Thomas slapped a comforting hand on his right shoulder. He said, “No, you can get this crowd, you would just have to do more than a couple of parties to get them. You already realized that when you made the additional party deal with Raymond. A bar crowd parties mostly from word-of-mouth, and in places that they’re already familiar with. So it’ll take a while.”

He continued, “But my point is still what I asked you in the beginning: do you even want this crowd? Come to think of it, even though Raymond is happy with the turnout, I’m wondering if maybe we shouldn’t have even thrown this party.”

Ivan looked Thomas in his eyes. Was he admitting fault?

Thomas nodded to him and read it. “Yeah, I’m admitting it, Ivan. It was my mistake to drag you into this. My eyes got too big on the money you could make. We both got big eyes. But you were right, a lot of professional folks won’t wanna party here. And they only showed up tonight out of respect for us.”

Even Henry had shown up to support them with his wife. They were having a great time dancing, and they preferred having the extra room to move around in.

Ivan nodded to Thomas and squashed it all. “I’m thinking about throwing a network party downtown next. You were right, too,” he told him. “I’m an accountant, and I need to stick to meeting professional people. That’s where all the real money is. This right here would be nothing but pocket change anyway. But at least my guys took some more good pictures for the website.”

Thomas grinned and said, “It’s all a learning curve, young man. If you never fail, you never learn how to succeed.”

Then he looked over behind the bar. “Hey, let me get a rum and Coke, Raymond.”

AT THE END OF THE NIGHT, Ivan didn’t feel up to chasing Ida anymore. It would have been nice of her to give him a small consolation prize of a woman’s attention, but he was no longer pressed about it. Where Catherine had been all up in his face with her advances, Ida seemed to be the running-away type. So he paid her, he paid his DJ, he told everyone good night, and he took the remaining three hundred dollars he had left in his pocket home with him to brainstorm the next goal: an event in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter downtown.

When the going gets tough, that’s when you find out who the real players are, Ivan told himself on the drive back home. I got no excuses to watch from the sidelines anymore. So I’m staying in this damn game until I win it.