"What!" I informed him where we were working and that all we were given were copies.

"Well, you can understand that there could be twenty copies of this work visa, and I couldn't allow all twenty people to leave the country."

My anger started to boil as my thoughts turned to the Producer who knew we couldn't get out of the country and yet let us pack and go to the airport. I also recalled what he'd said to me the night before, ‘We're not letting you go'... It wasn't a joke. The seriousness of the situation struck me.

In an act of desperation, I asked the agent, "How much would it take to get us on that plane?" stating it as if I'd done this a hundred times before.

"I couldn't possibly accept anything," he replied.

The words just hung in the air. Bribes in Mexico had always been so readily accepted, or so I had thought.

Feeling deflated, depressed and very angry, we returned to the hotel where I immediately got on the phone with the Producer and introduced him to some of the vocabulary I learned in the Navy. It didn't faze him. He started to negotiate with me! How much more money would I like? A larger hotel room? Maybe an apartment?

It had nothing to do with money, housing or Mexico. We felt it was time to return to the States and hopefully find other work, and I told him so. He hung up on me! That did it! I was no longer a rational person. He now had a tiger in a cage.