Chapter 25 & 26 Summary

Chapter Twenty-five finds Cody driving Jack away from the play they watched because Evelyn was the set designer as Kerouac reflects on their mass of experience both together and apart, and how exhausting it would be for either of them to try to catch the other one up. And so they sit in silence, Cody driving expertly and finally talking about the letters he wrote to Willamine from San Quentin in lieu of memoirs, since anything he kept would have been taken from him anyway.

In chapter twenty-six, the pair of friends finally arrives at Willamine's tidy apartment and Jack and Billie are instantly attracted to one another, and Kerouac believes that staying with her in a sea of love for a while will be just what his frayed mind needs. He concedes that Cody at first reacts badly, but that this is...