“Oh, yeah, send him right up.”

Ivan hung up the phone and smiled. The gatekeeper system was another perk of wealth. He had never had such a luxury before.

Emilio arrived at his door a few minutes later. Ivan planned to receive a lot more company after moving into his new two-bedroom apartment. The downtown location was more convenient for business, and the new pad allowed him to feel more confident about having folks over to entertain. So he took the leap from less than a thousand dollars a month for rent to double that and change.

Emilio walked in and commented, “Hey, man, this is a nice place.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing like your place,” Ivan assumed. Emilio was a two-and-a-half-million-dollar-a-year baseball player. His signing bonus had been three million.

“Well, your place is much neater,” he responded with a chuckle. “I still have to hire a maid.”

He continued to walk around Ivan’s new pad to check out the decor: the plush furniture, artwork, accents, rugs, vases, exotic lamps, everything.

“So, how much it cost you to decorate this place, thirty, forty grand?” Emilio asked him.

Ivan answered him with a frown, “Thirty, forty grand? Hell, no! Try half of that.”

Emilio looked surprised. “You’re kidding me. You did all this for less than thirty?”

Ivan said, “Look, man, I took a lot of the things from my old apartment in La Mesa, and I just told the guy to build around that. And that’s what he did. So a lot of this stuff in here is just an illusion of wealth. But as long as it looks good and feels good, I’m cool with it.”

Emilio took a seat on the plush beige sofa facing the entertainment center and said, “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

Ivan sat on a twin sofa next to him. “So, what’s been going on, man? I didn’t see you at the New Year’s Eve party we had.”

Ivan had made another five thousand after Lucina’s share. There were too many parties going on that night to make much more than that. However, his ad team pulled in another two grand for the website from New Year’s Eve party promotions. Ivan even had liquor sponsors courting his business now.

Emilio grinned. He said, “To tell you the truth, man, I hung out with Audrey that night, and she, ah…didn’t want to go to your party.”

Ivan nodded. “Yeah, I understand.” Audrey no longer worked with them. She got her hooks into Emilio and left with her own plans. Lucina had warned him that would happen with many of the girls. There was no way they could control it. So he felt guilty now for introducing the girl to his baseball friend. Ivan had used them both.