“Is bag from ice bucket,” Dasha said from her chair by the camera. “Maybe used. For sure not clean.”

Matt squinted at her and went back to the TV.

“I smoke,” Dasha said, exiting the room.

Natalie, Matt, and Dasha had been holed up in the ground floor suite at the Miami Beach Hampton Inn, “Where Breakfast Is On Us! And The Fun Is On YOU!” for seventeen of the longest hours of her life.

This was not what Natalie had expected when she’d boarded the flight out of DC the prior afternoon. At the airport they’d received a call from a What Girl: “You’re ticketed to go to Miami on the 3 p.m. flight.”

Foolishly leaning on logic, Natalie had attempted to clarify, “You mean St. Tropez, right?”

This prompted the What Girl to scoff, “No. Bibb says you’ll be out of position if we send you to St. Tropez. Plus it’s too expensive. We got you a hotel not far from South Beach.”

The words hit Natalie like a noxious cloud. All her journalistic instincts told her to run. Flee. Get on a flight to St. Tropez where she’d find the real story about FLOTUS and career oxygen. But Dasha was on the phone lining up a rental car and Matt, maneuvering his roll-y bag with one hand and a Starbucks and his cell phone with the other, announced that the control room needed them live on air from Miami ASAP. She took a deep breath—better get used to this—and followed Matt’s roll-y bag through the terminal.

They’d arrived at the Hampton Inn just before 6 p.m. and made their way to suite 155 which was decorated with matching comforter, drapes, and upholstery in a motif that could best be described as monkeys having sex.

Instantly Dasha had swung into gear. In a feat bordering on genius, she’d removed a pane of glass from the window, instructed the satellite truck to back up right outside, then she’d run cables from the truck through the empty window frame, hooking them up to the lights and camera inside. By 6:45 p.m., Dasha had positioned Natalie on top of a stepladder, which meant that on camera all you could see was Natalie’s torso against a dusk backdrop of the sand and darkening sea beyond.

“Is how we do in Irbil,” Dasha had explained as she was setting up the camera. Gesturing to the windowless indoor set, she’d said, “Is safer from shrapnel.”