The novel jumps forward several years. At the Whistlestop train station café where Cricket now works, his coworker, Jed Shipski, teases him about being a virgin. It has been years since Cricket has seen Pia, who moved away after her father was incarcerated in Connecticut. They maintained a correspondence as pen pals, but this gradually faded away.

Cricket and Jed’s manager, J. J. Roulin, arrives for a surprise inspection and gives Jed a clean apron to replace his filthy one. Roulin also notices that Cricket’s braces are gone; they were removed because his mother fell behind on payments.

Roulin sends Cricket on an hour-long paid lunch break. To avoid being seen, Cricket goes to the public library and finds an art monograph on the painter Francisco de Zurbarán. He is shocked to learn that master artists historically hired live models and took on apprentices as young as 12. Feeling that he is already far behind in his artistic development, the 15-year-old Cricket finds a phone book, looks up the Chicago Academy of Art, and writes down its number.