“Oh, my God! You haven’t been here long, have you?” the reporter asked him. She was a healthy-sized woman in her midthirties, wearing a lavender skirt suit. She inspected her watch. It was seven minutes after two. She said, “I know we’re just a little bit late, but I’m usually ahead of schedule.”

Ivan smiled it off. “It’s all right. This place is like family. I’m good.”

She nodded to him. “Okay, well, I’m Levonia Battle, and this is Nathan Clark, our first-rate photographer.”

Nathan was an older black man with long gray dreads for hair. He kept his poise and nodded.

“If you can, just try to imagine that I’m not even here, Ivan. But I will need to set up my light,” he commented.

Ivan shrugged it off. “Do what you need to do.”

Levonia sat across the table from him and pulled out her tape recorder and notepad. She turned the tape recorder on and took a deep breath.

“Okay…so…Mr. Ivan David…”

Ivan grinned and waited for her first question. She seemed to be a little unsettled.

She shook her head and said, “Wow, I just…I mean, how does it feel?” She even leaned forward to lower her volume in the room. “A hundred and eighty million dollars? I’ve never even been around a person with that much money before.”

Ivan told her, “Actually, you probably have, you just didn’t know it. This is San Diego. There’s plenty of money around here.”

“Oh, well, yeah, walking by, but not sitting down to do an interview with me. So how does it feel?” she repeated. “I’m sure that a whole lot of us would just love to know.”

Ivan answered, “Well, you know, when it first happens, you’re excited about it like anyone else would be. But once it’s over with, then you start to think to yourself, Okay, so what do I want to do next?”

Levonia said, “You relax and enjoy yourself.”

“Exactly,” Ivan agreed with her. “But I’m only thirty-two years old. How long do you expect me to relax?”

“I know,” she told him. “That’s what makes it all the more special. You did it at such a young age.”

Ivan said, “But that’s really how it happens, though. Once I started to read up and meet with other wealthy people, they all explained a zone that they fell in where things just took off. And you have to be ready for when it happens. My zone just came early.”

“Yes, it did,” the reporter commented.

By that time, Nathan was set up to take his first pictures.

“So, how did you do it?” Levonia asked Ivan.

“It’s really all about hooking up with the right people,” he answered.

She immediately frowned at him. “I mean, really, how much of a cliché is that?” It had to be more than the who-you-know game.