The Tamale Dare

Okay so here's how my Saturday night started, standing in a tamale kitchen in a rented tuxedo, sweating through a starched collar like an idiot.

Let me back up. I'm Varian, I'm fifty-two years old, and I've been a security guard at the base here in La Junta for eleven years. My girlfriend Tessa is forty-nine, she runs sleep studies at the clinic, and we've been together two years now. We met at the bowling alley on a Thursday when she was between shifts, and she beat me three games straight and laughed at my grip the whole time. I was done for right there.

Anyway. The dare.

I was standing at the counter of El Sueño Tamales, which sits on a dusty side street just off the base, and the whole place smelled like masa and red chili, warm and thick the way only Lara's kitchen can smell. Lantern light everywhere, orange and soft. And here I was in a tuxedo I'd rented from the shop in Pueblo, feeling like a penguin at a barbecue.

Tessa was still in her clinic scrubs. Green ones. She leaned on the counter with both elbows and just grinned at me.

"Oh my god," she said. "You hate it."

"I do not hate it!" I said, which was a lie, and we both knew it. The collar was trying to decapitate me. "It's... it fits fine."

"It fits fine." She mimicked my voice, which is a thing she does and a thing I love, but not tonight. "Varian, you've adjusted that cuff four times since you walked in. I counted."

"It's a stiff cuff!"

"Uh huh." She came around the counter and straightened my bow tie, which was already straight. "Okay, here's the deal. The charity ball is right across the street. You wear that tux all evening, all of it, no complaining. No muttering about the shoes, no tugging at the jacket, no saying the word 'noose' even once. You make it through the whole ball without one complaint and you get bragging rights for a month. Loser buys the tamales."

"That's the whole prize?"

"That's the whole prize," she said, and her eyebrows did the thing. "Everything else tonight is happening either way. The dare is separate. It's just for fun."

Now. I have to tell you why I said yes, because I wasn't even really listening to the terms. This afternoon, a guy had stopped by her clinic. An army recruiter, some captain passing through town for the weekend, tall, jaw like a shelf, the whole catalog. Tessa told me about it at lunch, all innocent, and she mentioned he'd come by twice this week and that he "complimented her coffee mug." Her coffee mug! Nobody compliments a coffee mug, they compliment the woman holding it, and I flinched. She saw me flinch. I know she saw me flinch because she smiled with her whole face and changed the subject to tamale orders.

So yeah. I was jealous. Don't judge me, you'd be jealous too.

"Fine," I said. "I accept the dare."

"Good." She kissed my cheek. "Order me two pork tamales to go, we'll eat after. I'm going home to change into something that'll make your collar feel like the least of your problems."

"Oh, that's... okay, that's not fair."

"Nothing about this dare is fair, baby. That's what makes it a dare."

I ate one tamale standing up in a tuxedo, which is a sentence I never thought I'd write, and then I went across the street to the community hall and waited for her like a fool next to the punch bowl.

The ball was actually nicer than I expected. Streamers, a band that was mostly brass, half the town crammed into the hall in clothes they don't usually wear. I saw Deacon from the base, and the woman who runs the pharmacy was wearing a dress the shade of a stop sign. Everybody kept telling me I looked handsome and I kept saying thank you through my teeth because the collar was winning.

Then Tessa walked in.

She'd gone home and changed into a red dress, and I mean red like the chili on Lara's stove. Her hair was down. I forgot how to hold a punch cup for a second. Fifty-two years old and I forgot how hands work.

"You're staring," she said when she got to me.

"You did that on purpose."

"Of course I did that on purpose!" She took my arm. "How's the collar?"

"Fine."

"Liar. That's one."

"I didn't say it out loud, it doesn't count."

"Shhh. The judges are watching."

We got through the first hour fine, honestly. The band played, old folks danced, somebody's nephew won a raffle for a quilt. I was even starting to feel okay in the suit, like maybe a penguin can be comfortable at a barbecue if the barbecue loves him.

And then I saw the recruiter.

He was there, of course he was there, dancing with a young woman in a silver dress, a local, twenty-something, and they looked fine together and I should have let it go. But then the song ended and he did the thing. He scanned the room. And his eyes landed on Tessa like a spotlight.

"Excuse me," he said to the girl in silver, and he walked over. Straight at us. Shined shoes, fresh shave, the whole package.

"Ms. Tessa," he said. "Thought that was you. You clean up... wow."

"Oh, hey. Captain." Tessa did the polite laugh. "You made it, huh?"

"Recruiters go where the people are." He looked at her dress and I watched him do it, and then he regarded me like I was a piece of furniture he was deciding whether to move. "You must be the boyfriend. Security, right? On the base?"

"Eleven years," I said.

"Steady work," he said, and I swear on my mother's grave the man said steady work like it was a diagnosis.

Now. I want to tell you I handled this as a fifty-two-year-old would. What I actually did was put my arm around Tessa's waist and pull her against my side, tighter than I ever have in public, and say, "We were just about to dance."

"Were we?" Tessa said, and there was a laugh in her voice she was trying real hard to keep down.

"We were." I steered her onto the floor before the captain could finish whatever charming thing was loading in his mouth.

The band was playing something slow, thank God, because I don't fast dance, I've never fast danced in my life. I pulled her in close, both arms, closer than we usually dance, closer than is maybe polite, and I put my mouth by her ear.

"I want to leave early," I whispered.

"Varian. It's barely nine."

"I want to leave early and I want to go back to the tamale kitchen."

"The kitchen closes at ten, you weirdo."

"Lara likes me. Lara will stay open for a man in a tuxedo who doesn't complain."

Tessa pulled back just far enough to look at my face. Her eyes were shining and she was biting down on a grin.

"Zero complaints so far," she said. "You realize you're actually winning this thing."

"I'm not winning anything. My feet are killing me and I have not said so."

"That's two counts of not saying so." She came back in against my chest and I felt her laugh through the jacket. "Okay. One more song and then we go. But the tux stays on. That's a dare condition."

"The tux stays on?"

"Uh huh. All of it. I'll allow the tie."

"The tie is the worst part."

"Then that's part of the dare too, isn't it."

I held her through that whole song and one more after it because the band did an encore and leaving during an encore felt rude even to a man mid-crisis. The captain watched us dance, I felt it, and I made sure Tessa turned so I could look at him over her shoulder while I did it. Petty? Sure. Fifty-two years old, petty as