Pete shifted his mind to a neutral zone and closed his eyes. He thought about his family back at the farm in Idaho where they farmed potatoes. They'd all be getting ready for Christmas. One of his brothers had probably cut the tree down by now, and it was sitting in the living room just waiting to be decorated. His nieces and nephews were probably driving everyone crazy to decorate the tree, but his mother would make them wait for the branches to settle themselves so, as she put it, her heirloom decorations wouldn't fall off. He wondered what his mother would serve for Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe a turkey or a ham. Maybe both. Five different pies. Probably just the turkey or the ham, but not both. Maybe just two pies this year, since his father told him it was a bad year with a blight that had hit the plants midseason. His mouth started to water at the thought of what he was missing. Oh, well, five more months and he could go home for a week or so before he started job hunting.

Pete's thoughts shifted to his three-and-a-half-year-struggle to get through college. He thought of the lean meals, the long days of work followed by all-night study sessions, and getting by on only a few hours' sleep. So many times he wanted to call it quits, but something deep inside him wouldn't allow it because he was determined to be a self-made millionaire by the age of forty.

The day he made his first million he was going to do two things. The first thing he was going to do was send his family to Hawaii and set them up in a nice house right on the ocean. The second thing he was going to do was buy this goddamn place, and the minute the ink was dry on the contract, he was going to burn it to the ground.

A chunky woman in a nurse's uniform appeared in the doorway. "Number 8446. You're up next. You're late this morning, 8446." Not bothering to wait to see if he would offer up an explanation, the woman said, "Room five. You know what to do."

Yeah, I know what to do, Pete thought as he brushed past the woman. He knew she didn't approve of what went on there behind the numbered doors, but she worked there anyway, collected a paycheck. As hard as he tried, he couldn't make it compute in his head. At one point he decided she was a hypocrite and let it go at that. He didn't give a good rat's ass if she approved of what he and hundreds of other guys were doing or not. He always stared her down when she handed him the envelope at the end of the session.