Sal leaves the next morning while Remi and Lee Ann are still sleeping. He gets a ride on Fresno Road with a kid who has recently had a toe amputated. After driving through many towns, he drops Sal off in Fresno where he gets another ride south of Bakersfield. It is cold and he puts on a raincoat. No rides pass by, so he buys a bus ticket. At the station, he sees a cute Mexican girl and feels regret that they're moving in opposite directions.
Surprisingly, the girl happens to get onto the bus to L.A. with Sal. He works up the courage to talk to her. She is leaving her husband who beats her and has left their child with her family.
He decides that they will be together, so he hugs her "and she loved it." Her name is Terry and she sleeps in his lap. Somehow, Sal gets worried that she is a hustler who plans to take his money. They go to a hotel room, and get into a fight because now she thinks that he's a pimp. He throws her shoes out the door and tells her to leave. She says that she's sorry.
"In reverent and sweet silence she took all her clothes off and slipped her tiny body into the sheets with me. It was brown as grapes. I saw her poor belly where there was a Caesarian scar; her hips were so narrow she couldn't bear a child without getting gashed open... I made love to her in the sweetness of the weary morning. Then two tired angels of some kind, hung-up forlornly in an L.A. shelf, having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon."Part 1, Chapter 12, pg. 84
