Zaskerdoe

Her name was Zaskerdoe. I think that was her first name - she went by 'Z' or 'Doe.' I never knew her last name.

I had met her briefly several years ago, and I recalled that it was some sort of seminar or class somewhere. She had sat in the back, and there were a couple of other people who sat with her. She had short red hair, narrow black glasses, and kind of frumpy black clothes. It was the kind of look that is fashionable now, but wasn't then. She was ahead of the curve. The other two people were kind of like her, and they seemed to have the sense that they were all in on a joke the rest of us weren't aware of.

But she was attractive, and she seemed very bright. I never saw her again after that.

Somehow I got curious about what had become of her, so I Googled her. How many people could there be named Zaskerdoe, after all? Sure enough, it led me to a newspaper article. She was teaching at a small school for exceptional children somewhere in Kentucky. It was a very poor region, and she had pretty much created this school all by herself as an opportunity for bright kids who were trapped in the region's poverty.

There was a picture of her. She was older, and her clothes were those appropriate for a teacher or headmistress of a school -- not the frumpy all-black look. Then suddnely, I was there, standing in the corridor of this tiny school created out of a mobile home, and we were looking at each other.

Then suddenly, I wasn't there. I was standing at a Formica countertop, trying to write her a note. I had teabags, and the teabags had small black tags on them. I was trying to write a note to Z with an opaque white marker on the teabag tag. The paper was sort of bumpy, and it created interesting patterns in my letterstrokes. But then one stroke would be so distorted as to be unreadable, so I'd grab another teabag and start over. I did that twice.

Then I decided I actually wanted some tea. I looked up, and I was standing back in the newsroom. There was a coffee maker with hot water, but it was at the other end of the room. The main anchor, the news director and a studio camera were parked between me and the hot water. They were getting ready to interrupt programming with a news bulletin. It wasn't that important a story -- just a minor development in a story that had acctually happened a long time ago. But it was story the station had covered extensively at the time, 'owning' it as they say in the business, and they were doing the break-in to maintain that 'ownership.'

I could squeeze past them and get to the coffee machine, but I knew how it would look... like I was more interested in the hot water than I was the news break-in. I was more interested in the hot water, but it was important not to let that show.

Then I woke up.

I got out of bed, went to the computer, and Googled 'Zaskerdoe.'

I got 0 hits.

I wish she had been real.