El Amatillo, Honduras

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Inside the office, there are beastly metal desks and a small line of people. A mother and her teenage daughter stare at me the way I stare at the mangy, broken dogs I see on Central America’s streets. Pure pity.

I'm motioned to the back. There, the corner office is occupied by a big women with a cavernous voice, talking on the telephone. I wait and I wait, for what feels like an hour. The administrator won’t look at me. She’s pretending I'm not there. Tears gather in the pockets of my eyelids, then tumble over the ledge, down my cheeks to my chin. Silently, I wipe them off with the back of my hand. I try hard at being patient.

Here’s the thing: I don’t cry often. I was raised by a single father, himself the son of a hardened, WWII-Depression Era mother. I definitely don’t cry in front of police, bureaucrats or elected officials -- people a journalist instinctively distrusts. But, on the semi-rare occasions when I do cry, I always find a great challenge in stopping. When a movie or a song (or the punishment of a sadistic Honduran border agent) gets me going, I stifle sobs for hours afterward. When I need to cry, I really need to cry.

So, what started as a few, small, frustrated tears became the kind of crying that, while far from spectacular, was nonetheless hard to conceal. There was a lot of misplaced self-pity welling up with those tears: How did I end up here? Jobless, homeless, trapped at the El Salvador-Honduras border with empty pockets and knotted tongue? These are the thoughts of the mangy dog version of myself. A pitiful creature.

I try to regain my composure, to at least seem composed. But when the administrator finishes her rambling, giggling, booming conversation (I imagine a lover on the other end of the line, telling dirty jokes) she sits down, pulls her heavy metal chair to the desk, looks me in the eyes and asks, Why are you crying?

This is it for me, I think. This is a women who does not like dogs. This woman wants to be naked beneath the covers with her telephone lover. This office is her hell. She has no patience for me and my gringa bullshit.

I try to explain: I've been here for hours. Done everything I was told to do.

She nods, expression as blank as floor tile.

I paid all the fees, but now I'm out of money. There’s a problem with my form, but I don’t understand what it is.

She looks to my right, where Jerry-Curl still lurks. There are mutual nods. She's already heard all of this -- and she's on his side. She explains the grave importance of my injured form. Any markings, she explains, drawing a painted fingernail across the paper, could jeopardize my crossing through the country.  She’s a master of the ominous. Even now, in this moment, I pause to appreciate her flare for the dramatic.

Then she says something that, for all its corruption, is the first explanation I’d heard, real or not. The police, she tells me, will stop you on your way through. They’ll check your papers, using the markings as cause to say the form was forged or “compromised.” It’ll be a problem for you, she says. It's them, not us, you have to worry about. We're just looking out for you.

I’m skeptical. Why can’t I just get another copy of the form? I try not to sound angry, impatient or homicidal -- all things I feel, to varying degrees. I already paid my fees.

 I’m sorry, she says, not sorry at all. There’s nothing we can do.

There has to be something you can do. Can’t you give me another form?

We can’t. You have to pay for the form.

I did pay. I already paid.

She stares at me, floor tile. I don’t flinch, don’t look away. Finally, she looks to Jerry-Curl.

Really, she says, this is your responsibility. His face falls. You were supposed to tell her how to fill out the form. He’s stunned. She’s throwing him under the bus. I don’t know what to think. Was this about money, and she now sees that I really don’t have any? Was it all spectacle, a game -- some kind of border theater, for the entertainment of disaffected agents? Is it possible “the rules” really are the rules? Or that the police, not the good folks at customs and immigration, are the problem? I do mental math, calculating the logic of the border. None of it adds up to an answer.

Then, Jerry-Curl springs back. It wasn’t me, he says. It was Boat Shoes.

They go back and forth for a bit. She’s not harsh, but makes the point. There’s a problem and he needs to figure out how to fix it: find a way to run the paperwork without a new form.

I follow Jerry-Curl back across the street. The crowd outside the customs office is growing. I slip past and inside. There’s a barefoot Australian inside, with bleach-blond hair and a goofy, hapless way. I watch him fill out his form, asking what each line means. (Days later, in a Leon bar, I will meet him again. He’ll say, you were the girl stuck at the border, and laugh. One of this friends, with a skeletal face and hair not so much blond as white, says, Yeah, I saw you there. I was hiding in the truck. Yeah, yeah. Man, that border was crazy. He’s on fast-forward, something about a three-day bender. They’re all bouncing, fluttering like hummingbirds.)

Jerry-Curl explains the situation to Boat Shoes. They deposit me in a swivel chair, in front of a computer, and Boat Shoes leaves. Jerry-Curl goes about the business of whatever other business he has to do today. He won’t look at me again. I sit a long while, and when I ask him questions, he answers without looking up. He’s washed his hands of me.

Then, just as quickly as it went bad, it’s all over.

Boat Shoes returns. He shuffles a few papers. Stamps a few forms. Thrusts them in the hands of one of the other border guys, and sends me on my way. There’s a few more hoops (the agent has to check the VIN on the van, and I need to make a few copies), but then we’re on our way, driving south west, Nicaragua-bound.

As we’re putting our documents back in their case, I find a $50 bill, the emergency money I forgot we had.