Summary: Chapter 27: Air-Ride

In the present, Cal attends the opening of a Warhol exhibition at a museum in Berlin. He runs into Julie Kikuchi, who teases him for smoking cigars. They sit there smoking together, and Cal tells her that he needs to explain why he didn’t call her back.

Back in 1975, the mysterious man calls Milton back and claims to be holding Callie for ransom. He knows details of the Stephanides’ lives. He orders Milton to bring the ransom money to the train station. Milton leaves the house in the middle of the night. He doesn’t tell Tessie where he’s going because he knows she’ll tell him to call the police.

Milton arrives at the station and puts a briefcase with the money in a trash can as instructed. He almost leaves but decides to face the kidnapper. He finds Father Mike fishing the briefcase out of the trash. Father Mike scrambles to his car, and Milton runs to his Cadillac. Father Mike attempts to drive to Canada. Milton chases him, honking and screaming, trying to alert the customs agents. They order him to pull over, and Milton pretends to oblige but then speeds off after Father Mike across a bridge.

Cal imagines Father Mike feeling emasculated in his marriage to Zoë, shocked by going from church, where people treat him with deference, to his home, where Zoë treats him with ridicule.

Father Mike has to slam on his breaks when the car in front of him on the bridge stops. Milton’s car rams Father Mike’s, and Milton dies instantly.Cal, as narrator, imagines his father’s car sailing off the bridge instead. He imagines that Milton cries for the first time since childhood, upset at his failure to save Cal and thinking about how he had spent his life telling people the right way to do things, and now he has done something stupid.Cal says that perhaps it’s for the best that Milton never saw Chapter Eleven destroy Hercules Hot Dogs and never met the man Cal had become.

Summary: Chapter 28: The Last Stop

Cal explains to Julie Kikuchi that he’s always been interested in girls and that his intersexness has nothing to do with sexuality. She decides she’s okay with dating Cal. They go home and turn out the lights to have sex.

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