The End

In the late 1990s, during my internet explorations, I found the name of a woman from my past at a Texas address. She had what I thought was a unique name. The website included a phone number, so I called her. But the woman who answered said she wasn't the woman I met. Coincidentally, in Texas I found another woman with the same first name and my last name (also, very rare). My imagination took it from there.

By its nature (an email exchange), it is has a non-narrative quality. But that was part of the fun of writing it.

This story was probably written in early 2000. At the end of 2000, I stripped it down and submitted it to a short-short story contest. That was my first submission for publication of any kind. I didn't realize, at the time, how out of place it was in that contest--altho I knew how amateurish it was. My only hope was that it would inspire me to further submissions. It worked.

Changes in details but not the plot have been made to the contest version.