Pecking Order, page 28
Ivan didn’t know whether to hug her or shake her hand. He went for the handshake to be safe.
“How are you doing?” he asked her.
She said, “I’m good. I’m just looking forward to hanging out with you guys in San Diego. I really like what you got going on in the Gaslamp.”
“Okay, that’s good,” he commented. “We’re trying to do it up. But let me introduce you to my partner.”
Ivan helped Lucina out of the limo.
Eve nodded to her and said, “Hey, how are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m good,” Lucina responded. “I’m Lucina Gallo.” Instead of shaking hands, she held Eve by the arms and gently kissed her on her right cheek.
That’s a hell of a lot smoother than me, Ivan thought, grinning to himself. Girls can get away with that kissing shit a lot easier.
Eve looked over Lucina’s dress and commented, “That is real nice. Where’d you find it?”
Lucina told her, “My design secrets will cost you. We’ll talk about that later.”
Eve grinned and nodded. “Okay.” She introduced her two girlfriends before they all climbed inside the limo. The driver closed the door behind them.
“So, Ivan, you’re from L.A., right?” Eve asked him. She sat directly across from him.
He nodded. “Yeah, South Central.” He didn’t need to concern himself with putting a spin on his background for Eve. She was from the hip-hop culture, which respected urban roots.
Ivan asked her, “What’s Philly like?”
“Man, Philly is hectic, but I love it,” she told him. “So, every once in a while, when I need to feel, you know, that realness of my people, I take a trip back home.”
“Or she can just bring her people out west to chill out here with her,” one of her girlfriends commented.
Lucina nodded. “It’s always good to have your friends around you to make you feel at home.”
Eve asked, “Where are you from, Lucina? Gallo’s an Italian name, right?”
“Yes, but I’m from Brazil. Brazil has a lot of Italians.”
“Yeah, that’s the land of the hot models now,” Eve’s second girlfriend commented with a nod. They were both as mellow as Eve was.
Eve said, “You know I have a new fashion line I’m working on, called Fetish. Would you be interested in modeling for us?”
“Yeah, girlfriend definitely got the look,” both of Eve’s girls agreed.
Ivan looked at Lucina to see how she would take it. But his partner quickly blew the attention off.
“Oh, no, no more modeling for me. I have plenty of girls you will like for that at the party. You just let me know which ones you like.”
When they reached the Gaslamp Quarter, Ivan told the limo driver to head straight through Fifth Avenue for the weekend sights.
Eve said, “This reminds me of South Street a little bit back home.”
“Oh, this is way more ritzy than South Street, girl,” one of her friends commented.
“Dig it,” the other friend agreed. “South Street is way longer than this, though. And you’re always stuck in traffic there.”
Eve said, “Well, you know what I mean, just one straight street with a lot of nighttime stores on it.”
Lucina said, “This is nothing compared to the streets in Italy, Paris, Amsterdam, and Japan.”
“Oh, yeah, I fell in love with a lot of those places,” Eve commented. “I love to travel.”
“International travel gives you a lot of places to fall in love with,” Lucina agreed.
Ivan had nothing to add on the subject. He was out of his information range. He hadn’t traveled much at all.
He smiled and said, “I’ll be able to travel like that sometime next year.”
“Oh, we will,” Lucina promised him.
Eve’s girls looked at each other and wondered if they were a business couple and a private couple. Ivan and Lucina looked like a perfect match. Even their outfits were complements of each other. But Eve and her crew held their comments to themselves.
When they rounded the corner of Sixth Avenue and headed back to the downtown club, a long crowded line had gathered outside on the sidewalk.
Now, this is what I am used to seeing, Lucina told herself.
It was no big deal to Eve. She had been used to seeing large crowds for years.
Ivan asked her, “You don’t mind if we take pictures for the website, do you? We’ll make sure that they all look good.”
Eve grinned. She said, “I’ve seen the website. I already know you use good pictures. I’m fine with it.”
Ivan told her, “That’s good. My photographer’s ready to set it all up as soon as we arrive.”
When they pulled up to the curb, Ivan’s photographer was eager, waiting, and ready with his ideas. He popped his head inside the limo with his camera in hand and started directing.
“Okay, we need Eve to sit in the middle, with Ivan and Lucina on both sides.”
They rearranged their seating inside the limo to accommodate the photographer before he snapped several pictures of them.
“Okay, now I need to get pictures of you guys climbing out.”
One by one, they climbed out of the limo while the photographer took several shots of it all. Then he took shots of them posing out on the sidewalk in front of the limo. That’s when the line took notice and got to talking excitedly among themselves.
“That’s her, right there. It’s Eve.”
“She’s taller than I expected.”
“Yeah, she has heels on.”
“Yo, she’s sexy as hell.”
“Is that her real hair color?”
“No, you know that’s all dyed.”
“I wonder if she’s just gonna stand over in the VIP section all night.”
“When is Busta Rhymes supposed to get here?”
“That’s Lucina Gallo with her, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, and, um…Ivan David.”
“Oh, he’s the one who runs I.D. Promotions?”
“Duuhh. I.D. Promotions, like in I-van Da-vid.”
“Shut up!”
When they finished taking pictures outside the club and headed toward the entrance with security surrounding them, one of the guards stopped Ivan and stuck his hand out. “I had no idea who you were a while ago. But I’ve been watching you grow. You keep it going, man.”
Ivan shook his hand. It was the same security guard who had teased him about his double first name nearly a year ago, outside the Padres party.
Ivan told him, “It’s no big deal. I don’t sweat it. That was the first night I decided to get involved. And it’s been a lot of late nights and hard work since then.”
“Well, you’re making it all happen for yourself now, Ivan. So you just keep it up.”
“Oh, I plan to,” Ivan told him as he walked inside.
Daphne and Maya were inside the door with the cash boxes, email lists, and more security behind them.
“Looking good, Ivan,” Maya told him, admiring his total package that evening.
He smiled and asked them, “Are we near capacity yet?” It was close to midnight, and Ivan was thinking all business.
Daphne looked down at her hand counter. “Mmm, it’s about sixty, seventy percent full now.”
“What about the VIP?”
“Oh, that’s less than half.”
Ivan nodded and said, “All right, keep announcing the VIPs cut line for forty dollars. Busta and his crew should be here soon so we can pack it all in.”
Maya and Daphne both nodded to him. “Okay.”
They opened the door at twenty-five dollars that night, with a capacity of nearly two thousand in the club, two hundred of which included the VIP section. Ivan and Lucina had to pay a ten-thousand-dollar bar guarantee for taking over the club’s Saturday night, but they looked to cover that and break fifty thousand from the door.
As soon as Ivan walked into the party, Red Face Lion spun the popular Eve and Gwen Stefani song “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.”
The crowd grew frantic with Eve’s arrival and danced hard to her song, while singing along with the lyrics.
Ivan watched them and grinned, before walking into Julio.
“Hey, Ivan, man, I told you we could do it!” he yelled, with a beer in his right hand. He wore a yellow VIP wristband. He said, “You just tell me who you want me to get, and I’ll ask my cousin to try and get them down here for you.”
Before Ivan could respond, one of Lucina’s girls commented on her way past him, “Hey, Ivan, you look great tonight. That diamond stud is really shining.”
“Yeah, thanks to you guys,” Ivan stated.
Julio looked at him and held up an OK sign with his free hand.
He said, “Man, the women in here are gorgeous. You got my two lined up yet?”
Ivan looked at him and asked, “They haven’t been treating you well in VIP?”
“Oh, yeah, but I want my two to stay with me.”
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.”
By the time Ivan had made it back over to them, the word had passed through the crowd that Busta Rhymes and his crew had arrived. The crowd grew insane with energy.
Ivan told Lucina, “Shit, we need to go get these pictures.” He had just made his way through the party.
Lucina hesitated. She didn’t particularly feel like running around all night just to take pictures for his website. So she told him, “You go. I’ll just take pictures with him in here with Eve.”
Ivan quickly grabbed one of the bottles of champagne from their liquor sponsors and headed back toward the front door.
BUSTA RHYMES and several members of his Flipmode Squad stepped out of exotic luxury cars to congregate on the sidewalk. The security team immediately guarded them.
“What’s up, dude?” Busta addressed them. “Is my man Ivan David up in the house tonight?”
Busta stood out from his crew, wearing a black leather biking jacket with tattoo designs all over it.
Ivan’s photographer told him, “He’s on his way out right now. We want to take some pictures of you guys out here before you all go in.”
Busta looked around at the honeys in the line and said, “Aw’ight, dude, but I see some pictures I wanna take right now. How many of y’all wanna take some pictures?” he asked the young women waiting in line.
The security team had to prepare themselves as several desperate girls ran over from the line in Busta’s direction.
“Oh, my God! I want a picture!”
“Hold up! I look good enough!”
“Busta, you’re just who I came here to see tonight!”
“All right, well, let’s get these pictures, then,” he told them.
Busta’s entourage was just as prepared as the security team to pick out which girls and how many would take pictures with him.
Ivan walked out of the club in the middle of the commotion, holding the champagne bottle in hand.
“Hey, hey, hey, keep your cool, ladies,” he told them.
Nearly fifteen girls were surrounding Busta and his guys on the sidewalk, while the security team tried to keep order.
“Ivan David. What’s up, dude?”
Busta recognized him and stepped up to stick his hand out for a shake. Ivan made his way through the chaos Busta had caused on the sidewalk in front of the club and shook the man’s hand.
“Sorry, it took me a minute to get out here, man. I had to fight through the crowd.”
“Oh, that’s a good thing,” Busta told him. “And I can already see you got the women and the bubbly up in here.”
Four of Lucina’s girls had followed Ivan out to help escort them all back in.
Ivan bragged, “Yeah, we got plenty of that.”
The photographer jumped right in to get the pictures. “Can I get you two guys shaking hands again?” Busta and Ivan posed for the picture. “Now can I get you standing out in front of the cars with some of your guys around?”
The crew seemed to move a little too slowly.
Busta told them, “Come on, y’all, this is for the website. We gotta make sure everybody knows that we were here. Let’s just get it and get on up in the party.”
Finally, some of the guys surrounded Busta and Ivan, with a Rolls-Royce Phantom, a Bentley, and a Maybach Benz parked against the curb in the background. Ivan chose to stand in front of the Rolls-Royce Phantom.
He looked over at the cars and said, “Y’all rolled up in style.”
The parking spaces had been reserved for them.
“Come on, dude, you know how we do it. It’s rock star status over here.”
Finally, Busta posed for a few snapshots with the anxious female fans he had left standing by.
“Come on, Ivan, get up in here,” Busta commanded. He spoke to Ivan as if he had known him for years already.
Ivan walked into the picture and posed for a few photos with Busta and his eager female fans. Then they headed inside the club.
The security cleared a pathway for them to enter, led by Lucina’s girls.
Ivan stopped by the front door with Maya and Daphne on his way in. He said, “All right, forty dollars to get in, or they go home. So let the security know. Either they’re coming in for forty or we’re closing the doors.”
Maya and Daphne looked at each other and said, “Okay.” The boss had spoken.
Once Busta and his crew walked in, Red Face Lion immediately began spinning classic Busta Rhymes songs.
The crowd sang along with them line for line: “If you really wanna party with me/…Put all your hands where my eyes can see…”
Busta Rhymes walked through the crowd, bobbing and weaving to his music on his way to the VIP section. The crowd was ecstatic at his presence.
“BUSTA, WE LOVE YOUUU!” a group of three girls screamed out at the top of their lungs.
“And I love you right back!” Busta shouted in their direction.
The security guards and Busta’s crew had to push women back in order for them to walk.
Yeah, this is crazy, Ivan mused, following behind them. The Chargers football players definitely created a crowd, but they never caused this much delirium.
Eve and Lucina watched it all from the VIP section.
Eve turned to Lucina and said, “You see what I mean? That’s all day, every day.”
Lucina was used to handling the athletes and their groupies, the movie stars and theirs, the rock stars and theirs, but hip-hop music seemed to create the most powerful energy. It was the pulsations of the music that made you move right now! Especially Busta Rhymes’s music. The extrathumping kicks, bass lines, and verbal chants drove the crowd into a frenzy.
“Hey, Ivan,” a few of the girls called out. They were able to grab on to him because he had no security protection. Ivan didn’t figure he needed any.
“Hey, calm down,” he told them.
“Are you gonna bring someone to San Diego every weekend? We hear you got Timbaland and Nelly Furtado next week,” they asked. They had done their homework.
Ivan told them, “Yeah, so just stay tuned for the next one,” as he moved on.
The guys were giving him an extra nod of attention as well.
“What’s up, Ivan? Keep doing you, man.”
“Thanks,” Ivan responded with a nod.
“Hey, nice party you got here, Ivan.”
“I’m just trying to work it,” he commented.
Other guys looked on and nodded to him.
When Ivan made it over to VIP, he noticed a few of the Chargers making small talk.
“Hey, Perry, I didn’t see you in here, man. And how could I miss you, right?”
