Yesterday I looked in my box to get my mail (we get mail on Tuesday and Thursday) and there was something horrible inside: a letter stamped, "Return to Sender - Moved Not Forwardable". It was addressed to Anita Torres.

Anita is a old friend of mine. She was a fellow student in the Classics department at UC - Santa Cruz. She graduated and went off to the University of Chicago to get her PHD. I went to Atlanta. That was in 1996. We lost track of each for years.

Then, out of the blue, I get an email from her in January. You know those emails. "Hey, just checking to see if this is you". blah, blah, blah. I wrote back several times, but never got a response.

Then in April a package arrived, postmarked Brooklyn, NY from Anita. It was a Christmas present, books, and Andy Warhol calendar, a cute card with a googly eyed Santa.

I wanted to email her to thank her for the gift, but this was during my fiasco with Yahoo. I might have been able to send her an email from another account, but I needed to get access my account to get her address. Fuck.

When I finally got back into my account in May, I emailed Anita straight away and got one of those "mailer-daemon" responses. Apparently, the account had been closed.

I remembered the box with the return address in Brooklyn. I printed out a few emails, wrote a long letter and stuff it in the mail with 3 tala 90 worth of stamps. That was the 17th of June. After what I can only think must have a pleasant stay in the States, the epistle returned yesterday.

What to do? What to do?

Last night I scoured the Internet for her name and any mention of the University of Chicago. I found a page for some Classics conference with her name and email (also, doesn't work) and the emails of several of her colleagues. I wrote them all explaining what was going on. I got an email back from one of them, Laura Slatkin, who, incidentally, also went to UC-Santa Cruz, although we didn't know each other (I don't think). She gave me Anita's email address, which turns out to the be the one that Anita used to email in the first place that no longer works. Damn.

So I'm at an impasse. I suppose she can easily find me since my email hasn't changed in years. However I think she might be angry at for not thanking her for the Christmas gift. She has no way of knowing it would take 4 months to get here and I had no way to thank her. It's just a theory anyway.

I don't know what to do or where to look. I'd really like to find her. Any suggestions?