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 the rule: Six Sentences max, some form of the prompt word min.
Its no secret we view this bloghop as part-fun/part-experiment/fulltime skill enhancement.
When last we saw Rue DeNite she (and her bodyguard, Rocco) were riding the elevator up to the world headquarters of the Bernebau Company to meet with it’s sole proprietor owner, Cyrus St. Loreto. The Bernebau Company has proposed a joint venture with the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club & Lounge (and it’s various subsidiaries). Lou Ceasare being Lou Ceasare, has sent one of his strippers, the eponymous Rue DeNite, down to Miami to scope out the Bernebau operation. Disguised in ten thousand dollars of business fashion, Rue is hoping to make a down payment on a favor from Lou. Meanwhile, Cyrus St. Loreto has dispatched his fixer and problem eliminator, Constantin Szarbo to Lou’s establishment.
So, the double subtitle on today’s Six? We thought it would be fun to do a parallel Six. Let us know if you have questions. Be forewarned: the characters down in Miami are from a WIP (‘Home and Heart’ a Sister Margaret Ryan Story). Hopefully, (in the write-and-learn aspect of this effort), they will be self-explanatory enough to have the Six(s) stand on their own.
Prompt Word:
CAROUSEL
The room seemed without dimension: to the right and left, the walls faded into darkness, the entry door, when closed, was featureless as the wall separating the conference room from the reception area, “Like a trapdoor spider,” Rue thought as she walked towards the conference table on the opposite side of the room, beyond that, the fourth wall offered a view of Miami and the ocean.
Through some magic of engineering, the transparency of the glass was keyed to the direction one was looking,
“Good morning,” turning towards the voice, Rue watched the transparency move along the glass of the wall as smoothy as a passing cloud; bringing with it the natural light of the morning, it stopped short, however, of the source of welcome.
The voice would be a perfect audio sample in a dictionary under the entry: ‘sophistication’, with appropriate alternate definitions: a) dry wit, urbane humor, b) charming, predatory; Cyrus St. Loreto moved with such grace that he was arms length behind both Rocco and Rue before they were aware of him, that a door opened and closed soundlessly was hardly unexpected, crossing the thirty feet to the conference table not difficult, given the quality of carpeting, however, getting that close to them, one a trained bodyguard, was.
The owner of the Bernebau Company stepped to a sideboard in the shadows on the right hand wall, picked up a silver platter containing a coffee urn, three bone china cups, and, resting on an ebony carousel, a sugar bowl, creamer and carried it to the conference table; the section of the glass wall between the man and the sun remained slightly opaque, even as he moved about the room, he was never in direct sunlight.
“My opinion of your boss’s business acumen, not to mention style, is shooting up the charts with a bullet,” he laughed, causing a shiver to slide down the back of Rue’s dress and the muscles in Rocco’s shoulders to twitch, “I’ll have Genevieve give you access to our accounting system so you can pretend to examine our books and, after my man returns from Providence, we can begin what I plan to be a very profitable relationship.”
“Mr. St. Loreto sent me to look over your operation, that he might better assess the value of the cooperative business venture recently proposed,” Lou raised his right hand, index finger extended and the swinging doors behind him reversed their forward motion; the man smiled slightly and continued, “May I join you?”
“Yeah, that’d be great, I’d offer you a drink but you won’t be here all that long,” Lou unwrapped a fresh cigarillo and, after sliding the small spiral notepad and gold Cross pen to the side, leaned forward, his eyelids lowered slightly; business associates of long-standing would, at this point, find themselves trying to remember if their life insurance policies were up to date.
Holding a scratched Dunhill out, tailored shirt cuff drawing back over a Patek Phillippe that looked quite at home, “I am Constantin Szarbo, but that information is, of course, of little value to you”.
“I understand your business model and need only to meet those in,” a slight pull at the corner of the man’s eyes was probably a smile, “middle management; Mr. St. Loreto likes to sample a business partner’s corporate culture before,” twisting around on his side of the booth, the man looked at the dancer, who, closing her set, was throwing single-serving packets of Domino sugar out to the enthusiastic audience, “However a sampling might be in order.”
“Hey, I appreciate your coming all this way to tour my operation,” Lou Ceasare grinned like the lead horse on a carnival carousel, bringing to mind the punchline of an old joke about newlyweds, ‘That’s once…’, continued,
“Tell your boss that business is business and much as you seem to have a soft spot for my dancer, this ain’t no pastry carousel that I got here; trot back to your master and tell him that if he wants to make some money in my territory, we can talk, but I got no need for a partner, capiche?”
About clarkscottroger
Reading through the Reader in WordPress removes the parallel view, Clark, so both sixes appear together, but the second story has a totally different feel to the first… but I have to come to your site to comment, so I didn’t miss the double-sided layout. It’s good, actually, like seeing two sides to the same coin at the same time.
It’s good to see Rue again, although I know for a fact there’ll be no pretending when she looks over the books. And Lou… Lou’s Lou! What more ca
… 🤨😤 can I say? It appears Lou didn’t even want me to say that! 🤣
Good sixes… er… twelve, Clark! 😁😉
thanks, Tom
Yeah the challenge was two part: do a layout thing (parallel) Sixes to reinforce the parallel stories. The second more difficult, and ultimately more interesting.
Two ‘bad guys’ reacting/responding to essentially the same situation… how much (could I) communicate to the Reader about the differences between Lou and Cyrus.
fun
It sounds like those two are going to be good friends. I wonder how you got the double columns to appear.
in my dashboard (self-hosted WordPress theme), when in editing mode, I have a row of icons, including B(bold) I(italics) etc nearly at the right end is an icon for ‘Insert Columns’
I clicked on insert 2 and the app produces some html that says ‘Put content here’
They both need to watch their backs.
While it may seem this character, Cyrus St. Loreto is new, he appeared in my serial story based in Victorian London Interesting character, Cyrus.
That said, I will say, I’d trust Lou before I trusted Cyrus… in certain circumstance.
To bring in the Doctrine, Lou Ceasare is obviously a scott, Cyrus is, more than likely a roger with a significant secondary scott.
As we say, scotts (can be) cruel whereas, rogers are mean
Very enjoyable fighting match.
Thank you.