I think of my own apartment in Ybor City, where the cockroaches wear tiny suits of armor and the upstairs neighbor practices the tuba at 3 AM. “Ma’am,” I say, pulling a Ziploc bag of Goldfish crackers from my purse, “in Florida, the house isn’t the thing that’s haunted. You are the thing that haunts the house.”
She doesn’t laugh. They never laugh. That’s the secret of Tampa real estate: no one is buying a home. They are buying a vault to store their grief. A garage to park the memory of the affair they had in 1987. A walk-in closet to hide the bankruptcy papers. I unlock the sliding glass door, and the air inside is the smell of last year’s pork roast and a rug that’s seen a thousand bare feet. tampa alissa nutting sample
The Realtor of Sun City Center
My newest client, Mrs. Hendricks, has skin the color of a faded Publix coupon and eyes that have been surgically widened into two wet, panicked coins. She wants a house “close to the good hospital” but far from “the changing neighborhoods,” which is code for everything she won’t say aloud. I show her a split-level in Palma Ceia with a pool shaped like a kidney. The water is the color of a melted peppermint patty. She stares at it and whispers, “My husband used to float.” I think of my own apartment in Ybor
Tampa, I think. You beautiful, rotting manatee. You sparkler dipped in sewage. You’re the only place where I can be this honest and still get a five-star review on Zillow. This sample mimics Nutting’s use of visceral, grotesque imagery, a deadpan first-person narrator with questionable morals, and a setting (Florida) that acts as a character in itself—sultry, decaying, and absurdly comic. They never laugh
She buys it. They always do. I hand her the keys, and the metal is so hot from the sun it burns a little brand into my palm: a cursive S for sold . Or maybe S for sucker . It’s hard to tell in this light.