I suppose for me, it really all started in the garage. I mean, you could take a broader view of the thing, and say it started with NAFTA, which, in a way, it did. Without it, I don’t know that the revolution would have started at all, and who knows where we would be today? I mean, the Mexicans would have just stayed in Mexico. On the other hand, no country lasts forever, even great ones like Rome, and I’m not sure that the United States of America was all that great, at least not by 2007.
Finding out that it would get a kick in the pants three years later wasn’t all that surprising. In fact, there was a kind of justice in it, Because I worked alongside the Mexicans, I too, was being oppressed. The Mexicans of the future wouldn’t see it that way, but the history that gets handed down is selective.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
In 2007, I worked in a fast casual restaurant. Fast casual means that they serve real food, but you order at a counter and seat yourself. Kind of a cross between fast food and a cafe.
This one was had a pastry kitchen, and we baked for four stores, one of which sent us bread, and another which had the food kitchen. All the kitchen staff at our store were bakers. We were in the city, in a row of shops on the ground floor of an office building. There was a small parking lot in front, which was only for customers. Some of them and all of us parked in an eight story garage on the next block. The business contracted the space, and we were loaned cards which allowed us to enter and exit the garage each day.
In Tennessee, if your are paid by the hour, you have to take a lunch break. You area not allowed to work through lunch. That’s the law. I took my lunch breaks in the park across the street that year. Most of the people just hung out in the loading area behind the building, but I liked the park. It had large trees surrounded by grass, and a life sized replica of the Parthenon in the background. I chose the ground under a tree as my half hour home, and settled down with a sandwich, a to go cup filled water and a book.
It was raining the day I met Flew.

*******

I first began to get the idea that something was fishy in the parking garage the day Danny disappeared. He came to work, went to the office, signed out a parking pass and disappeared. We wandered through he garage, not sure what we were looking for, Mindy and I, and thus, not knowing if we had found it. It was a pleasant garage in its own way, too pleasant. Garages aren’t supposed to be that friendly. You just park your car and go.
Not knowing what to do with my lunch hour in the rain, I took my sandwich and headed for the garage. I had an audio book I could listen to, and just figured I would sit in the passenger seat of my car while eating and being read to.
It turned out to be comfortable, and seemed perfectly safe, but just in case, I locked the door. Now I’m a second degree black belt, but there’s no point in being stupid. So anyway, the doors were locked, and I had found a place for my drink right by the emergency brake, and my sandwich sat just in front of it. I was listening to my book when suddenly, there was someone in the drivers seat.
It wasn’t me. I was still in the passenger seat.

*******
“Um,” I said, taken aback. I picked up my woven bag, the one I used as both a purse and a lunch sack. I was ready to bolt, but I needed the keys. They were in the ignition, since I was listening to the CD player play my book. I wanted to reach over and get them, but what if the stranger grabbed me? I knew some self defense, and a bunch of it was based on wrist grabs. I could get out of a hold a number of different ways, depending on how I was grabbed. Some defenses were designed to hurt the other attacker, and one or two even flipped the person, but the ones I remembered most, the ones that seemed the most practical, were the ones that ended in the Nike defense. In the Nike defense, you distract the attacker, usually by throwing up your hand in their face, get loose and run like the Dickens.
“What are you doing here?” asked the man in the drivers seat. He turned to face me, his blue eyes flashing. He had long blond hair with a green streak in the back. If he hadn’t been trespassing into both my car and my lunch half hour, I would have said he was good looking, but good looking or no, there was a stranger in the drivers seat of my car, staring at me like I was from another planet. I reached over and yanked the key out of the ignition, holding onto the kubaton to which they were attached.
“This is my car. I’m eating lunch, and I had the doors locked. With the kubaton in hand, I felt a little safer, which was pretty stupid. If a guy, not matter how good looking, could materialize out of thin air, what difference did it make what I was holding? I could have been holding an AK47. Well, maybe not in that space. Besides, I wouldn’t have wanted to shoot up my car.
He shook his head, looking confused. “Naw,” he said. “This car is mine. I was driving down cinco de mayo boulevard, and nobody was with me. Did I pass out of something? I don’t remember coming here, but I don’t always remember everything. Sometimes, there’s just this weird light, like it’s all sort of bright and quiet.” He stopped, seeming to remember that I was there. I took a bite of my sandwich. It was a smoked turkey and cheese day. I alternate with peanut butter and honey days.
“Look, I don’t know what kind of drugs you’re doing, dude, but this is my car. Get out of it, and I won’t call the police. If you insist on staying, I’m leaving, but I’m taking my sandwich first.” I began to pack up my lunch. A half hour was not a very long break. I needed some space from all the noise of the kitchen. I didn’t want to waste it with some nut case in my car. Why couldn’t he have appeared in someone else’s car?
“No. It’s mine. See?” He took a key ring from his pocket and started the car.
“What the fuck?” I said. A small wooden carving hung from his key ring. It looked like it should be some sort of icon, but I had never seen one like it before.
Enough was enough. I had no idea how the stranger had gotten a key to my car, or even how he got in, for that matter. the door was locked, I reminded myself.
I opened the passenger door and grabbed my woven bag. At the last second, I remembered the electronic card, which I usually left in the little compartment where I kept my sunglasses. As I left the car, I put it in my pocket. he may have keys to the car, but he wasn’t getting out of the garage.

*******
My heart pounded as I strode towards the fourth floor elevator. It was the middle of the day. The garage was full of cars, but nobody was there. I thought about taking the stairs, but what if he followed. I watched as I waited for the elevator, ready to run for the stairs if I saw him getting out of the car, but he didn’t even pull out. I hoped he wouldn’t leave it running. Gas was expensive, and I wasn’t so sure about the fumes. I think the old Mazda was a polluter.
The elevator doors shut behind me, and I calmed down. back on the street level, nothing had changed. Had I imagined it? That was as crazy as crazy gets. I sat down in the loading area behind work, and finished my lunch, reading a book I usually kept in my woven bag, for my forays to the park. I went back into work and tried to think about what we were baking. As soon as we were done, I would see to my car.
I never did call 911. We weren’t supposed to use our cell phones at work, and for some reason, I didn’t want to discuss this with everyone else.
Besides, I had a feeling that he wasn’t going anywhere at all.
I was wrong, but at least he waited for me.

******

“Where have you been? Did you bring me something?” He was munching on a cookie I had left in the car. It was part of my lunch.
I noticed that his accent was slightly different, but I couldn’t place it. It wasn’t foreign, exactly. Just different.
“I’ve got a muffin,” I answered truthfully. “It’s a little beat up looking, because the blueberries got stuck to the pan. We can’t sell this one. I was going to eat it for breakfast tomorrow.” I handed him the muffin. he unwrapped it, and ate it hungrily.
“I’m Flew,” he said between bites. The muffin was gone in a few seconds. It wasn’t a very big muffin, like a store would sell individually, but a small thing that was part of a catering job.
“Ramona,” I said, not sure I should tell him my name. Who was he and what was he doing here? “What kind of a name is Flew?” is what I asked instead.
“Nord,” he answered. It’s not what I expected, but it explained the blond hair. Wee, not the green streak, but then, I had a blue one for a while. Then it turned bright green and stayed that way a while, before becoming a yucky turquoise.
“I want to go home,” I said. “I’ve been at work all day, and I’m tired. Why are you in my car?” I was no longer afraid of him, but I really did want to go home. I fished around in my big woven bag for my keys.
“Look. I’m sorry, “ he began. “I think I may have screwed up. I do that sometimes.” I waited for him to continue, but he said nothing at all.
“Um, Flew?”
“Yeah?”
“Could you get out of my car so I could go home?”
“Wow. I don’t know. I mean, you could take a bus or call a friend, right? But i got here in the car. I don’t know how to get back without it.”
“You can’t get home without my car?”
“My car. I’ve owned it for three years. It was my brother’s before that, and he got it from a gang brother’s aunt. it’s been in our little circle for a long time. I think you’re confused.”
“You definitely are,” I said. “Look. Call one of these people.” I pulled out my cell phone. I had begun to think he was crazy, but he seemed harmless. “Let them come get you.” His family was probably used to calls like this. They were probably wondering right now just where he could have got off to.
“No, see, I might have slipped. I didn’t mean to.” He appeared contrite, although i couldn’t imagine why. Well, maybe showing up in a stranger’s car would do that to you, but how had he gotten in? I still didn’t understand that. When I got in my car, nobody was there, not even in the back seat. I had thrown my jacket back there. i would have noticed.
“I do that sometimes,” he continued. “I didn’t mean to, but it’s handy. I was being followed, and I turned into the garage before the cop noticed. I parked, and suddenly, you were there. You didn’t just get there, though. You were all settled in, eating lunch, your drink propped up. And I don’t have a player like that.” He was looking at my CD player, the one I got from my sister’s car when it died. She had a nice sound system, but a Ford transmission.
“I do. It’s my car,” I interrupted.
“Where am I?”
“Nashville.”
“Never heard of it.” He stopped and considered.
“What year is it?”
“If I tell you, will you get out of my car?” It was getting later. I had a Friday and Saturday weekend, and I was anxious to start it. He was going to make me get stuck in rush hour traffic.
He didn’t answer.
“Please?” I said.
“Please?” he pleaded back at me. His blue eyes no longer flashed. They looked weary, maybe with a touch of fear.
I sighed. “2007,” I said quietly.
He whistled under his breath. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m dead serious.” A glow crossed her face. “What?”
“Then it hasn’t happened yet.” He allowed it to sink in.

*********

“2007.”
“What?” I said again, with a touch of impatience.
“I can still walk the streets. We’ve got three more years.” He looked at me. “You might have longer. Know any Mexicans?”
“Dude. I work in a kitchen. Anyone who works in a kitchen knows Mexicans.”
A look of amazement crossed his face. “It’s real. The history really did happen. We’re still in power, then.”
I got out of the car and walked around to t the driver’s side. I had no idea who this guy who called himself Flew was, but I wanted to get home. “let me see your driver’s license,” I said.
“Yes ma’am.” He flashed a smile. “Cops aren’t dangerous yet, are they?”
“Some are,” I answered, thinking of Rodney King.
It was a different looking driver’s license, but then, it’s not like I had seen all of them. I had had two, myself. North Carolina’s was prettier than Tennessee's. It had a hologram of the Wright Brother’s plane, which you saw if you tilted it away from you, and you got a choice of backgrounds. My old one had the Hatteras lighthouse in the background. My Tennessee license looked like a mug shot.
Well, not as much of a mug shot as Flew’s. The first thing I looked for was the date. His license would expire in 5803 . It had been issued in 5798. How old was he? Hard to say. He was born on May 10, 5772. His lived at 6240 De Cuellar Way, in Chiapas, La.
Chiapas? Wasn’t that a state in Mexico?
“We need to trade seats,” I told him. “You’re not old enough to have a driver’s license.”
“I’m older than you,” he said.
“I’m 26,” I told him. “I’ve been licensed for ten years.”
“I’m 27.”
“You haven’t been born yet,” I pointed out. “Not only that, we’re in a city you never heard of, and everyone here drives like maniacs. I’ll drive.”
Amazingly, he got up out of the driver’s seat and walked around. he even left his key in the ignition. He’d been listening to my audio book.
Even more amazingly, I didn’t hit the automatic door locks. I could have. I could have locked him out, driven off and left him standing there in the garage, a Louisiana license from 2035 in his pocket, and whatever else he had with him. If he had a phone, who would he call?
He climbed into the passenger seat and shut his eyes, wearily.
“Home, James,” he said.
I guess some expressions don’t change.

********
“Nice place,” he remarked, looking at the rundown upstairs apartment I called home.
“It was cheap, and it’s in a safe neighborhood. There’s some dangerous places around here.”
“In 2007?” He looked around in a wondrous way. “I hate to impose,” he began, then stopped.
“I seem to be letting you impose,” I said, and I was. I was still not sure why. “I thought maybe you liked to impose.” I smiled at him. if he really was from, let’s see, 5772 plus 27, it was 5799 in his world. He was far from home.
“Um, I haven’t eaten in a while. I’ve been on the run since yesterday.”

If I somehow slipped in time, I’d want someone to fix me some scrambled eggs and grits, so that’s exactly what I did for him. And for me, too. I was pretty hungry.
It wasn’t a great apartment, but I kept a well stocked produce drawer. I sliced some cantaloupe while the grits were cooking, and cracked four eggs into a bowl. i added some garlic powder, dill, salt pepper, cream cheese and little chunks of cheddar to the mix, before pouring it all in a hot pan. Whenever he got back to 5799, he would remember my eggs. I knew how to cook a good breakfast, even if it was dinner time.
Who has time to cook all that in the morning? Who even wants to eat all that in the morning? Me, I like to roll out of bed and go to work. Or maybe not go to work, but I’d become addicted to food and shelter. Someday, I’ll retire.
He was leafing through a magazine when I emerged from my little kitchen, carrying two plates of food. Good homemade bread topped off the dishes. i worked in a bakery, and leftover bread was one of the few perks of my job.
The other was misshapen cookies. Insurance? Paid vacations? That was the turf of the privileged elite, those who didn’t actually do anything. People like me? The country would fall apart without us, but we were paid shit, and we got leftover bread.
Not only that. It pay never go up, not as long as the Mexicans were here. I liked the Mexicans, but they shared small apartments, worked 2 jobs apiece, and brought everyone else’s wages down. Well, the working people, anyway,
“I can’t believe this!” Flew was leafing through a back issue of Atlantic Monthly. I couldn’t imagine what was so unbelievable, so I peek ed over his shoulder before setting the plates down at the dining table.
He was looking at ads.
Now, we’re not talking about Cosmopolitan or Vogue. The Atlantic Monthly doesn’t have especially exciting ads, but Flew leafed through the magazine excitedly, exclaiming at this model for blank, and that one holding a blank.
“They’re blond,” he exclaimed. “The majority of them are blond, and there’s other white people too. They’re being respectable. They’re the mouthpiece of stuff people are trying to sell. I had heard about that, but I didn’t believe it.” He looked up at me, his blue eyes shining, his whole face lit up. I wondered if all people in 5799 were this expressive. Probably not, anymore than people in 2007 were all the same.
“We were respected, once,” he said in wonder.

******
I was hungrier than I thought. The warm dinner hit the spot. We hardly spoke at all. I didn’t know if they had different table manners in 5799, or if was just concentrating on eating. He looked a little on the skinny side.
What if he wasn’t from the future? What if this was some sort of scam? Naw. Why would someone scam me? To steal my car. It was a 1994 Mazda, which I had named Fido. He was a spunky little car, but nonetheless, steal a Mercedes or something.
“Something else?” I asked, when his plate was empty. If he had really been on the run, he was probably starving.
“I hate to impose,” he said.
“Are you sure? You’re very good at it.” I instantly regretted saying it. This guy had a very expressive face. I changed the subject.
“So, are you really from the future?” I asked.
“That’s a funny question. I mean, it’s always the present, wherever you are. If it weren’t, I don’t know that you’d have a body.”
Again, the slight tinge of an accent, but nothing that I could place.
“Okay, why do you have a key to my car, and would you like coffee? I have some good cookies. Lots of them. Do they have cookies where you’re from?”
“I have the keys to my car because I was driving it, yes, please and yes, we do.”
“Smart ass. What did I just ask?”
He sighed, then took it from the top, like I was a dumb student or something.
“I would like some coffee. Cookies would be great. We do have cookies, but not all of them are good. Only some.”
“Here, too,” I interrupted. “But these are leftovers from my job. If they run into each other, we can’t sell the cookies because they aren’t round. We sell them for a lot of money. But there are things like iced animal crackers and cheapo chocolate chip cookies with Chocolaty chips. If they say chocolaty, it because it’s not real chocolate.”
“That hasn’t changed,” he said. “But chocolate chips are kind of an ethnic thing. Those pink marshmallow coconut ones are popular. And my mother makes butter cookies like nobody else. It’s a Swedish thing, something she learned from her grandmother.”
“I have grandmother baking too. Baklava, with almonds and rose water. None of that heavy, sticky greek stuff. She’s arabic.” He followed me into the kitchen, even though the table was only a few feet from the doorway. I wished he would sit back down. I was getting nervous again.
“So do you want to know about the car, or are we just going to talk about cookies?”
“Okay, why do you have a key to my car?” For some reason, this was giving me the creeps. It wasn’t like he had a key to may apartment, or did he? Exactly who had I invited into my home? Was I nuts?
“Because it’s mine. I was driving very fast through some old winding road, but it didn’t go anywhere. It ended in a circle, with big houses on it. I had gotten out of the city, and totally out of the Nord hood. And I needed to escape. Look. It’s a long story, but this car was once yours, and sometimes reality blurs for me. i was pretty desperate. One of the houses had a garage door open. It was weird. Usually, rich people lock up, but I pulled into the garage and stayed put, and the cops turned around and left, but it’s not like there was any other way out of the place, but I was in the car, and the car had been other places. It had memories of its own, only not like memories. it’s a car. But, well... anyway, I must have slipped.”
“Now hold on. You drove into a suburban subdivision in 5799, parked in a garage and ended up in my car in a municipal garage in Nashville. You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
“You think I’d make that up? Don’t be silly. I’d pick something far more believable. It sounds absurd. Only real life could happen like that.”
I poured two cups of coffee, and put the milk container on the table. He followed me out with the cookies, which were wrapped together in plastic wrap. he opened them carefully. Apparently, they still had plastic wrap in 5799. Was petroleum still around? Wouldn’t they have run out? Maybe their petroleum was our trees. That was, let’s see, 5799 minus 2007 was 3792. How long did it take for trees to become oil?
“Dude. Big hole in your story.” His cookie was nearly gone. These were big. he must have been hungry. “Don’t worry about eating my cookies,” I said. “We’re not a big kitchen staff, and we make boatloads of these things. There’s always more screw ups than bakers that want to take them home. But anyway, it’s a good car, but there’s no way you’re driving a three thousand, seven hundred and ninety two year old car.”
I thought he was going to choke. he struggled to swallow what was in his mouth before giving himself over to complete laughter. Every time he looked at me, he burst out laughing again.
“Do you know nothing about history?” he finally asked, after he had regained control.
“What about it? I know more art history than anything, but I’m not ignorant.”
“The Years Shift. You have to have heard of that. Come on.”
“Yearshift? Is that like a gear shift, only it changes years?” I had no idea what he was talking about.
This bright more laughter, and this time, I laughed a little with him. At least I had been making a joke. Sort of.
“The Year Shift is when the calendar moved from Christian to Ancient Hebrew. It was a few years after the Mexican revolution, during the brief Afghan take over.”
“And what year was that?”
“The Mexican Revolt. 2010, I believe. I was never a great student, but I know as much history as most scholars,” he said proudly. “History is important. You can’t use something you don’t understand. Time and I get along famously.”
“Well, it’s only 2007,” I said feeling vindicated. “How would I know something that hasn’t happened yet?”
“Yes, well, that explains a lot,” he said, but I wasn’t sure what he meant. I was tired. It had been a long day. Even with the coffee, I wanted a nap. I’d do the math later, once he told me more. I still wanted to know how long my car would keep running.
I gave him a blanket and the couch. With a good meal under his belt and a safe hideout, he had grown even more tired than I felt. As I turned to go down the hall to my bedroom, I turned back to him.
“The car? It’s name is Fido,” I said.
“Fido,” he repeated. Then he closed his eyes and drifted off into a welcome sleep. Despite the stranger in my living room, I soon followed.