Six Degrees of Separation

It's 1988 (give or take a year) in a small college town in the heart of coal country. There's not a lot to do. This one horse town has one two main streets, one named for a TV star and one named for it's place in the towns geography. In between the two mains streets run a few side streets. The biggest of which houses the town's only club. The club will under go many names in it's history but today it's in it's original incarnation. Named for Harriet Tubman's famous trail. The club hosts heavies in the underground music scene, as well as local performers. A local band, naming themselves after a character in a popular TV show hangs out there. Along with the lead singer's younger brother, and a recent high school graduate, among many others. They listen to lots of music, drink under age, and generally cause mayhem.


Flash forward to 2001. A young woman finds herself in the same town at a Christmas party, brought down from a dying industrial city 800 miles to the north by the guy she's been dating for a year or more. She meets a dark grumpy punk rocker at the party, along with his very sweet girlfriend. They become fast friends. They take her to the same club, it's latest incarnation, this time named only for the street address it occupies.


Flash again to 2004, in a desert town in a dusty valley surrounded by mountains and mesa(s), a short lived marriage is about to fall apart. The girl's burlesque troupe is holding a meeting to meet and greet their newest member, a puppet master and ventriloquist who happens to love both Burlesque and Vaudeville. The girl's troupe takes him on immediately. Over many conversations and meetings the girl finds out the puppet master lived in the college town in coal country for a little while. She mentions that her now ex-husband hailed from there as well. They compare notes and realize that her ex would have been far too young to have known the puppet master. Life goes on.

2008.. Over morning coffee and email. The girl reads her email from the puppet master, who is now living far away. The email brings news that his wife is pregnant with their first child. She mentions this to her boyfriend, the dark haired punk rock boy that she met at the Christmas party so long ago. She mentions too, that the puppet master and the boy's brother are about the same age. Give or take a year. She mentions the puppet master's "real" name.

I know him, says her boyfriend, I know that I do.... She dashes off an email..And in the late evening the reply.... Yes, her boyfriend is right... He did know the puppet master. The puppet master knew his brother, they hung out at the club for a summer and caused various amounts of insanity. How odd... That they should all cross paths so differently...