He doesn't know how they will pay for it.

That night, at Walmart, David asks Maria to buy bread.

She refuses. Bread at Walmart costs $3.89. With a coupon from Publix, she says, she can get two better loaves for less.

Maria weaves through the crowded store, glancing around nervously. This is the closest Walmart to their new neighborhood. The aisles are labeled in English and Spanish but nothing looks familiar.

She suspiciously eyes fellow customers. To her, it feels like the sort of Walmart where she shouldn't have brought her purse.

She crisscrosses from one end of the store to the other, unsure of where to find the items on her list.

The first thing she needs is a vacuum. Both she and David have been having trouble breathing. The rental house had to be remodeled after the previous residents trashed it, and she fears lingering construction dust is making them sick.

Maria picks out the cheapest vacuum on the shelves, then crams her cart with mostly store-brand groceries.

After checking out, Maria tells David she wants to go to a nicer Walmart on the other side of town next time.

But another major shopping trip will have to wait. She has spent nearly all of her food stamp money for the month. For the next two weeks, she will have to get by on $36.

Two days later, Maria and David hurry to a nearby bank branch. They've been slapped with a $35 fee for overdrawing their checking account.

In a partitioned office, they explain that they're renting a house in the area.

"Do you like it?" the banker asks.

Maria doesn't answer.

"Estamos mudando y se me paso una cosita anoche," Maria says. We're moving, and something slipped by me last night. "Can you waive the fee?"

David notices a flash of color on the banker's dark wood desk. Beneath her computer monitor is a business card holder with a bright orange beach scene that says "Puerto Rico."

"I like that," David tells her.

The banker helps them set up a new savings account for overdraft protection, waives the $35 fee and hands Maria a brochure for first-time homebuyers.

"Someday you want to buy a house," it says. "Right now you have a million questions."

A local banker is someone who you can ask questions, face to face. Politicians, Maria says, are a different matter.

Back home, in the living room of her half-assembled rental house, images of Obama and Romney flash across the TV screen as they give rapid-fire stump speeches around the country.

Even when the presidential candidates are passing through Florida, they seem far away from the life she lives.

"If I had one wish, I'd sit down with both of them," Maria says. "Cut the B.S. Let's just talk."

She would take them to the grocery store and tell them how much it costs her to buy a decent loaf of bread.

She would show them how quickly her Social Security check disappears.