I awakened to the silver wing cutting clouds over blue-green water, and then I was in Tampa. After renting a Ford Escape, I headed down the coast. I wondered if this was gator country, if I should keep an eye out. All I knew about alligators was you’re supposed to run away in a zigzag.

I wasn’t impressed by my first sight of Retreat, despite the city’s placement on the water. The homes were shady and sunken, the palms hairy and unkempt. I passed through downtown and it didn’t boast a building over four stories, some vultures rotating above it.

Once I stepped outside the Escape’s AC, the air pumped down my throat like hot soup. My hair went greasy, my clothes stuck, and I had to wipe the sweat off my eyebrows before knocking on the bungalow’s door.

I’d found the sublet in the Retreat Examiner classifieds. It was cheaper to rent it for a month than to take a hotel room for ten days, and anyway, I didn’t relish the thought of a few weeks eating at restaurants and sleeping in recycled air. I planned to be here well into March, and the reporters I knew who spent a long time on the road were always in ruinous condition.

The house belonged to a middle-aged woman named Candy who’d gone to Chicago for the month to sit with an ailing brother. Her son-in-law was the one who opened the door, then gave me the keys and a perfunctory tour.

It wasn’t much to speak of, just a few rooms and a backyard of chickweed. Weirdly, Candy had hung mirrors on all the walls, so every time I turned a corner, I spooked myself.

I unpacked my clothes. When I profiled a celebrity, I usually wanted to appear at least vaguely in their milieu, and I’d decided to apply the same tactic to Retreat. I’d brought my most conservative items, plus a Tampa Bay Devil Rays ball cap I’d picked up in Times Square.