Tampa Alissa Nutting Sample May 2026

Mrs. Hendricks touches the blinds. Her manicured nail leaves a tiny dent in the plastic. “Is it haunted?”

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.”

“People float here all the time,” I say, smiling. My teeth feel like Chiclets glued to a gumline. “It’s the buoyancy of denial.” tampa alissa nutting sample

Tampa in August is a sauna lined with strip malls. The air is so thick with humidity you could chew it like taffy, and the only thing more relentless than the sun is the soft, rotting smell of the bay at low tide. This is where I sell dreams. Or rather, where I sell the illusion that a three-bedroom, two-bath with hurricane shutters and a lanai can outrun the inevitable.

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. “Is it haunted

The Realtor of Sun City Center

I drive back over the Howard Frankland Bridge, the bay below me the color of a dirty aquarium. I roll down the window and let the wind eat my hair. Another soul tucked into a stucco coffin. Another commission check for a woman who teaches tenth-grade English and thinks about her students’ fathers during third period. My teeth feel like Chiclets glued to a gumline

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.