the Wakefield Doctrine

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, ruled by a single… rule? To use the prompt word and keep it to six sentences in length.

This week’s prompt word:

SCREEN

“Ya got the instinct, I’ll give you that.”

Lou Ceasare spoke quietly, which is to say the regulars presently in attendance at the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge, in a demonstration of the social phenomenon 0f  Interpersonal Entrainment, simultaneously increased the volume of their voices, effectively drowning the conversation going on in the last booth on the Lounge side where he and I sat.

Staree Nyte, currently playing tag with a multi-colored baby-spot light around the stage in the Strip Club, with the seamless transition exhibited by the patrons of the Lounge side, switched her musical accompaniment from ‘California Girls’ by the Beach Boys, it’s laid-back rhythm eminently danceable, to the more ‘Hey, the show’s over here’ of Bob Seger’s ‘Her Strut’; what two men in a booth?

Lou and I could’ve been at a corner table in the Tavern on the Green for the sense of having a relaxed, private conversation over lunch, except for the part about being in Providence, sitting in a red-leather booth opposite one of the most respected (and feared) men in the New England underworld; oh yeah, the topic was how I might be helpful.

“You wouldn’t know it look at me now, Devereaux, but there was a time back when I got into the life that all I had were my instincts and, what do they call it now, a knack for psycho-social evaluation and screening,” He laughed his alpha-wolf laugh resulting in a pause in the susurrus of conversations surrounding us, every bit the primordial freeze of creatures large and small whenever a top-tier predator reminds the surrounding jungle of their presence, “Well, back then Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers already carved out the kiddie TV territory, what’s a young Italian-American boy gonna do?”

The privacy-curtain provided by everyone in the place came back as Lou leaned over the table towards me, something like those slow-motion videos of pieces of the Antarctic the size of a state breaking off into the ocean, “I need you to look into the background of a potential… ‘business partner’ for me, all on the up and up, of course; ‘cept my name never gets more involved than whatever my latest escapades might be in the Providence Journal, capiche?”

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

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, ruled by a single… rule? To use the prompt word and keep it to six sentences in length.

This week’s prompt word:

SCREEN

“Plato was almost right.”

The tall, thin man sat alone at a table in the middle of the Café ,looking like the archetypical shipwreck survivor in a single-panel cartoon in the New Yorker or the Saturday Evening Post; the difference between the two and the man was the exertion of Free Will and illusion of socio-economic sophistication. The time was afternoon, lighting was sufficient and nearly all the Proprietors (and Tom) were present.

“It wasn’t simply a matter of shadows thrown on a wall by an unseen fire, as that would account merely for the common world we,” Locking eyes with Tom, who was leaning over his elbows on the working side of the bar that ran along the far end of the open room, continued, “Well, most of the human race experience on a day-to-day basis; the better construct would be a screen, one that allows to be seen what the individual, by inclination or upbringing, wants to see.”

Tom laughed and threw a bar towel in a hopeless trajectory towards the Manager, while Nick, sitting on the bandstand halfway down the old brick interior wall, in a sotto voce that more forte than sotto, laughed, “He was talking to the dog,” which Ford, naturally, punctuated with a rimshot on his drum kit. Mimi, on the Café side of the bar talking to Chris on her laptop, looked down to her right, “Tut tut, Hunga, your people have been aware of the true character of reality since, well, forever.”

“Hear, Hear” Denise emerging from the dark hallway at the end of the bar, “You been told!”

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