“Because I used to be him. I was skeptical of everything.” Ivan leveled with her. “I kept my money in my pocket unless it was for family. But at the end of the day, you can’t do business like that. You gotta go for it and learn your lessons on the way. That’s what I’m doing right now,” he admitted.

It’s nearly two o’clock in the fucking morning and I still have to go to work, he kept saying to himself.

Lucina tilted her glass to her lips and made her comment over the rim. “You are right. That is what I did with you.” She took a sip of her drink and said, “I took a chance.”

With that, Ivan got back to business. His fantasizing about working deals and romancing Lucina Gallo were over, for the minute. He was now sitting next to her with a major event to put on.

He said, “Okay, so, how is this gonna work? Do you have a venue already?”

Lucina said, “I have several to choose from.”

“And how much do they cost?”

“From two and a half to five thou-sand dollars.”

Ivan nodded. “What are the other expenses?” He knew what he needed for his parties, but a three-thousand-capacity crowd was way out of his league.

“We need radio, your website, promotional flyers, catering, security, my girls.” She stopped and said, “I always pay my girls.”

“What about the DJ?” Ivan asked her.

She said, “No more old school, I-van. This is a regular par-ty.”

Ivan laughed and said, “That was just for the older crowd that I was catering to. But you still gotta mix the new songs in with the classics.”

Lucina said, “I know plen-ty of DJs. I even know DJs out of L.A.”

“Yeah, but what would they cost us?” Ivan asked her. “My DJ would only cost five hundred dollars. You bring a guy from L.A, that’s a thousand just to bring his equipment down.”

“That’s part of the budget,” she told him sternly.

Ivan slowed down and said, “Okay, so what is the budget?”

“Twenty thou-sand dollars,” she told him.

Ivan was shocked. He repeated, “Twenty thousand dollars?” He figured they would need half of that. He said, “These guys are gonna give us twenty thousand dollars for a birthday party?” That was more than a quarter of a year’s earnings for him at Hutch & Mitchell.

Lucina frowned at him and said, “That’s nothing. I was gonna ask them for for-ty thousand. But since this is your first big par-ty, I want to make sure they are sa-tisfied with you.”

Ivan sat there and thought, Shit, I should have teamed up with her a long-ass time ago!

Then he asked her the obvious question. “So…why are you willing to partner on this with me? I mean, it’s obvious you already know what you’re doing.”