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cooked by Koreans, not Chinese, and had little relation to the food the Chinese people actually ate. I didn't care, though. Crab Rangoon and egg rolls were exactly what I needed to fill the pit in my stomach.
    By four o'clock I was bored silly, so I came up with the bright idea of moving the TV to the little table near the window. That way I could keep one eye on Kent's place and one on the tube. What I hadn't planned on was the incredibly bad quality of afternoon broadcast television. I powered through an hour of people blabbing about celebrities and then settled in for the local and national news. Still no sign of Kent. It was then that I began to experience some mild panic at the thought that I might have to stay here for the night if I wanted to spot him. The lock on the door seemed fairly secure, but when it got dark out I was not going to feel very comfortable in this dive. More than that, I began to wonder about my new career path. Was sitting around in dingy hotel rooms really that much better than stripping? It certainly didn't make me any more money. There was only one discernible upside: the continued need to order junk food.
    Pizza for dinner—thin crust, pepperoni and black olives from Octavio's, a favorite joint from my college days. I eagerly consumed a half-dozen slices, but not without a pang of guilt. I had been in denial, but the truth was that my new career as a PI was not being very friendly to my waistline. For one, it had me out and about more, which left me at the mercy of restaurants and stripped me of the control I used to have over my diet. And, by reducing the number of nights I danced, I was eliminating a thousand-calorie workout every time I stayed home. Dancing five or six nights a week had spoiled me by allowing me to eat whatever I wanted, but now I found myself needing the two things I dreaded most: exercise and self-control. I decided, right there on the spot, that I would take more control of my diet and start exercising more. Right after I had one last slice of pizza.
    By eight, there was still no sign of Kent. As far as I knew, he didn't have a job or any other obligations apart from school, so it was a mystery why he hadn't shown his face at his apartment in more than eight hours. It was possible he was holed up inside all day, but, given how depressing my own room was, I found that unlikely. And now that it was getting darker out, I noticed there was no sign of illumination from within his room.
    Necessity is the mother of invention, it is said, but so is boredom. In a rare fit of competence, I had brought my digital camera with me, zoom lens and all. I was far from an expert on how to use it, but I knew that it had a feature perfect for surveillance. After pressing about a hundred buttons, and clicking through countless digital menus, I finagled it so it would take a photo every ten seconds, setting up a constant still-frame view of Kent's apartment. Another dozen buttons turned off the fake "click" sound. I didn't have a tripod, but I rested the camera on a pillow I placed on the table near the window, and voila, I had built myself a nice little spying unit that wouldn't require me to keep one eye on the place. Better yet, it allowed me to get the hell out of there. Pleased with my little contraption, I celebrated with a final slice of pizza. After all, it was thin crust.
    I waited a couple of minutes until I was comfortable that my surveillance system worked. After adjusting the photo quality downward, to preserve storage space, I got my other stuff and left the room, making doubly sure the door was locked. I would come back the next morning to retrieve my camera.
    Spending a few hours in that sleazebag motel made me appreciate my thirty-third-floor condo more than ever. After some champagne, a handful of cheese curds, and a few chapters on my Kindle, I was beat.

 
CHAPTER FIVE
     
    I didn't have the heart to try making eggs benedict again, so I settled for scrambled, with extra