Empty Dreams

People ate lugubrios meals around the waterfalls, their faces green with marine sorrow. All the cops in LA looked like handsome gigolos; obviously they'd come to LA to make the movies. Everybody had come to make the movies, even me. Terry and I were finally reduced to trying to get jobs on South Main Street among the beat countermen and dishgirls who made no bones about their beatness, and even there it was no go. We still had ten dollars. (pg 88)

Sal finally made it to LA with this girl Terry he met in Bakersfield. It was love at first sight for Sal, who has been looking for a companion most of this trip. Suprisingly after all his luck, or lack of it, with other women, Sal gets this girl to spend the night with him and actually plans on taking her back to New York. However in LA they find that nothing comes as everybody expects it to. Everyone goes there for one purpose, "to make the movies", but no one ends up doing that. Everyone is "reduced" to something else. The "handsome gigolos" turn out to be cops, while Sal and Terry, after looking for work everywhere else and failing to find any, try and find work in the southside. Even there, among men and women of very low standing it is a "no go". Dreams of a fascinating life with fame, fortune, fulfillment, and love fade away into hunger, pain, emptiness, and "faces green with marine sorrow". However, Sal still has Terry and they "still had ten dollars". It seems that Sal may be looking on the brightside but will he and Terry make it back to New York together or is this just another empty dream?