Lurking, Still Lost

I googled an old acquaintance the other day. I had known her when I was living in New York City. I wasn't stalking, if that's what you're thinking. I was curious what had happened to her over the years. I originally met Andy in another "New" city, New Orleans, while shooting an episode of Haunted History. She was working as a P.A. and local contact for the production company out of L.A. We'd kept in touch over the years--poorly--thanks to our shared affection for David Letterman. After I'd been in New York for a few months, I got a letter? a call? perhaps an email, I can't remember now--but she was moving to New York with her young daughter. We met up for lunch down in Soho while she was staying with friends in Brooklyn. She was enthralled by my story of getting evicted from my first sub-let. We went to a few art galleries--in New Orleans she'd had a photography show in a gallery. I remember looking at snow globes--I think she had a collection. Anyway, once I decided to move back to Little Rock, I told her she and her daughter could stay in my apartment rent free until my lease was up. There were a few times I came back to the city and they would vacate back to Brooklyn, leaving my small studio apartment littered with Barbie dolls, snow globes, and feminine products. It was my apartment, but I was only visiting.
There was a guy I used to work with. He was from New York, family lived in the Village, and he had attended NYU. But he'd met a girl from Little Rock and ended up married to her and working there. So he drove up to New York in the mini-van so we could shoot a job for a New York producer, then load up my few furnishings and drive back non-stop to Little Rock through the night. For some reason, the last image I have of Andy is from across 62nd Street, loading a box into the van. She was with her daughter and she looked scared, or confused. Honestly, I was a little mad. She was looking at me like I'd done something wrong, yet I didn't know what. After that I didn't give much thought to her, until the other day.

"Everyone's unhappy, everyone's ashamed. Well we all just got caught looking at somebody else's page"
--Already Missed the Boat by Modest Mouse

I was curious what had become of her. Had she succeeded in big bad New York? I decided to use that wonderful sage of the internet age, Google, and see just what she'd been up to. Fortunately, her last name was pretty unique, so the search only yielded four pages of options. Through the posted results of a race in Chicago in 2005 I saw a 34 year old female with the same name. Then, through the published new members of an art gallery newsletter, also in Chicago, her name turned up. I figured this had to be the same person. But then all of sudden, no more Chicago. She moves to Iowa and is the editor of a newspaper. It is here that I stumble upon her blog. Now the little details start to get filled in. It was the same Andy I knew. There are references to her life in New Orleans. Living in New York. Moving to Chicago. And then finally, like me, moving home. Iowa was home. Central City, Iowa. She wrote about her daughter, who was now grown up and in High School, attending prom. The writing showed a great sense of humor. And then a heartbreaking vulnerability. She was sick. She lost her job. She was feeling better and was starting to run again. Then she is diagnosed with MS. There are references to a fiance, but never followed up by a husband. There are reprinted come-ons she received from some online dating service by men she must have felt were sad or sleazy. There is a link to an interview with a Chicago newspaper that interviewed her about presidential primaries in Iowa. But then there is a gap in time. The newspaper no longer lists her as editor on its website. Then there is a post on her blog about her new job. She is a librarian. It sounds like a good job. She sounds comfortable, peaceful. There is a reference on her blog to the fact that she is starting a MySpace page and her daughter is mortified. I try to find it but nothing turns up. There is a link to email. I want to contact her, say hello. Tell her I too am an accident of geography, having bounced around here and there only to end up back where I started. I want to know if she's OK. But I keep digging through her blog, looking to fill in the pieces I don't know, and then, all of a sudden, the blog is gone. I'm directed to a page asking me to log in. It says the account I want is "not currently available". I think perhaps I've been busted in my lurking. I've been locked out. I was learning too much, solving the mystery. I hoped maybe it was a temporary thing, maybe she was posting a new entry and that's why it was locked out. But now it's gone. I can't get back to the email link, I have now way of contacting her. Maybe the account had been inactive for awhile, unpaid bills, and my lurking on it triggered a computer to finally shut down the account and take it offline. I don't know where it went. I was so close, then nothing. So I'm forced to leave her there as a librarian in a small Iowa town, lost in time and memory, but it's a better image than that look I got across East 62nd that cold winter's day seven years ago.