Five-Star Fish Tacos

The first time Beto saw Helen, she was dancing by herself at one of those touristy beach clubs in Puerto Peñasco. Eyes closed, she swayed to Ricky Martin’s Canción Bonita, wholly oblivious to the fact that people had set down their drinks to watch.

Helen was young and uninhibited back then, in a green bikini top and a flowery skirt that kept inching lower with every rotation of her voluptuous hips. The men watched because they wanted her, and their wives and girlfriends watched because they all wished they had the guts to dance like that.

Heart pounding, hands suddenly clammy, Beto waited for the music to stop before approaching. The dancing girl was even more gorgeous up close. Not only that, but she smelled great. Her hair gave off a distinctly vanilla scent that made him think of the fried ice cream at his father’s restaurant.

He was just clearing his throat, praying for inspiration, when she opened her eyes. Those dazzling eyes were the kicker—a striking emerald green that matched her lovely bikini top.

“You make me want to learn how to dance,” Beto said, trying out a deeper, silkier voice.

Although it wasn’t his most original line, it seemed to work. As a new song began—Conga by Gloria Estefan—Helen took him by the hand and led him through some simple salsa moves. Beto’s footwork wasn’t anything to write home about, but he was a fast learner and before long they were twirling and spinning, grinding and touching. Grinning and giggling like a couple of school kids sharing secrets. They danced until closing time, stopping only once to share a plate of fish tacos, and then Beto walked her back to her hotel room.

“My girlfriends are probably already in bed asleep,” Helen warned.

They kissed at the door, a slow, lingering kiss that sent Beto’s entire body into warm tingles of need. Right then he needed her the way he needed more of those stellar fish tacos and an ice-cold can of Coke. But he nodded respectfully, kissed her again, and promised to call the next day.

That had been forty years ago. Late night phone calls, plenty of dates, and a lot more kissing followed. Helen learned how to make fish tacos just like the ones at the beach club. Beto was smitten. Courtship, then marriage soon followed. They were blessed with three adequate children and five adorable grandchildren.

Then Beto’s father died and left him his restaurant in Puerto Peñasco, which had seemed like kismet at the time. Beto had just retired from his job in Arizona, and he and Helen were at the perfect phase in their lives for a big change. They sold their comfortable two-story house, put all their furniture into storage, and returned to the place they’d first met, eager to rekindle those supercharged feelings of long ago.

The problems began soon after they got there. Beto planned on reopening the restaurant right away in order to get some cash rolling in. But as soon as Helen saw the low-slung building, she wrinkled her nose and said, “It could use a good coat of paint, for starters.”

Beto wanted to please his wife. After all, she was his inspiration for returning to his hometown. This whole move to the coast was supposed to feel like an extended honeymoon. Of course, their adult kids had rolled their eyes in synchrony upon hearing their plan. Over the years, they’d heard plenty about their parents’ first encounter at the beach club. Love at first sight, was the way Beto had always described it, in a way that made their youngest daughter titter with embarrassment.

Perhaps Beto had romanticized that first meeting to the point that he was setting up unrealistic expectations, but he needed this. He and Helen both did. They weren’t chicklets anymore. This was their last chance to recapture that lovin’ feeling, as the old song went.

Beto hired a subcontractor to do the painting, but was informed that the restaurant had termites. An expensive treatment plan was prescribed. Whole sections of the building were dismantled and rebuilt. The ancient commercial oven was deemed a fire hazard and needed to be replaced. Carpenters and electricians soon invaded. Beto set up a shade awning and a rickety desk in the hot parking lot, where he sat dejectedly day after day, witnessing his dreams and his money going up in flames.

In the evenings, he and Helen were too tired to go out. Neither of them felt like cooking. They ate quesadillas drenched in salsa, watched Spanish television (Helen was trying to learn the language, but her gringa accent seemed beyond redemption) and went to bed early. Helen—no longer slender and nubile—lay on her back under the ceiling fan and snored. Beto often removed himself to the couch in the living room, where he laid awake for hours, worrying about all the money they were spending and not making.

“Why don’t you ever come to bed anymore?”

They were in the tight little bathroom of their rented condo, performing their morning formalities side by side in front of the mirror. Helen was applying lipstick, twitching her eyebrows up and down as she said this, which Beto knew meant she was open to friskiness, but the whole thing just seemed so manufactured.

“Oh, well,” he said, “it’s just that my sciatica’s been bad lately. You know how it gets. Don’t want to wake you with all my tossing and turning.”

As Helen emitted a sigh worthy of Scarlett O’Hara herself, Beto caught himself rolling his eyes in the mirror. Luckily Helen didn’t see it. Maybe it was too much to expect that an old married couple in their sixties could suddenly shed an entire lifetime of uber-intimacy in order to regain the fresh mystique of their twenties.

At the construction site, things were worse than ever.

“The ceiling in the bathroom is about to cave,” said the foreman. “Water damage. We’re going to have to tear it out and see what’s up there. Could be black mold.”

Beto bit his lip and nodded. His father’s generous deathbed bequest was turning into a curse.

The six-month project stretched to eighteen months. Helen created a budget spreadsheet on the computer and insisted Beto stick to it. No more frivolous purchases. They needed to make their money last until the restaurant opened.

Meantime Helen had made no progress with her Spanish. She refused to accompany Beto on visits to his sister Veronica on the other side of town, claiming she was allergic to the cat. There were plenty of nice ladies in their little condominium complex, but Helen felt self-conscious about her Spanish and therefore made no friends.

Sometimes at night, after a long day of watching the construction at the restaurant, Beto would drive by the beach. Mexican music blared from the tourist club where he and Helen first danced. Neon lights decorated the big plate windows. Inside, people laughed and drank. Beto wondered if any of them were falling in love.

“Come with me to the club tonight,” he said to Helen one morning as they stood in front of the mirror.

“You know I can’t dance anymore,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Knee surgery, remember?”

He nodded, disappointed. “We could just go and sit. Share some fish tacos. Hold hands.”

Helen gave him a funny look. “Pretty sure that’s not in the budget.”

At last the date for the restaurant opening was set. Beto pulled out his father’s old recipe file box and started planning the menu. Helen had always been a great cook, but now she claimed the aromas made her queasy. Beto hired a chef and together they worked on perfecting the dishes, while Helen stayed home and watched American television.

Two years from the day they arrived in Mexico, the restaurant finally opened. Beto coerced Helen into playing hostess until they could afford one, and their skeleton staff had been fully prepped. Beto thought everyone looked nice in their matching black polo shirts, but Helen sniffed and said they looked ‘common’.

The night went well until Helen proclaimed she was starving and needed a break.

Beto talked one of the waiters into covering for her at the hostess desk, then followed his wife back to the kitchen. Suddenly he could think of nothing else but sitting down for a few minutes. His feet were killing him.

Helen was already at the little employee table, drumming her fingers impatiently as Rico, the frazzled head cook, fried up the fish tacos she’d requested.

“Excellent idea, my love,” Beto said, sinking into the chair across from her. “Mind if we share? Just like old times?”

She shrugged, although Beto sensed she was against the idea. Helen hadn’t shared a plate of anything in a long, long time.

The tacos were delivered, steaming, to the table. “Thank you, Rico,” said Beto, watching to see if Helen would extend the required gratitude. Rico had been working like a burro for weeks, and tonight was especially stressful on him.

Of course, Helen ignored Beto’s raised eyebrow. She was too busy picking at one of the tacos. “What are these little orange things?”

Beto already had his mouth full, but managed a reply. “Mango.”

Helen’s nose wrinkled in disgust. She eyed the innocent piece of fruit as if it had committed some violet crime against her. “Since when do fish tacos have mango, of all things?”

Beto laughed nervously. “How many times did we come here when Papi was running things? The fish tacos have always had mango.”

“Well, I don’t like it.”

“So ask Rico for something else. He can make you anything, isn’t that right, Rico?”

Rico glanced up from the grill, forehead slathered in sweat. He was frying chicken, flipping steak, sautéing onions, and warming tortillas all at the same time. “Sí, Beto, Señora, I can make you anything, just give me dos minutos.”

Helen stood, fork in hand. “I don’t want anything else. Just a damn five-star fish taco. These don’t taste anything like the ones I remember.”

Beto tugged on her hand. He felt his face turning red. “Come on, Helen, be a good girl and sit down now. Rico can make you another one without the mango.”

She slammed her fork onto the plate, sending bits of fish flying in every direction. “That won’t fix things. It won’t change the fact that these tacos taste nothing like the ones I remember.”

“Helen—”

She beat at Beto with her fists. He put up his arms to deflect the blows.

“These ones taste funny,” she went on, flailing her fists ineffectively. “There’s some new-fangled flavor in there that I’ll never get used to. Can’t you taste it, Beto? That weirdness?”

He shook his head, embarrassed. Rico wasn’t the only one witnessing this melt-down. Now several of the waiters had wandered in to gawk.

“They taste funny,” Helen said again. Inexplicably, she was sobbing now, still beating her fists against his chest. Fat tears rolled down her face and dripped off her chin onto the offending taco.

Beto pulled her toward him. At first she resisted. He could feel the tension in her body, the emotional battle going on inside her. Then she laid her head against his collarbone, sniffling.

“It’s all wrong,” she moaned.

He patted her back sympathetically. “I know, I know.”

“We’ve got to fix the recipe, Beto,” she said, “before it’s too late.”

He nodded, inhaling the vanilla scent of his wife’s shampoo. He had always loved the smell of her hair, the way her head fit so perfectly against his collarbone.

“And we will,” he said.