Well, I guess this will fit in here.

She was young, she was pretty, and she was in distress. I was there, trying to calm her down. And then the flying saucers came.

My landlord frequently hires homeless people. One of the convictions he holds is that the homeless need to be helped. He sees them as basically good people, who deserve to be given a chance. And this theory has been proven out: my landlord frequently hires homeless people, especially for construction projects, and most of them have been good workers.

Everyone he hires gets a chance. My landlord is aware that mental illness is endemic among the homeless. That doesn't bother him. If they do their job, and don't do drugs, they have regular employment.

Jim was one of the people my landlord hired. He had an arrangement where Jim could live in his garage. I didn't meet Jim right away. One day I looked out the window and saw a rather pretty young woman walking in the backyard.. This, of course, required some investigation.

Her name was Julie. She told me she was a friend of Jim's. Julie had brought a young girl with her, as well as a rabbit that was having a great old time eating the tomatoes I had been raising.

Julie was in her 20s, thin, with long brown, slightly unkempt hair, and firmly in the category of pretty, with only a chipped tooth to mar her appearance.

I met Jim later. He was tall, with an athletic build and the sort of suntan people get when they spend too much time outside. I would guess that he was in his early 50s. He had met Julie on the streets.

I made my introduction. My landlord had already told me a few things about him. Jim was devoutly religious, and held some rather uninformed views on politics. Picture someone who was politically conservative, but couldn't explain why. His ignorance of history and current events was almost flawless.

Now, bear in mind that Jim was homeless. He was living in his car when my landlord found him. Jim claimed to have had a college education, and had earned a degree as a social worker. Julie was with him, because as a social worker, he could help her.

I suspect Jim had been doing some major fibbing about his past. This, I have found, is common among the homeless. My landlord learned, as did I, to just listen to what they said, and believe none of it.

As a worker, over the weeks, Jim did well. But my landlord did not like Julie one bit. I suspect that something else was going on, what the kids now call “drama.” Julie had a habit of turning everything into a crisis.

After a few weeks, my landlord couldn't take it. Jim had to go. He also added that he didn't want Julie to come back, ever. Jim left, his belongings still in the garage.

A couple of weeks passed. It was at night. There was a knock at the door. It was Julie. I let her in.

“My boyfriend Jim is in jail, and he gets seizures. His seizure medicine is in your garage. I can't get in.” My landlord was gone for the evening, and the garage was locked. I assured Julie that my landlord would be back in a couple of hours if that, and then she could get that medicine. That wouldn't do. This was an emergency. Mind you, Jim had left that medicine behind and had done fine without it for two weeks.

Julie had rode to my place with her mother. She told me about what happened to her when she was gone. She and Jim had gotten an apartment, and they were living off of her SSI check. She was mentally disabled, and got a monthly check (probably around $700 or so) from the government.

Minute after minute, she was getting more upset. She had to get in that garage. She had to get that medicine. It couldn't wait.

And then I looked up. Some business was apparently having a promotion. At least half a dozen searchlights were dancing among the clouds, looking like some sort of flying saucer fleet.

I stopped in my tracks. Here was something that inspired me. For a second, I had really believed that I had seen space ships s from another world. I understood the special feeling people felt when they saw UFOs. Julie didn't seem to notice. She was fretting about mundane things, and not willing to see what was going on around her.

I couldn't stand it. “Look! Flying saucers!” I said, hoping to get her attention.

“I see them. They're just stupid searchlights,” she said. I was crushed.

Truth is different from fiction. In fiction, you have to have what is called a denouement, that is, a satisfactory ending to a story. This story lacks that. Julie suddenly remembered something she had in her mother's car. She asked me to go inside for a minute. When I cam back outside, she had a set of bolt cutters in one hand, and a pillowcase full of Jim's belongings in the other.

Jim came back a few days later to pick up the rest of his belongings. And that's the last I ever heard about either of them.