The chapter opens with a creak and a pant pant. It's the first time the narrator has ever been panting, and he's embarrassed. He's been acting like a monkey, he says, and it's because he hasn't thought he'd act like that in 20 years. He tells himself that he doesn't deserve to be panting like that, and then he thanks the lawyer for punching his card. The lawyer congratulates the girl on punching her card, and she tells him that she's done it with the novel "The Milky Way Railroad," which she read back in her hometown. The narrator tells the lawyer that the novel is about a bullied boy, giovanni, and his best friend, Campanella, who board the train to go to the "milky way." When they get to the train, the boy wakes up from a dream about a scorpion, and the girl is dead from protecting him from being what he is. She's not happy with the ending of the novel, which is about how people are idiots, and how happiness is their "happiness." The narrator says that he can't really sympathize with the girl's feelings, because she'd rather be left behind