A cab splashed frozen water from the curb, which soaked me through to my right hip and, dead-center, groin. The bar was only a few more miles away, so I reasoned the icebox air might help me dry a little and I was relishing the unseasonably heavy hailstorm (hail being nature’s dry hump). But, where was I going, anyway? And why? 

My editor, Ms. Blair, had had to tell me again and again, even though she couldn't have been more clear at the outset: cover scotch for The Saint. A specific assignment, yet appealingly open-ended. Drink a drink; report it. Sounds easy enough, even if the life of an out-of-town correspondent can be a bit disorienting and, admittedly, lonely -- the kind of work that can leave an ambiguous, timeless, spaceless outline of where a reporter should be. At home, but never in the office. No midnight brainstorms with the boys. No pages crumpled around the wastebin. No last drops of hog's hooch clinging to the bottom corner of a bottle slipped from the copy chief's supposedly locked liquor cabinet.

I bet it's bright in Northern Florida, I thought, as the brim of my newsboy cap took a beating that made staying in a straight line a task for Hercules. Someone pulled their car to a stop sign, idled, stuck up their middle finger at me, then drove away.