Free News Blues by Marianne Mancusi Page B

style a little, but we were sisters. And
     sisters stuck together when their parents went off the deep end as ours had.
    Besides, it wasn’t as if Lulu was in diapers and needed constant surveillance. She was sixteen. Mary from Little House on the Prairie got married at sixteen. And she was blind! Lulu had perfect twenty-twenty vision—surely she could figure out how to use a
     stove or call for takeout.
    So after laying out a few ground rules, I headed to my bedroom to find an outfit to wear on my date. Ted, the surfing Czech
     had called me yesterday, soon after I sent my e-mail. We talked for about three minutes—he said he was impressed by my profile—and
     ended the conversation by making dinner and movie plans for tonight. To avoid potential future stalker issues when I inevitably
     dumped him, I said I’d meet him at the Old Town Mexican Cafe, a fun restaurant in San Diego’s historic Old Town. We’d have
     dinner. We’d have drinks. (Though not too many. I was so not having a repeat of Thursday with Jamie.) Then, we’d go to the
     movies in Fashion Valley and at some point I’d take a photo for proof. This way, I could prove to Jamie that I wasn’t: a)
     lying to him and b) pining over our one-night stand. He’d know that I, Maddy Madison, had a full, active social life with
     cute surfer boys.
    Then I could tell Ted it wasn’t working out and move on. Hopefully the surfing Czech wouldn’t be too broken up about losing
     me, poor desperate online-dating-service guy.
    The only problem now was what the heck I was going to wear on the date. After a brief closet assessment, I resigned myself
     to the fact that everything I owned was hopelessly worn and/or ugly. Not that it mattered. After all, I was only using Ted
     for a quick photo op. But what if he turned out to be really cool? What if by some rare stroke of luck, he was The One and
     I had worn such an awful outfit that he ran away screaming and I ended up living out the rest of my life as the crazy cat
     lady because I didn’t dress appropriately for the date? It was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
    Finally, I decided on a swishy black DKNY skirt, a red strappy tank top, and cute little flip-flops I’d gotten from Urban
     Outfitters. The outfit said fun and flirty, but not to expect too much. A quick brush of eyeliner and a dab of lip-gloss and
     I was ready.
    At first, Lulu wasn’t too happy to learn that I was ditching her on our first night as roommates, but she seemed somewhat
     appeased after I handed her twenty dollars, a pizza menu, and the telephone. I promised myself that I’d spend some quality
     time with her the next day. See how she was doing. After all, this divorce was a major life change for her and I wanted to
     make sure she was okay with everything.
    Thanks to traffic and zero parking, I arrived at the restaurant fashionably late and scanned the place for a blond-haired
     surfer-looking guy. No one in sight.
    Maybe he decided to be fashionably late as well and was simply a bit more fashionable than me. As long as he didn’t stand
     me up. That would be unbearable. To be stood up by a guy you were just using to prove to the guy you just slept with that
     you weren’t a loser. Ugh.
    Calm down, Maddy. Go get a drink .
    After checking in with the hostess, who told me there’d be a half-hour wait for a table anyway, I hit the bar and ordered
     myself a nice glass of Chardonnay. I would have much rather had one of their delicious margaritas (they had eighty different types of tequila here), but this was a first date which meant I had to behave myself. I had to seem grown-up and
     sophisticated.
    I took a sip and then (in a very ungrown-up fashion) managed to spill half the glass of wine down the front of my tank top.
     Great. Thank goodness I didn’t order a Merlot.
    “Are you Maddy?” a male voice asked as I frantically tried to dab my soaking breasts with a napkin. I looked up.
    “Yes, hi, ” I said brightly, pleased to see