You could see a cantina there right past the bridge, painted with a big cartoon of the sun with a smiling human face, the logo of an old lager beer of the Mexican coast.

Before they could get there, they had to get past the Mexican checkpoint without a passport. It used to be there wasn’t even a checkpoint on the Mexican side, not for pedestrian crossers, until the refugees started coming in droves.

The guards stepped out when they saw Joyce’s prison jumpsuit.

“Buscamos asilo,” said Donny.

Asylum.

While they waited for the Mexicans to complete their paperwork, Donny tried to convince Joyce that the first thing they should do when she was released was get a medical examination.

“There’s an Amnesty office right here,” he said. “We can file a human-rights complaint at the same time.”

“No, Donny,” was the answer.

They went straight to a hotel instead. The most Mexico-looking hotel they could find in the row lined up there along the main thoroughfare leading into Matamoros. Donny offered to get his own room, but Joyce settled on two beds.

“It’s good to have someone close. Just not that close. Okay?”

Okay.

Donny went shopping while Joyce took a very long bath. He got her three sundresses, a western shirt, cheap sunglasses, some jeans, and a T-shirt advertising Playa Bagdad. She went with the jeans and the T-shirt, and the cheap tequila he got at the store next door. She put on the sunglasses, and you could tell she planned to never take them off again. They sat there all afternoon at the tiny table by the window, watching the sun slowly work its way across the square and hardly saying a word as they let the Cuervo work its way through their anxious minds. From where Donny sat you could see the border crossing, with the flag billowing there above the walls. The real purpose now was to keep people in on the other side. Maybe it always had been.

It wasn’t until they went out for dinner that Joyce finally was willing to talk about what happened. That she had not been tortured, just questioned, and humiliated in a menu of ways that were not in any way actionable. That she did not want to sue anybody. That the American courts were not where the fight could be won. That the way to fight these fascists was not with lawsuits.

Donny decided not to argue with her.

In the morning, Joyce’s application had already been approved. She was known. Donny didn’t apply for asylum, just a tourist visa. They took the new train to Mexico City, the one that ran on magnets or whatever and produced zero pollution.