Page 12 of Dirty Like Jude
“So.” Jessa blinked her big brown eyes at me. “Here’s where you comein.”
I stared at her, suddenly getting her meaning. “Me?”
“Why not you?” she said. “No one throws a party like you,Roni.”
I really could not argue withthat.
I’d been doing the party promotion thing, part-time, for the last three years. Ever since I realized it was a thing. That I could actually get paid doing what I loved to doanyway.
I’d always been a party girl. And I’d always thrown fantasticones.
My milkshake brought all the boys and girls to the yard. It had just always been thatway.
So, becoming a promoter was a no-brainer.
But I’d never worked with Dirty. I didn’t work with bands. I promoted nightclub events. Theme nights with bubbles and pajama parties and college kids on E. I hosted a regular night at a local club, did special events at other bars around town, and worked mostly with small to mid-list local DJs, and sometimes visitingtalent.
Small-time shit compared toDirty.
I had no particular aspirations to work in rock concert promotion. My loftiest aspiration, these days, ever since meeting DJ Summer at Jessa’s baby shower last month, was to work with her. It hadn’t happened yet, but itwould.
I’d definitely worked my ass off to get to where I was already, and I was pretty bent on making my way to the forefront of the local party scene—so I could one day promote talent of DJ Summer’s calibre… and beyond. But it wasn’t that easy. It took time to do itright.
It took time to meet the right people, foster the right relationships, and build a name for yourself in a competitive, challenging, and often weirdly cutthroatenvironment.
An environment where, admittedly, you didn’t get offers like this—like Dirty, one of the hottest rock bands in the world—dropped into yourlap.
But.
“It’s November,” I said carefully. “You want me to find a location for this New Year’s Eve event—in November? Every place in town is booked solid by now. Including the bar where I’m already promoting a New Year’s Eveparty.”
“So you hand that off to someone else,” Jessa said. “I know you’ve been wanting to give up the day job forever. Promote bigger parties. I also know the money in real estate is good, and you have a mortgage to pay. That you need somethingbigto make that leapfinancially.”
Alltrue.
My day job for the last six years had been doing temp work in the real estate industry. Currently I worked at the display suite office for a real estate developer. I ran the welcome desk and pretty much worked alone; it was so slow they didn’t even keep an actual sales rep on staff, so I was it. It was stunning how few people actually came through the fancy office, which had a full-sized display suite in it. Most of the clientele were overseas buyers who never set foot in the display office, who bought the condos sight unseen and didn’t give a fuck whether the one they chose had the black-and-gray color scheme or the sand-and-cream one, because they were never going to live in it. They were buying the condos as investments, as rentalproperties.
Which meant that the majority of my day was spent on my laptop, on social media, working on my true love: partypromotion.
Did I actually want to work in real estate? Fuuuckno.
But…
“It’s not just about the money,” I told her. “It’s also about my reputation and making the right moves. Leaving the steady paycheck behind would be pretty much a go-big-or-go-home situation, in all respects. I’m not sure I’m ready for thatanyway.”
“This is as big as it gets,” Jessa said. “This is Dirty. Who knows where this could lead? You really can’t turn this down,Roni.”
“This is late November,” I reminded her, doing the calculation in my head. “New Year’s Eve is five weeksaway.”
Jessa looked entirely unsympathetic, in that way a new mother did. Like,You get to sleep, what the hell are you complainingabout?
“Dirty wants to throw a party,” she said. “They want to play a show. Someone out there would kill to host that show at their venue. All you have to do is find him or her, sell tickets—which will not be a challenge—and get yourself paid. You can probably negotiate a pretty decent cut. Dirty isn’t doing this for the money. If they want the money, they’ll play a stadium. This is a small gig for them, for shits and giggles. But it’s huge foryou.”
“Five weeks from New Year’s Eve,” Irepeated.
Jessa shifted her squirming son from one breast to the other. “So you’re saying you won’t do it? You won’t even try? Instead, Maggie gets on the phone to every promoter she and Brody know, and someone else jumps at the chance to plan a Dirtyshow?”
Fuck.
