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

How long has it been? Jeez, it’s not like I have to buy a ticket on an aeroplane, needless to say there’s no extra value in a fast train.

As we all know, the Six Sentence Café & Bistro is just a short city-walk, if the weather is nice, a low-cost taxi ride if packages are involved. Even if Mimi’s shift coincided with our schedule, the bus runs every forty-four minutes, so we could get there with good company and interesting conversation.

But, this is a Wakefield Doctrine Six Sentence Story contribution to Denise’s ‘hop.

Prompt word:

GRID

“Hold on… won’t be but a moment,” the casual observer, and, this being the Six Sentence Café & Bistro, you were expecting, maybe an emotionally-depressed undertaker? Queried as to their immediate impressions, a (first time) visitor to the Café might have reported, “Well, he was tall and thin, but the thing about the man was the air of distraction that surrounded him like a degenerate eigenstate, ya know?”

If challenged on this characterization, the tall, thin man would, likely-as-not, deny being distracted, busy or even partially-aware of what a degenerate eigenstate is, other than being a cool name for a band.

Within minutes, the Manager re-appeared, a stray cobweb hanging off his left ear, “Just checked the utility room, the problem is not with the power grid, maybe it’s in the plumbing, give us one more minute,” three steps away towards the hall-that-is-buried-in-night, he might turn and say, “Now that you mention it, could you see if we have any eggs and stale Wonder Bread in the kitchen, I could really go for some French toast when I get back.”

Feeling uncomfortable about stepping behind the bar and through the double swinging doors in to the kitchen, our hypothetical first-timer might look about the interior of the Bistro, hope being pulled along by ambition, (and not a small ripple of visceral thrill at the daring, like adolescent friends pulling her towards the stolen car), and suddenly realize that the room was not entirely empty.

From somewhere, perhaps an alcove bathed in cathode-blue light, a woman appears behind a smile and calls out, “There are no take-backs in life, seize what you can and let no regrets hold you back;” and moving around the end of the bar, another, baritone in timbre, good natured in intent, a man behind that bandstand agreed, “You can’t step in the same river twice, so go for it,” smoke obscured his face; pushing through the double-swinging doors into the kitchen, the visitor, (now, very much no longer an innocent bystander), remembering rainy, childhood days announced, “…and what is the use of a book, without pictures or conversation.”

 

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