Veterans Day

Veterans Day gives Sara’s birthday visit a specific occasion, but the meeting’s central significance is intimate rather than ceremonial: Henry wants to be close to her while recognizing that she regards sex as something reserved for marriage. The holiday gathers his hope, drinking, and uncertainty into one encounter without resolving their conflict.

The Birthday and Its Preparations

By Sara’s birthday, Henry and Sara have met twice more, once at her home and once at his. Their meetings carried a strong sense of fun and expectancy, and Henry describes Sara as strange, individual, and inventive. He recalls happiness between them but distinguishes it from their unsatisfying sexual situation: Drayer Baba’s teaching kept them apart, and Henry felt himself losing a struggle against God.

Henry marks the occasion with a carefully assembled present. At Aunt Bessie’s, an exotic-food store at Hollywood Boulevard and Fountain Avenue, he buys bee secretion, an expensive product Sara had discussed wanting but could not afford. He puts it in a wicker basket with chopsticks, sea salt, two organic pomegranates, two organic apples, and sunflower seeds. The gift reflects his attention to what Sara has said, while its unusual centerpiece gives the present an eccentricity that suits the way he sees her.

The Visit on Veterans Day

Henry drives to Sara’s with several bottles of wine, having already finished one while shaving. He rarely shaves, but does so for her birthday and Veterans Day. That small act of preparation sits beside the drinking: he makes an effort to appear ready for the occasion even as alcohol has already entered it.

His thoughts turn to the terms of Sara’s celibacy. Sara has told him, “Fucking is not that important,” and Henry understands that she means sex should wait for marriage. He regards her restraint as sincere and says that her view of sex as something to save for a good man is understandable, even though he does not consider himself a good man. Her standard and his own self-image remain in tension as he goes to see her.

Attraction and Uncertainty

Henry’s attraction to Sara is not limited to the prospect of sex. He finds her mind charming and describes her as endearing and calmly intellectual. He is also captivated by the red mixed into her golden hair, a distinctive detail that makes her seem to him like someone he has been searching for over decades. His fantasy places them together at a Paris café after he has become famous, joining his imagined literary future to the possibility of a life beside her.

On the way, Henry stops at a bar on the Pacific Coast Highway and drinks a double vodka-7. He worries about Sara’s belief that sex means marriage and accepts that she is celibate, yet he also speculates about her sexual history and admits that he cannot know how confused she may be. His uncertainty exposes the gap between respecting her stated boundary and trying to imagine what lies behind it.

The Holiday’s Unresolved Stakes

Henry says he does not agree with Sara’s ideas but likes her anyway, and he cannot explain why he is going along with her terms. He wonders whether he is becoming lazy, tired of sex, or finally old. These possibilities remain questions rather than settled explanations: the birthday encounter brings his desire into contact with a boundary he neither endorses nor tries to break down.

Veterans Day thus becomes a marker of Henry’s ambivalence. The wine, the shaved face, the costly gift, and his Paris fantasy all register investment in Sara, while his doubts about marriage and sex keep that investment unresolved. His closing birthday wish offers affection without an answer to the conflict that has kept them apart.