Stanley sat on the love seat extolling the virtues of the encyclopedias while the pregnant woman (her name was actually Mrs. Bump) sat across from him on the long sofa.

“It’s never too early to invest in your child’s education,” Stanley said, and explained how this set of encyclopedias surpassed all others.

“I’m very interested,” said Mrs. Bump. “But you’ll have to wait until my husband gets home. I can’t make a decision like this without his approval.”

Stanley suppressed a frown. He had noticed the framed photographs, some from the wedding, others from a honeymoon in some tropical locale. He disliked the husband’s face. If a man couldn’t smile during his own wedding or honeymoon, what must he be like the rest of the time? And now there was more evidence against him—he dominated all aspects of his wife’s life, even simple matters such as buying encyclopedias for their soon-to-be-born child.

Perhaps Stanley’s dislike of the husband was intensified by his affection for Mrs. Bump. She was pretty. And young, he thought, maybe nineteen or twenty. Stanley wasn’t much older, just out of college, but he felt worldly in her presence. She seemed wide eyed and girlish as she asked what it was like to be a traveling salesman, out on the road, seeing the country. But for all that she didn’t seem like a foolish girl who’d been knocked up and rushed into a shotgun wedding. And the husband in the photos looked to be at least thirty, maybe older. Probably settled in a successful career. The house was spacious, clean, tastefully furnished. Stanley wondered how this vibrant young woman had ended up with such a pill.

She wore a housedress and slippers—too far along to be dressing up every day—but her hair was sculpted into a flawless beehive. Her face was round, and he wondered if it had always looked like that. He’d heard that pregnancy could change a woman’s face. She didn’t look haggard, but had that glow some expectant mothers were said to get.

Stanley didn’t push. They chatted some more. He asked if she hoped for a boy or a girl. “I’d be happy with either,” she said, “but I know it’s a girl. Don’t ask me how, I can just tell.” He inquired about names. He should have moved on, tried to cover more ground while it was still daylight, logged a few more sales. But he enjoyed her company. It was much nicer to linger here awhile than to start all over at a new house with a new prospect. She was easy to talk to, and easier to look at. She laughed at his jokes. He was good at that part of the job. It was really about selling himself, not the product. Getting the customer to like him, trust him, buy into his confidence and charm. The product didn’t really matter.

And he detected … something. It happened sometimes—housewives left home alone all day, eager for company. Usually it was nothing serious, just a bit of flirting with the traveling man, a quasi-romantic figure on whom a lonely woman could project her innocent fantasies, safe in the knowledge that nothing would happen and he would soon be gone. But in Mrs. Bump Stanley detected something more. For the first time he began to wonder if she really had a husband. It was an absurd thought, that she would not only lie to him but construct an elaborate ruse by placing framed photographs of herself with a man all around her home. Nevertheless, he mused on it, which was easy to do as they chatted pleasantly about nothing in particular. With one part of his mind he carried on the undemanding conversation and with the other he followed this strange new train of thought. Perhaps she had been knocked up, and the father had run off, and she’d staged a bunch of photos with a male acquaintance, to present a respectable façade … but for whose benefit? Neighbors, who would surely discover the truth sooner or later? Traveling salesmen like him? Why, what was the point?

He wore himself out with these thoughts and grew suddenly weary of the whole scenario—the house, Mrs. Bump’s presence. It had been a slow day even before this long, fruitless stop, and now he felt impatient to get back out and make some sales. He began to gather his things.

“I’ll come back this evening,” he said, “when your husband’s home.”

He stepped outside. His car was not where he’d parked it. He stood staring at the empty space where it should have been, as if disbelief could somehow make it reappear. He went down the front walk to the street and looked in each direction, absurdly hoping he’d misremembered where he’d parked and that his car would be just a few doors down.

“Back so soon?” Mrs. Bump smiled when she opened the door.

“My car’s been stolen.”

She looked past him to the empty spot at the curb. Her brow furrowed but she still wore the surprised smile.

He telephoned the police, who came to the house and asked questions for their report. Then he telephoned his employer to explain what had happened.

“You poor dear,” Mrs. Bump said from the doorway of the kitchen. Stanley was standing with his hand still on the receiver of the telephone he had just hung up. “Stay for dinner. My husband will be home soon. I’m making a roast.”

He noticed the savory smell wafting from the oven, which he had registered only subconsciously during his phone calls. His stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

“You’re too kind, Mrs. Bump,” he said. “I’ve imposed upon you too much already.”

“I swear it’s no imposition. You’ve had a terrible misfortune and it’s the least we can do. After dinner my husband can drive you to the train station.”

“No, I’d better catch the next train. Go home and—and put things in order.”

“At least wait until my husband gets here. He’ll drive you.”

“I don’t mind walking. It helps me think. But thanks all the same.”

She implored him a bit more, but he couldn’t be persuaded. He was eager to be gone before the husband arrived. He’d given up his strange fancy that the husband didn’t exist, and his attraction to Mrs. Bump had soured in the wake of the ordeal with his car. He felt a peculiar sense of shame that it had been stolen. Somehow, it seemed to be his fault, for staying too long without a sale to be made, staying simply because he enjoyed the company of a pregnant married woman. What a fool. If he’d gone when he should have, his car would not have been stolen. He didn’t want Mrs. Bump’s husband, whom he was now certain was a successful businessman of some sort, to see his shame and failure.

On the way out Mrs. Bump kissed his cheek, which pleased and irritated him. She pointed him in the direction of the train station. He began to walk, watching the street for some sign of his car. He made up his mind that if he saw it he’d flag down the driver, feigning some emergency. When got close enough he’d drag the thief out through the door and thrash the sonofabitch.

But of course he wouldn’t see the car. The thief was long gone. He wondered what the fellow would do when he discovered the merchandise in the trunk. Try to sell it himself? If he did, that was how he’d get caught. But Stanley hoped the police would find the car before it came to that. The paperwork was already going to be hell, and that would make it even worse. There was nothing he could do but wait and hope. And get home to regroup.

A few blocks from the train station he stopped before a saloon. He hadn’t known he would go in until he was opening the door and passing from the hot street into the cool dark air inside. He was hungry and wanted something to eat before getting on the train. And he wanted a drink to help calm his churning thoughts. He ordered a sandwich and a beer. He finished the beer before the sandwich and ordered another drink.

By the time he had finished his meal he’d ordered a third drink. He felt reluctant to leave the comfortable barroom. He’d exchanged only a few words with the bartender, but now the workday had ended and people from the town started to come in. The fellow who sat down next to him struck up a conversation.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Stanley said when the fellow asked what brought him to town, and he explained about his stolen car.

The fellow was so moved by his story he bought him a drink and called over some other folks. They bought him drinks too and he told the story many times, adding numerous embellishments. After a while he couldn’t separate the facts from the embellishments, and the story became something he could tell fluently without recognizing any of the details as things that had happened to him. He heard it repeated by others throughout the saloon, and he began to question if his car really had been stolen.

“Say,” he asked someone, “when does the last train leave?”

“Midnight.”

“Plenty of time,” Stanley roared, and guzzled another beer.

After more retellings, the other patrons grew tired of his story. He was relieved not to have to tell it again, because he’d grown tired of it too. He couldn’t keep it straight anymore and wondered if it had really happened. He grew silent and withdrawn. A woman invited him to come home with her. She wasn’t bad looking, if a bit older. But his thoughts had wandered back to Mrs. Bump. The woman was suddenly repulsive to him and he turned away from her.

“Say,” he exclaimed. “Does anyone know a Mrs. Bump?”

He pushed through the busy barroom asking who knew Mrs. Bump. He grabbed strangers by the lapels and insisted they must know her.

“She lives right here in town. Surely you know her. Pretty girl. About to have a baby.”

No one knew her. Or at least they said they didn’t. He mistrusted them. They told him he was getting pushy and had better watch himself. He began to suspect an elaborate conspiracy against him in this town. He grew belligerent, accusing folks of lying to him and stealing his car and besmirching the reputation of an honorable young woman who was about to become a mother. He found himself being herded toward the door.

Suddenly he was no longer in the noisy barroom but out on the quiet street. The scenes had reversed: when he had entered the saloon, it had been hot and bright outside and cool and dark inside, and since then the barroom had become warm with the heat of the drinkers’ bodies and talk while outside it had grown dark and cool. He looked at his watch. There was still time to make the midnight train. But instead he turned in the opposite direction.

He followed his steps back to Mrs. Bump’s house. Even in his drunkenness, he remembered the way. He tried to formulate a plan of what to do when he arrived, but in a short while he found himself there, with only a jumble of malformed thoughts in his head.

He stood before the house. The space where his car had been was still empty. The driveway was still empty, too. This lent credence his strange suspicion that Mrs. Bump had lied about having a husband. At the time it had seemed merely a way to sustain the fantasy that he could be with her. Now in his drunkenness it became clear: she did have a husband, the man in the photographs, but he had abandoned her when she became pregnant. Out of guilt he had left her the house. And out of hope that he would return, she had kept his photographs displayed. But even as she lied that her husband would soon be home for dinner, she kept talking to Stanley, detaining him long past the point when he should have gone, because she knew her husband was gone for good and she’d transferred her hope to the man who had appeared unexpectedly on her doorstep.

Stanley felt emboldened. He tried the front door of the house, but it was locked. He needed to get her attention. He went around to the back where he thought her bedroom might be. He searched on the ground and found a pebble and flung it at her window, but he applied too much force and instead of plinking off the glass it smashed a pane.

He retreated behind a tree. A light came on in the room and through the broken glass he heard two voices: a woman’s and a man’s. The man’s voice rose in anger and Stanley hopped over the fence into the neighboring yard and watched from behind a tree as the back door opened. He saw the beam of a flashlight, but he couldn’t tell if it was the man from the photographs because the flashlight was beaming about the yard and leaving its holder in darkness.

The man walked all the way to the fence, cursed, and switched off the flashlight. He leaned on the fence and lit a cigarette. In the match flare Stanley almost made out the man’s face but then it went dark again. They both stood there in the still night, mere feet apart. Stanley could have whispered and the man would have heard him.