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other stories to pass the time. The stories always evolve into rumors about the people in the town.
    The viejita who lives on the corner en la casa azul can tell the future. She has an old parrot who gives her formulas for the future. No one has ever stepped into her house, but I looked through the window once and I saw números in white paint all over her purple walls. I heard the pajarito demand galletas on the way to Delia’s. Delia sells churros and eggs to most of us in town. I heard the little bird shout
    “Uno!”
    “Dos!”
    “Cuatro!!”
    The pajarito said these three numbers slowly and then went into accelerated number shouting. I thought maybe he just never learned how to properly count.
    I fell asleep in Palomar and I woke up in El Paso en el futuro. Newspapers indicated 2010. In Palomar, it was 1952. I didn’t have any papers so I cleaned houses for ladies with big hair and overpowering fragrances. I worked with five other women. Cassandra was my favorite. She was blunt and adequately harsh on the white women we worked for. Behind their backs, we laughed about how they looked orange because even though they had money, they could never be melanin rich.
    Cassandra was my first kiss and my first fuck. We lived together through passing seasons. We raised succulents and laughed at each other as often as we could in between the reality of economic circumstances and our introspections. One night, after falling asleep in her arms, I woke up alone in 1974.
    With the windows rolled down, Sylvia looked up at the policía and out to the pavement, where she calculated her first grave would be.
    “Young lady, what’s your boyfriend’s name?”
The gringo had his grip on her wrist and squeezed harder.
    “I don’t know.”
    Sylvia saw psychedelic spots and her head began to burden her shoulders.
    “Get out of the car.”
    The police officer pulled her out. The last time policía interacted with her, he followed behind her and her hermano before he finally searched the both of them on the basis that they were “acting suspicious”.
    Sylvia stumbled and breathed in the smog and the heaviness of her mortality.
    “We were patrolling the area and someone called and reported what happened.”
    Sylvia sifted through her thoughts and the viejito popped into it.
    The nearest bar is a miniature structure packed with men portraying masculinity behind mustaches. I drench my fragility in tequila until I can’t feel the hot tears possessing my face. Someone addresses me by “mija” so, I stare into him. He simply offers me pan dulce. I chuckle at him. He has a brown paper bag with sweet bread in it and here he is, at this macho bar in his vaquero gear.
    “I know I am in the past. I can tell by the fucking cars and the way you dress and I know she hasn’t even existed yet.”
    I tell him about Cassandra’s messy hair and her perfect eyebrows that had to be on point before she went out. He sighs and hands me a concha.
    “Come esto. You need to hydrate mija.”
    I chug water as he explains the science behind creating perfect pan dulce. We step into the parking lot where the sun shower from the morning dissipated back into the sky. The rhythm of my step stops. Someone has a grip on the back of my shirt’s collar.
    He shows me a small knife.
    He whispers something about being able to fix me.
    He says something about me being dirty, una cochina.
    Pasty vaquero puffs up.
    An alcohol induced altercation has me on the gravel. All I hear after that is “Run!”
    I know that Mister Pan Dulce is hurt, but I have to run.
    I run myself sober and the next morning, I wake up hungover in 1993.
    Sylvia didn’t look behind her. She could feel the egos disappear to the station. She spit the lump in her throat onto the ground. She clenched her fists, breathed deep and thought of Estelita. Walking to the bakery, she felt her pocket and the sweet bread wasn’t there anymore. She ran to look inside the shop and the viejito wasn’t there.