In the woods on a cold November evening, while attempting to commit suicide with the barrel of his father’s revolver in his mouth, Ralph is happened upon in the woods by “the town idiot,” Virgil, who smiles at him and flashes the “V-for-victory sign.” Ralph pockets the gun and after Virgil introduces himself, he asks for a ride to the post office to deliver a card to his sister Hattie for her birthday. 2 months before, Ralph had been fired from his job as business executive after he blew a $250,000 deal because he was “dead drunk at one o’clock in the afternoon.” When Ralph sees Virgil next, clutching the brown parcel he’s often seen with, he offers him a ride to the post office. Across the street at the bank, Ralph is told his accounts are overdrawn by $2,000. Back at home, and with only $1,500 dollars to cover the insufficient balance, Ralph calls his father in Beverly Hills asking for a $3,000. He explains to his father that he’s desperate and even attempted suicide a week earlier, but his father, incredulous, remarks that Ralph should grow up and that he can only spare $500. Looking for other thinks he could hock for money, he tells his wife Beth that he intends to sell the station wagon, her car. She reproaches him for not selling his Mercedes and suggests that he uses the car to keep up appearances for his “ladyfriends.” Ralph sells the car for $3,300 and the next morning, he deposits the money and drives to Alison’s, his ex-mistress, house. After he begs her to come back to him, Alison refuses and he remarks that the day they ended their relationship, he was so distraught that he attempted suicide. Alison is too incredulous.

Later in the afternoon, Ralph drives all over the back roads of the town looking for Virgil who he finds peering over a wooden bridge in to the water. He offers Virgil a ride, and the two spend an hour driving around as Ralph unloads all his troubles—that he had been fired from a job he worked at for 12 years, that his wealthy father only offered to send him $500, that his wife reproaches him for his infidelity, that his mistress had left him after 2 years—to all of which Virgil responds, “Well, that’s OK, don’t worry.” Ralph continues these sessions with Virgil 2-3 times a week, noting that he enjoyed talking to someone who wouldn’t criticize him for his alcoholism, lack of self-awareness, and infidelity—“someone who’d just listen and say, ‘Well, that’s OK, don’t worry.’” As time progresses, however, Virgil talks less and less during the car ride sessions, sometimes sitting in silence for the duration of the hour. During one car ride, Ralph asks Virgil to take his gun because he is contemplating suicide again. He thrusts the gun into Virgil’s hands as he whimpers and shakes his head no, but Ralph insists that Virgil take the gun. The next day, Virgil is found in the woods, the pistol still in his mouth, dead. Within a week, Ralph finds a job and meets a girl on the train that he spends his Friday afternoons with in a motel. Ralph remarks that Virgil was right, “there really had been nothing to worry about all along.”