Al’s Blind Date: The Al Series, Book Six by Constance C. Greene Page A

ruined on account of she’d hated those shoes that her mother bought her.
    â€œSo Al’s kind of grateful to the mutt,” I explained. “Even if he is sort of repulsive.”
    â€œHe’s all of that,” my mother agreed. “Imagine being cooped up with that face all day. Imagine having to take him to the park, where he has to be followed around with one of those dreadful pooper scoopers. Imagine having to scoop up his poop. I’d be embarrassed to be seen scooping up my dog’s poop.”
    I burst out laughing. “You looked so funny when you said that!” I said. “You cross your heart and hope to die you won’t tell Al’s mother, though. She might get mad.”
    â€œWhat do you take me for, a squealer?” my mother said indignantly. “I won’t say a word, though I do think Mrs. Olmstead ought to at least offer to get Al’s shoe cleaned. Are you going to her party, you and Al?”
    â€œI said I’d let her know,” I said. “I wasn’t sure you’d let me.”
    â€œOf course I’ll let you,” my mother said. “It’s only upstairs. If the nephew turns out to be a bummer, come on down. Besides, I’d like to know what her apartment is like. She had it decorated last year by one of the top New York designers. I understand it cost the earth. So keep your eyes peeled. I think she has silk walls in the drawing room and her dining room is black.”
    My mother set her mouth in that way that she has when she disapproves strongly of something.
    â€œA black dining room is not good form, it seems to me,” she said, pressing her lips into a thin line. “What’s the nephew like, did she say?”
    â€œShe said he was brilliant and a darling boy,” I said.
    My mother clapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh-oh,” she said. “Beware of brilliant darling boys. How old is he?”
    â€œI didn’t ask,” I said.
    â€œHow tall is he, then?”
    â€œI didn’t ask that either. You sound just like Al. She always thinks boys are going to be midgets, that they’re going to come up to her sternum or her belly button or something. She has a thing about it.”
    â€œThat’s because she’s tall,” my mother said. “I was always tall for my age too. And for some inexplicable reason, the short boys went for me straight away and all the tall boys seemed to prefer the short girls. Unfair, but that’s the way it was. I know how Al feels.”
    I’d never thought of it until that minute. How tall was Brian? Al had never told me. All she talked about was Brian’s big muscles and how he made the city boys look like Charlie Brown.
    â€œMom,” I said, “did you ever go on a blind date?”
    â€œWhy, I was the blind-date queen of the eighth grade,” my mother said proudly. “In that grade alone, I had three blind dates. Each one was with the brother of a friend who needed a date in the worst way and couldn’t get one. One of my friends charged her brother fifty cents when I said I’d go to the dance with him. It was a finder’s fee, she said. He put up a good fight, but in the end he paid her, and afterward she told me she should’ve charged him a buck. I thought I was worth at least a buck. Maybe more.”
    â€œWas it fun? Did you have a good time?” I asked her.
    â€œNo,” she said. “I can’t honestly say it was fun. We were both too uptight. But I’d never been on a date and I felt I was ready to get my feet wet. We didn’t have a single thing in common. He was bored and so was I. He’d been to dancing school, so he knew how to dance. I’d been to dancing school too, but I wasn’t a very good dancer. He left me to dance with a girl in a pink dress. Her name was Felicia. Oh, how I hated her. I could hardly wait for the evening to end. Then there was the business of what I should do if