“I’m Jed Sipperly,” the man said, with a showily firm handshake; somebody must have told him that a firm handshake inspired confidence. His face was fleshy but firm beneath a thatch of straw-colored hair; the sun had burned a ruddy crease that started near the bridge of his nose and curved beneath his eyes. Perhaps it was because he had driven for too many hours straight, but Janson suddenly had a vision of what the salesman would look like in a few decades. The meaty lips and padded cheeks would grow loose; the sunexposed contours of his face would turn into furrows, ravines. What now passed for healthy ruddiness would coarsen into a webbing of capillaries, like crosshatchings on an engraving. The yellow hair would whiten and retrench to a zone around his nape and temples, the usual follicular fallback.

On the fake-wood table in the shadowed office, Janson could make out an open brown Budweiser bottle and a nearly full ashtray. These things, too, would speed the transformation, doubtless already had started to.

“Now, what kin I do you for?” Jed’s breath was faintly beery, and as he stepped closer, the sun picked out his crow’s-feet.

There was another cage-rattling lunge from the dog.

“Don’t you mind Butch,” the man said. “I think he enjoys it. You excuse me for a moment?” Jed Sipperly walked outside to the pavement near the chain-link enclosure and stooped down to pick up a small Raggedy Ann–style cloth doll. He tossed it into the enclosed area. It turned out to be what the mammoth dog was pining for: he bounded over to it, and began to cradle it between huge paws. With a few laps of his floppy pink tongue he cleaned the dust from the rag doll’s button-and-yarn features.

Jed returned to his customer with an apologetic shrug. “Look at him slobber on it—dog’s so attached to that doll, it ain’t wholesome,” he said. “I guess everybody’s got a somebody. A real good guard dog, ’cept he won’t bark. Which is sometimes a saving grace.” A professional smile: his lips curved up in an isolated movement; the eyes remained watchful and without warmth. It was the kind of smile that bureaucrats shared with shopkeepers. “That your Nissan Altima?”

“Thinking of a trade,” Janson said.

Jed looked slightly pained, a merchant asked to give to charity. “We get a lot of those cars. I like ’em. Got a weakness for ’em. Be my undoing. Lots of people don’t particularly care for those Japan cars, especially hereabouts. How many miles you got on it?”

“Fifty thou,” Janson said. “A little more.”

Another wince. “Good time for a trade, then. Because those Nissan transmissions start making trouble once you reach sixty. Give you that for nothing. Anybody’ll tell you the same thing.”