s worth a shot to see.”
“What about if I put a diamond stud in my left ear?”
Mike grimaced, zipped up, and walked over to the sinks to wash his hands. “Well, an earring on a guy is a little eccentric, isn’t it? But I guess you wouldn’t have to wear it all the time. And definitely not while at the office.”
“Well, where else would I wear it, then?”
Mike shrugged. “I guess on the club scene or wherever. Fancy dinners. I don’t know. What do you single people do nowadays?” he joked. “But you’re supposed to be getting serious now. What does the lady think about that? Did she suggest it?”
Ivan had to chuckle. Mike was wrong as well as right. Ivan told him, “Yeah, she did suggest it,” and kept his office illusion going. They continued to believe he was passionate about a woman instead of business. The irony was that Lucina Gallo was both.
Mike chuckled at him and joked, “In that case, it’s a great idea. The woman is always right.” He added, “But I don’t have much use for an earring in my ear. That would only give my toddlers something else dangerous to grab at.”
When his coworker walked out of the bathroom, Ivan continued to stand there in the mirror. He mumbled to himself, “Yeah, well, I don’t have any kids.”
Next walked in Dwayne Bellamy, the middle manager. He saw Ivan there in the bathroom alone and said, “Your new clients are still rolling in, Ivan. But you make sure you get your story ready for the brass. I hear your on-the-side thing is getting bigger now.”
Ivan nodded to him. “Yeah, it is.” Then he decided to ask Dwayne what he thought about an earring. “Hey, man, what do you think about a diamond stud?”
“A diamond stud? What do you mean?” Dwayne asked him.
“An earring.”
“Oh, an earring.” He shrugged. “Well, that’s just not my thing.”
Ivan said, “Michael Jordan got two of ’em.”
“Yeah, well, Michael can get away with it,” Dwayne commented.
Get away with it? Ivan repeated to himself. He nodded and said, “All right.”
He was ready to leave.
Dwayne said, “You’re not thinking about that, are you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t have to wear it at the job, right?” Ivan responded.
They eyed each other for a couple of seconds, as if it was a stare-down.
Dwayne finally told him, “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Ivan. Sometimes we can jump out of the plane before we have a parachute or a landing pad ready. You catch my drift?”
Ivan nodded again. “I got you. I was only speculating.”
Dwayne nodded back to him. “Okay,” he said, and left it alone to do his business.
Ivan walked out of the bathroom right past Barry Mitchell’s office. He wondered how his boss would take him having an earring. Would it be too much of an obvious signal of change? And how much of Dwayne’s response was built around his knowledge of Ivan joining the party promotions game?
I’m not ready to do that anyway, Ivan told himself of the earring idea while on the way back to his desk. But the low-cut hair was a doable experiment. I might go ahead and get it cut down after work tonight. Fuck it, it’ll grow back! he told himself.
AS SOON AS IVAN finished getting his hair cut down at the barbershop that evening, he received a call from Lucina.
He laughed and said, “What, are you reading my mind now? I’m just walking out from the barbershop. I’m trying that new look you suggested to me. Let’s see how it works.”
“Ivan, stop fighting it and go along with the flow,” she told him. “Anyways, I have two new friends from out of town who want to go shopping at the Fashion Valley Mall. But I have meetings to make tonight. So I was wondering if you could be a great guy and hang out with them there for a couple of hours before the mall closes.”
Ivan looked down at his Seiko watch. It was already after seven. He said, “The mall will be closing by the time we even make it over there. Where are they now?”
“They are already on their way,” Lucina informed him. “They should be there in no more than twenty minutes. And since you already live in that area, I told them they could wait for you inside the car.”
Ivan didn’t see any problems with it. He figured he could finally scope out a few of Lucina’s girls to see what they were all about. Were they down-to-earth girls who simply needed an experienced big sister type for guidance? Or were they fast and flirty, with their own ideas about life and business? He was also curious to see how they would respond to his low haircut. So, for his own research purposes, he agreed to it.
“All right, I’ll babysit your girls tonight,” he joked.
Lucina corrected him. “No, they’re not my girls. They’re just some new friends. And I want to see how they are.”
Ivan paused. “You want to see how they are?”
“Yes. I want to see how they treat you. I told them both that you were a very sweet and important man. And I want to see if they take advantage of that.”
Ivan was confused. He made it back to his car and said, “You didn’t tell them that I was your partner?”
“No, I just told them you were a good friend,” Lucina answered. “But if they treat you with respect, and you still like them, I will tell them that you are my partner later. So will you do that for me?”
Ivan didn’t know what to say. He wanted to slow things down and ask her more questions. But he figured it was best to gather his own information by going through with it.
“All right, all right,” he barked to her. “I’m heading over there now. And I’ll tell you how they are once I send them home. But if they’re your friends, then you should already know how they are.”
