Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade 1941
This is our Six Sentence Story post.
(The) Six Sentence Story is a bloghop hosted by Denise.
Each week she provides a prompt word and invites us to write a story around it.
One catch: the stories must be precisely six sentences in length.
This is an ‘Ian Devereaux week’, so the Six that follows is (also) the latest installment in our serial story, ‘the Case of the Missing Fig Leaf‘ (click on the title to the chapters that got us here.)
This week’s prompt word:
BOUTIQUE
The power of the engines suffused the cabin, a sub-vocal tone both powerful and beyond reach, an endless mantra, reminding us, hurtling through the sky, 565 mph at 35,000 feet that we all exist in a temporary magic spell.
Pulling myself from the insides of my head, I glanced to my left where Leanne was pretending to read her Kindle; like a mute ventriloquist, I aimed my eyes at her face while staring at her body, now hidden beneath the boutique cashmere throw blanket, ‘gild the lily’ came to mind, causing a whispered smile to start shouting.
“What!?” two-thirds of a chuckle kept her dark-comet eyebrows from linking up, ready for a fight; sensing my retreat, Leanne did something most of my gender is incapable of perceiving, resulting in an avalanche of dark, sleep-confused hair to partially cover her eyes and, for the millionth time since puberty, I marveled at the eternal teeter-totter playing field that was the preferred venue in the battle of the sexes.
Fluttering the length of her blanket with the cruel finesse of the experienced matador, she continued, “I know about your half-degrees from Harvard, your time on a commercial fishing boat, but the detective thing, what psycho-social trauma convinces a man, intent on living the Chandler/Spillane/Bogart mythos of the tough-as-nails detective to name his agency, ‘Desiderata Investigations and Conflict Resolution Services, LLC?”
I decided to answer her question honestly, “My greatest regret is not getting beat up as a kid in grammar school;” seeing her eyes focus on something I feared might constitute a secret passage into my head, I quickly added, “Given that our European field trip, in a small but very real extent, involves mainstream religious dogma, I’ll contribute a personal belief, ‘The fruit Adam and Eve ate of wasn’t the knowledge of good and evil, it was acquiescence of fear as integral to human existence.”
Leanne Thunberg, tenured professor at Radcliffe college, extensively-published academic and one of a handful of people with the key to my heart, stared at me, eyes flaring as curiosity and caution fought for control; I had a moment of ambivalent uncertainty, like seeing a combination of Jane Goodall and Lara Croft walk into a safari camp, the jungle behind her full of predators waiting for a sign.
About clarkscottroger
Most excellent, all.
ty
I like the description of Leanne sizing up the situation in the last paragraph. It makes me wonder how she is going to act.
Thanks, Frank I’m wondering the same thing!*
*very much seat-of-the-pants approach to fiction here, literally (ha ha) don’t have a clue about the next installment, hoping the characters tell me in time.
Never thought of using boutique as an adjective. The things you learn! 😊
Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I write the Six and then find a way to use the prompt.
Always terrific!
Thanks, Paul
Hey! Is that Gina Gershon in the thumbnail of your Six coming in from the Home page?
Leanne / Gina ….yeah, can see it :D
Actually that’s Noomi Rapace
Interesting theory, great excecution.
Thanks, M
HaHa – “sleep confused air”
The thought of a combination of Jane Goodall and Lara Croft causes one to wonder.
Another great installment.
lol yeah, not sure where it came from (the Goodall/Croft thing) but fun to visualize… no?
Naturally–after reading and typing a comment from my other blog, and failing–I came over here to offer my rave review: “as usual, a fascinating write which takes me for a spin to a world I don’t have the guts to enter”. Bedelia’s world seems tres tame! Have a blessed weekend, Clark :)
Thanks J.*
If I may, I would say, by the fact that you can write, “Bedelia’s world seems tres tame” puts you in a relatively small group of those who have characters inhabiting a world of their own. Reading your Sixes are enjoyable simply because she is ‘real’ and (a part of) being real requires a real (fictional) world.
Nice
*extra thanks for the reminder to, whenever I go out to write comments to copy before hitting send. Nothing more aggravating than writing a good comment and losing it to the occasional blank omment space
You warm my heart (and Bedelia’s), thank you. Truly, Bedelia and company live and breathe in my head–very real folks, particularly as Bedelia is my alter ego, I suspect (I’m at a loss to say how I knew Father James and Finn–they simply materialized on the sheet of notebook paper!). Thank you for affirming that my writing does “them” justice. I endeavor to give them my best each week :) And now I’m thanking YOU for the reminder about copy-pasting my comments–I was on the verge of hitting Send (from my blog), and I don’t have time or energy today to write it twice! :) My best to you always, Clark :)
gots to be the coolest thing about characters, when you realize they’re ‘telling’ you the story rather than you making it up
lol
way more fun than TV
You are SO Right!! And YES, Way Better than TV!!!
That opening sentence is just perfect, and the “temporary magic spell.” Yes, flying is like a magic carpet ride and you hope the spell deosn’t break while in mid-air.
A lot of pent-up tension in this Devereaux Six, enough to blow the cabin pressure I reckon :)
Had to look up Jane Goodall as the name was frustratingly familiar but my memory banks blank – and oh, yes, it’s her, along with Lara Croft, and the safari camp and jungle… makes excellent image sense in naming two famous characters to help describe something.
Also had to have a word with Mrs Duckduckgo* about ‘gild the lily’ … hadn’t heard that expression afore.
“Dark-comet eyes” – like it.
*my relationship with Mr Google is sometimes strained.
Thanks, V
as to the fusion of Jane and Lara… I will state, for the record, I had no idea that those two would appear in my head and I furthermore disavow any direct knowledge of why on god’s earth these two should, combined, contribute to the valued Reader’s enjoyment.
funny the things we learn sideways, the gild the lily was stored in my head somewhere in shouting distance of ‘silk purse, sow’s ear’…. but obviously the first would apply to our Professor Thunberg… but (this proximity prompted a habitual check of the expression (I am a regular contributor to Wikipedia… and I will totally credit them with any appearance of possessing a broad range of knowledge)…. in any event, while it was not surprising that the expression originated with Wm Shagespeare… I was interested in the original words:
You might be aware that “gild the lily” is attributed to Shakespeare, but there is a catch — the phrase used in Shakespeare’s play King John is actually “to paint the lily.” The quotation reads, in part, “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily / To throw a perfume on the violet. . .. / Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” There are those who criticize “gild the lily” as a misquotation, and “paint the lily” does appear from time to time. But “gild the lily” has become firmly established, and it holds true to the spirit of the original version, even if the wording does not. (courtesy of Mirriam-Webster)
for all the C’s and maybe Bs I got in school (as a clark, my MO was to kill the one-time tests i.e. Reading, SATs MATs and such as offsets to fair-to-middlin course work), I find the above way more interesting than I would have… I’ve written in these pages before, “If’n I paid more attention to English and grammar classes than to learning the lead to ‘Sunshine of Your Love’… who knows where my writing would be today?”
lol
For me that’s so cool how characters (real or invented) can suddenly jump on the idea train and establish themselves however brief or long.
If… you hadn’t been busy learning lead to ‘Sunshine’ it might not have helped shape the style of writer you are today? Those old pastimes of ours are good ingredients I think. I ditched writing for a few years to paint and had exhibitions and many adventures. Could have easily knocked out a whole volume of writing works in that time… but I think painting has helped ‘colour’ my words somewhat, so never a regret. Same with being in bands… did all those rehearsals and gigs help add some music and rythmn to my words?
Excellent info on the Shakespeare misquote. Yes, I thought too of ‘silk purse/sow’s ear, and also ‘putting lipstick on a pig’.
Great you contribute to Wikipedia. What would we do without ’em and their generous spirit of info for all, ad-free and corp-free. I make yearly donations to them to help a bit financially.
I now have a small collection of Jimmy Wales ‘Thank you’ emails :)
Onwards, and stay creative.
excellent point about the ‘what we are is what we write’… those varied experiences are the thread of the tapestry… ayiieee turn that damn keyboard off! lol*
I arrived to this writing thing way late, in terms of it being a source of expression/satisfaction… it wasn’t until I started this blog. The drive to start a blog was the sudden conviction that I needed to have as many people as possible be aware of it… it didn’t take long for me to think, ‘damn, these other guys is good with their wordage, I better start practicing more.’
no, really! true story.
lol
*a background voice in one of the best of all albums, Electric Ladyland
The tension between these two- palpable.
Thank you, Miz Avery
(I was mentioning to Denise in a conversation about ‘how these Sixes come to be’) sometimes its the word, sometimes its the photo and sometimes its even the music. The effect is usually one to bring into focus a perspective on the story in its current form, this week, I knew ‘the story’ would be about the flight to Paris, but the music was the muse to the tone of our little look in on Ian and Leanne as they flew across the ocean.)
Description bonanza! Well done.
Thank you, Lisa