Ivan knew he couldn’t allocate any of Lucina’s girls to babysit Julio all night with Busta Rhymes and his crew on their way. So he told him instead, “Here’s what I’ll do. You point out any two girls you like who are not working the club with us, and I’ll give you two more VIP wristbands to invite them over with you. But it’s up to you to make them want to stay there.”

Julio had plenty of drink money to afford company that night. So he nodded and looked around. “Any two?”

“As long as they’re not working,” Ivan repeated to him. “Just come get me for those wristbands when you find them. But I have to get over here with my guests.”

“Oh, go do it, man,” Julio told him. “And I’ll do me.”

As Ivan headed toward the VIP section to join Eve and Lucina, he could feel the eyes of the room glued to his back.

“That’s Ivan David?” the crowd whispered as he passed by. And it felt good.

A couple of attractive white girls grabbed him before he could reach his destination.

“Can we take a picture with you, Ivan?”

He looked them over and was pleasantly surprised.

He joked, “You know who I am?”

“Yeah, we love your website. We were only wondering if you were as hot in person as you are on your pictures.”

“Yeah, and now we know you are.”

Ivan laughed it off. “All right, well, let’s hurry up with it. Eve is waiting for me.”

“Oh, okay. Excuse me, can you take this picture for us?” they asked another girl dancing beside them.

When the girl took the picture with their small digital camera, other girls in the crowd looked on in curiosity.

“Isn’t that Ivan David?” someone else asked.

“Oh, yeah, it is.”

“Can I get a picture with you, too?”

The next thing Ivan knew, he was crowded by picture requests.

He finally backed off and said, “All right, all right, I gotta get back to what I’m doing here.”

“Please, Ivan, just one more picture. I wanna put it up on my MySpace page.”

EVE AND LUCINA watched the public struggle Ivan had found himself in from where they stood in the VIP section.

Eve chuckled. She said, “The girls give Ivan their full attention here, hunh?”

Lucina looked on and grunted, “Hmmph.” Not yet, she told herself. But wait until after his articles come out for his big birthday party.

She told Eve, “I just hope he doesn’t grow a bigger head than the one he already has.”

Eve laughed and said, “Tell me about it. That’s how they all get. But it’s hard to stop it when the girls act so crazy sometimes.”

Lucina agreed with her. “Yeah, they do.”