March 11, 2005, 7:49 a.m.
Six (or Fewer) Degrees of Separation
News gets around.

More than most cities, Washington operates like a three-dimensional Venn diagram with interlocking circles of furiously-chattering associates: Floating circles of media types overlap foreign-policy wonks, who overlap evangelicals, who in turn overlap Hill staffers, Pentagon pen-pushers, World Bank bureaucrats, and rich habituees of Georgetown hair salons. Chitchat that starts in one sphere...

"Wait, wait, it gets worse: He changed the locks when she — "

" — makes me sick, now he's turned lobbyist he's making a fortune. He just bought that red brick mansion on — "

... can turn up in another with disconcerting speed. Parents from remote and mutually antagonistic parts of the great diagram may encounter one another on weekend soccer fields and make unwise comments ("Chirac? What a jerk!") that redound at awkward angles ("As it happens, Chirac is a hero of ours.")

The unlucky, and the very skilful, have in common the experience of seeing their escapades and faux pas printed in gossip columns. The rest of us rely for our human-interest stories on the bush telegraph:

"They got the Boeing account!"

"... totally nuts, she's taking all her children out and she's going to home school them..."

"Seriously in trouble. The FBI searched their offices — "

"Pregnant? Again?"

The fact is, anyone you encounter in Washington is likely to sit at the nexus of half a dozen Venn circles. This produces a pleasant stream of friend-of-a-friend feature stories that, if not rising to the level of scandal, nonetheless animate countless cocktail parties and coffee klatches.

"...apparently he's going to need medication if he's going to function past first grade..."

"A liver transplant? Poor guy. Still, it means they're going to need someone else in that department..."

Interconnectedness is one of the amusements of Washington life, but until this week I had failed to appreciate just how incestuous it is, story-wise. The scales fell on Monday, a few minutes after I got to the gym.

"Oh my goodness!" my friend Colleen shrieked as she arrived. I was standing with in a knot of mutual friends, and she rushed over to join us.

"You were the talk of the blacktop at drop-off today." Colleen's children go to a public school where mine do not but we know some mothers in common. "Everyone was like, 'Have you heard about Meghan? Apparently her husband wants her to yank them out at Easter and start straight away, and oh! Did you hear what else? She's going to have a baby!"

I laughed and exchanged grins with the other women. "I managed to talk him out of that," I demurred. "I'm going to wait until the summer."

Colleen put her hands on her hips. "Well, that's what I thought, but they were like, no, no, that's not what we heard."

We all chuckled and shook our heads and trail off to exercise. Forty minutes later, we converged again for coffee at a Starbucks down the road. It was a rare warm March day, just balmy enough to sit outside around a rickety metal table. Morning traffic lurched through the grey morning heading south, and it was like Judgment Day on the sidewalk, with half the pedestrians striding directly downtown to damnation and the other half streaming into Starbucks for resurrection.

We five athletes were sitting and chatting amiably in the light breeze, exchanging newsy tidbits, when a blonde in fur coat walking past slowed her pace and caught my eye. She stopped, stared at me, and called out: "Hi! You're... Meghan, right? We met at the X's, remember? About a year ago?"

"Yes, of course!" I responded, smiling in the too-warm fashion women use with the faintest of acquaintances. She is an reporter, married to a surgeon, and sends her children to a school where I know several mothers. In a pinch, I'd say we intersect on three Venn circles.

"So — " she said, and paused, looking at me alertly across the wrought-iron fence dividing café from sidewalk. "So, I hear you're going to take your children out-"

The women sitting with me burst into laughter, and I nodded, yes.

"It's all over town," Heidi said into her coffee.

The blonde woman tilted her head. "And you're expecting a — "

"Just doing my bit for Social Security."

"You don't show a bit," the woman said with fond skepticism, shaking her curls. Then, as the throng of commuters pushed past, she fell serious. "But I don't know. Are you sure? Home schooling, I mean? That's going to be a lot of work. Four, no, five children — "

"Well," I put in, "We've decided to keep two in school, so it's really only teaching kindergarten and third grade."

"But still — !" breathed the wide-eyed near-stranger. She shook her head again, clearly forced by conscience to impart her executive decision. "If I were you," she said finally, "I'd think twice."

"That's good advice," I replied, hugely amused. A friendly laugh rippled around the table, as if to say, "What are you going to do?"

There was another pause. I think my kindly acquaintance may honestly have expected me to frown, shrug, and say, "My goodness, you're right! It will be a lot of work. It's a good thing you urged me to think twice: The plan is off!" for she stood there a little longer, gazing worriedly at me as a mother might at an impulsive child.

"It's going to be lots of fun," I said reassuringly to everyone, and took a sip of my hot chocolate.

"Well," said the woman finally, with a bright wave. "Off to work! Bye!"

"Bye! Nice meeting you!" everyone else chorused.

When I got home I realized that the reach of the Washington Venn Diagram is even greater than I'd realized. For waiting in my computer was an e-mail from my friend Fiona in London, which read as follows:

"Blow me down with a feather, just got an email from my friend Margarita in DC. Tells me you are having a baby. BLIMEY good luck."

The funny thing is that I don't even know her friend. Where, you wonder, did she hear it?