Jane and Mary slipped across the border months before the wall was finished, and after, they were trapped. Mary found for them a house on the beach, thin and red with barely three rooms. They cut out windows to face the water from the cheap ply wall. Jane spoke high school Spanish in town, tending bar. Mary painted at home and sometimes fished dinner out of the surf.
On Christmas Eve, Jane listened to Mary talk in her sleep, naming the white sand Snow. She marked every warmer day on a wrong year’s calendar. By the first hot day nobody new had arrived in town.
“We’re living in a sexless marriage,” said Jane.
Mary leaned across the lime Formica bar that kept the oven out of the den. She eyed the lanky girl propping her feet on the edge of a box still filled with books. Jane tightened the knot of her bikini behind her neck, flicked her red braids away from her shoulders, paused, cracked the cap off her blue nail polish with a twist.
“I still don’t think common law applies to two straight girls,” said Mary.