“Okay,” he agreed with a nod.

“Welcome back, Ivan,” the security guard greeted him on their way in. He nodded to Lucina and said, “And good evening.”

Lucina only nodded at him with a weak smile.

Ivan asked him, “Your shift don’t end at midnight?”

“Yeah, but the guy on the next shift is running a little late,” he answered.

Ivan said, “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, it happens.”

Lucina walked inside with him, stepped into the elevator, rode it up to Ivan’s floor, and still hadn’t said much.

Ivan continued to think along the way. Am I gonna find out what she’s about now on the personal level? Is she just doing this out of the blue? Is this, like, her regular MO? I mean, what is on her mind right now?

Once they stepped off the elevator, he finally asked her. “What’s on your mind, Lucina? You’ve never been this quiet before.”

She said, “I’ll tell you inside,” and kept him waiting.

Ivan opened his apartment door with his key, and Lucina walked right in to inspect the interior decorating job. Ivan watched her with patience, allowing her to see whatever she wanted around the room.

When she finished her walk-through, Lucina nodded and said, “He did a pretty good job.”

“Well, you knew that already. Why else would you suggest the guy to me? Lucina Gallo selects nothing but the best, right?” Ivan asked her sarcastically.

His comments led Lucina right into her present thoughts on their partnership. She responded, “So, why am I allowing you to continue pulling me into doing these small, meaningless parties instead of us going after the much bigger money out there?”

Her unexpected bite caught Ivan off guard. His lighthearted smile turned into a fast frown.

So that’s what she came over here to do, he realized. She’s ready to have another business tantrum with me, and at one o’clock in the morning to boot.

Instead of adding fuel to Lucina’s fire, Ivan calmed his nerves with a cool-water approach. He said, “We are just six thousand dollars away from a twenty-thousand-dollar-a-week goal. That means we can both clear forty thousand dollars a month without sweating the risk or all the extrahard work of these big parties. I mean, I got this idea from talking to you,” he told her.

Lucina argued, “No, you did not get this small party idea from me. You came up with this tedious tactic all on your own, and now me and my girls have been attached to these small, nothing parties at least five times a week for months, without promoting one big party. Not even on New Year’s Eve!”