Lucina told her, “He has a birthday coming up on the fifth of March. And he wants us to charge fifty dollars a head for it.”

Maya paused and said, “Wow. That would make him a ten.”

“Would you stop with the numbers already? Who would pay fifty dollars to see him?” she snapped.

Maya said, “Well, that’s more like a ticket price. Is he going to be selling tickets from his website?”

Lucina answered, “I don’t know. I just told him I would call him back. I didn’t think he was serious.”

“Well, is he?”

“I’m still not sure. That’s why I called you. But he wants to do it at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.”

Maya said, “Oh, now, that would be nice. No wonder he wants to charge fifty dollars. Is this a dressed-to-impress affair?”

“It would have to be,” Lucina assumed. “He says he wants top-money businesspeople.”

“Yeah, and that’s who he would get for fifty dollars. But how many people does he expect to attend, five hundred?”

“Five hundred?” Lucina repeated. “He said he wants to make a hundred thousand dollars. That means at least two thousand people. And he wants to rent out the main ballroom there.”

“Wow,” Maya responded again. “That would really take him off the charts.”

“Yes, yes, but can he actually do it, that’s what I want to know.”

“I know I’ll be there to see it, that’s for sure,” Maya told her.

“So, a fifty-dollar party makes you want to see it?”

Maya explained, “You can’t look at it just as a fifty-dollar party. You have to promote it as if Ivan David is royalty or something. And when people start to ask for tickets, then you tell them it’s fifty dollars. That’s when you separate the money people from the people who don’t have money.”

“But two thousand people paying that price?” Lucina repeated to her friend.

“It depends on how well you promote it,” Maya countered. “We’ve been around parties like that before. The price starts at twenty-five. Then it goes up to forty. Then they drink for fifty, sixty, and seventy dollars.”

Maya asked her, “Is Ivan having liquor sponsors there? At that price, and for that crowd, they may be really interested.”

Lucina stopped talking. She didn’t know all of those details yet. But it seemed as if her girl believed the idea could work.

Lucina told her, “Let me call him back and ask him all of those questions.”

“Okay. And let me know what he says.”

Lucina hung up without responding. Then she paced her room again.

“Hmmph,” she grunted. “I don’t believe this.”