Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

I love this painting. And, this being the Six Sentence Story, I thought, hey zoe will provide the word, let the photo provide me with ‘an atmosphere’.

Probably should provide a little backstory. I just finished writing ‘Almira’ and I’ve been giving thought to what to write next. Surely less that a full-novel, maybe a novella, you know, smaller, (with less than a year in time commitment). In any event, my second thought was, ‘damn, clark, you’d better hurry and learn more about writing’.

And so the Edward Hopper painting.

or something

This is zoe’s Six Sentence Story. A bloghop which invites all to take the week’s prompt word and write a story of six (and only and exactly) sentences. It really is fun and satisfying. Join us! This week the word is ‘Will’

Starr let the night-dark shadows of the alley drape over her shoulders just enough to mute the natural extroversion of her long blonde hair, while still keeping the man and woman across the street in view, where they sat in a 2 am diorama, ‘Diner under yellow fluorescent lights’. She struggled with the necktie, over-coming her natural tendency to tie a playful bow instead of a small, hard, ‘none of your business, it’s been a long day’ knot. Cinching the belt into a newly punched hole, the extra length of leather stinking out like the tongue of an impudent child, she completed her change of clothes by forcing the last rebellious wave of gold up and into the sweat-stained fedora.

Hearing a sound behind her, the girl crouched down, “Ok, boy, you wait here, I’ve got a little business across the street to take care of and then I promise we will get something to eat.” In the canine tradition of cheerfully ignoring the ways and conventions of the humans they’d long ago adopted, his tail wagged side to side, which unlike a human, indicated wholehearted agreement and, without taking his eyes off the girl, backed into the shadows.

Starr touched the brim of her hat and smiled at the bare leg protruding from the row of once shiny garbage cans, like the lower half of a semi-colon and said, “Thank you Mr. McLarty, I’d promise to return your clothes, but our stories will be more convincing if I don’t,” and she tucked a stiff parchment rectangle into the inside pocket of the suit coat, “Last Will and Testament’ protruding above the Brooks Brothers label and crossed the street on lily pads of street light and litter.