10

Rae had never had a romantic attachment before and the experience seems to have been bewildering to him. He was still quite young, love and hate had yet to be tempered into resignation. As a flighty young man, he had always found it easier to avoid personal entanglements than to risk the emotional pain of rejection. In this, Sara was undoubtedly helpful. Sara’s presence was quiet and calm. She stayed and she was never dissatisfied, or at least, she never let it show. I like to think that Rae felt safe with her.

Did Rae love Sara? Recent scholars have begun to pay more attention to her but regrettably there are very few historical records of this woman. She was older than Rae, perhaps by as many as ten years. She had two children, although they no longer lived with her—removed by the government, they lived with a relative. She was as unemotional as Rae was friendly. Hours might pass where she did not utter a single word.

Why did Sara stay with Rae? No one knows. Perhaps she would have said that she wasn’t with Rae at all. Beyond occasional casual sexual intercourse and sharing their alcohol, you might have said that she just frequently happened to be where Rae was.¹ Certainly, her mind was more often on her absent children than Rae.

After the night they met in Dave’s hole, Sara ceased her ineffectual efforts to get her children back—at least for a while—and Rae stopped wandering. They moved in to Dave’s hole together.

The Aliens arrived on Earth shortly after they met. Neither of them cared. Perhaps they would have paid attention if the Aliens sold alcohol. As it was, their every moment was occupied in acquiring alcohol for one another or for themselves.

Rae and Sara always shared their alcohol. When he got a few dollars begging, Rae brought her large bottles of malt wine. When she made money giving blow jobs behind a convenience store, she bought a bottle of gin or tequila. When they didn’t have any alcohol to drink, they talked about times they had been drunk, or their favorite drinks, or the great and awful things they had done in the past in order to get alcohol or when they had been too drunk to be unimpressive. And these conversations were often as good as being drunk. But always, they came to wanting something to drink.