No Naked Lights

by Mike Mayak

The ancient pickup truck puttered through the convenience store parking lot as Braden Walter, just turned forty-five and still my boyfriend, headed it into the parking space. Not that many people around that late so nobody noticed us and the truck appear out of thin air.

“Handicapped Parking” I said pointing at the sign. “That puts the time at least after the seventies, I think.”

“When I was over in England I saw a sign at a gas station that said “No Naked Lights,” Braden said. “That meant No Lit Cigarettes.”

“Yeah, they call them ‘fags’ over there,” I said grinning as I leaned over to kiss Braden.

“Hold up,” he said. “Until we find out exactly when we are.”

Braden’s late father, John Walter, had some odd ideas about the relationships of time to matter, in particular that older objects had earlier times stuck to them and it might be possible to travel through time with those objects. We got the old pickup truck and with what we knew about the Braden Formula we were trying those ideas out. So far we’d been to the 1960s and the 1940s all here in Western Kansas where we’d grown up.

“Too bad we’re a ways out of town,” I said. “We might see something to tell us the year.”

There were just a couple of big worn cigarette ads in the store window, no prices.

“Let’s get a paper,” Braden said. “That’ll give us the date. “Or yesterday’s date.”

“Or last week’s date, depending on the size of whatever town we’re near,” I said hopping out of the car. “Besides, I have to use the men’s room.”

“Finney Monroe, I like the way you think!” Braden said, shutting the car door behind him.

I wandered around the store as Braden used the facilities. Not a lot to tell us the date but even the overpriced bread looked a lot like it did near the year we had started out from.

We had both used the restroom and grabbed a soda. At the counter I found the paper with the date: June 5^th, 1998.

I smiled as I pulled out my wallet and paid for the paper and soda.

“Hey, what is this?” the clerk said eyeing the money. “You passin’ counterfeit dough?”

“No,” Braden said. “That’s a perfectly good ten dollar bill.”

When we started this we made sure we had denominations from several decades. But the clerk held the bill under our noses.

“Yeah? Then who’s this guy Hamilton on the front? Your printer?”

Braden and I stared at teach other. I glanced behind the clerk. On a small file cabinet was a small flag of a country I’d never seen before.

We left the stuff and ran back to the truck.

“Well, that’s never happened before!” I said.

“Yeah,” Braden said. “Let’s think of home real hard!”

Everything shimmered around us as the truck started up but I wish I’d kept that paper.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: No official pic for next week as it is Thanksgiving but I may have something special! Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!—-jeff