even one who potentially loved Madonna and loved to vogue, would be an acceptable way to spend my time. I hadn’t been on a date since Ray first asked me out nearly ten years earlier; Crawford didn’t count. We had never been on an official “date” and he still had that…well, wife.
Jack and I had spoken on the phone not too long after my dinner with Kevin, but we all know what happened in the interim, and that made my life extremely complicated. Jack had been so kind and understanding that I thought perhaps he was the vogueing brother, sensitive enough to “strike a pose” and caring enough to respect my feelings after losing my ex-husband to a crazed, knife-wielding maniac. He had called back earlier in the week, equally kind and persistent, and had asked if I could meet him at Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Rangers, that evening. He sounded like a very nice guy indeed and that gave me hope. Kevin told me he was very attractive, but being as Kevin has been celibate for at least the last fifteen years and maybe more, I didn’t put too much stock in his assessment. And what was he supposed to say? “My brother is a troll. Have fun!” I assumed that he looked like Kevin—myopic, about my height, blond, and rumpled. Imagine my surprise when a man an inch or two over six feet with jet-black hair peppered with a little bit of gray and the most gorgeous blue eyes approached me at the ticket window at Madison Square Garden, our appointed meeting place. The Rangers were playing a preseason game and Jack had invited me to go. I had met Kevin’s parents—also blond and myopic—and could only conclude that there were some most excellent recessive genes in this clan.
See, here’s the thing with blind dates, in my experience: they never involve anyone remotely handsome. The handsome guys are usually married or gay and not interested in a blind date with me. The blind-date guys are usually guys you wouldn’t consider spending the rest of your life with, never mind the two hours it takes to eat dinner. Or, the fifteen minutes it takes to drink the cup of coffee that you agreed to because you overheard your date taking a puff off his inhaler while you were scheduling said date. Rather, you are usually subjected to the guy wearing the “Bikini Inspector!” hat who lives with his mom, is lactose intolerant, or has some other not immediately obvious medical condition that would, under normal circumstances, make him ineligible for you to accept a date from. Jack McManus was not wearing the “Bikini Inspector!” hat and, while not drinking from a huge glass of milk or eating a hunk of cheese and simultaneously having an allergic reaction, did not look lactose intolerant. Or deathly allergic to bees. Or suffering from Dutch elm disease. In other words, he looked like a winner.
I looked at his shoes to see if he was trailing toilet paper from his heel, another dead giveaway. Nope. And when he smiled, all I could see were two rows of the straightest, whitest teeth ever to reside in one man’s mouth. This guy was a veritable poor woman’s George Clooney. If you find that kind of thing attractive. Which I don’t, I reminded myself. I like Crawford. Crawford is the guy I like. I repeated that mantra over and over while I stared at this gorgeous man in front of me, steeling myself for “the catch” that I hoped would reveal itself early in the evening so that I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
He approached me tentatively and held out his hand. “Alison?”
“That’s me!” I said cheerfully. Mentally, I took a deep breath and tried to reorient myself. Okay, I told myself, pretend you’re a fairly attractive, grown woman, with lots of confidence and more than your fair share of mojo. Or at least someone who can follow up a hearty “that’s me!” with some intelligent conversation.
“Jack McManus,” he said. We shook. Nice hands. Not smooth like Kevin’s, which were unused to manual labor, but definitely the hands of someone who knew how to hold both a hammer and a woman’s hand, although preferably not at the same time.
The Garden was abuzz with people arriving for the hockey game, and Jack took me by the elbow, steering me through the throngs. In the past when I had gone to Ranger games, I had