“I can already tell you’re a vast improvement over the man who lived there before you,” Mr. Barnes continues. “Absolutely horrid. Never came to a single one of my parties. Shame what happened to him, though.” “Oh, no. Did he pass away?” I infuse my voice with an appropriate amount of horror and sympathy, but I mostly want to know whether he died in my apartment. “Nothing like that. He moved to Florida.” Mr. Barnes shudders. “A worse fate I cannot imagine. And I say this as someone who was born in Jacksonville.
