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

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

Hosted by Denise defined by it’s numerical eponymous title.

Prompt word:

CLAW

The sign, in flaking gold-leaf letters against a time-sooted field of white read: East of Éclair and immediately below: Pâtissiers

…the tall, thin man turned to the Bartender, an impatient October wind pushing the brown cashmere scarf, his one concession to end of Summer, perpendicular to the storefront. “You know what we really need to offer our clientele at the Café?”

“Strippers?”

If an acquaintance, familiar with both, were asked what the signal characteristic of the man and woman currently forming a dyad on the seaside village’s brick-paved sidewalk, a shrug would be encyclopedic if not slightly inscrutable; as if to escape further scrutiny, the man in the Harris tweed jacket held the door for the multi-couture’d young woman.

The proprietor was of average height, her figure buxom in a cyclothymic-cheerleader sense and, though dressed in a fashion not atypical of the seaside village in the south of the coastal state, wore jewelry worth more than the shop, real estate included; display cases were set in the middle of the shoppe, glass-encased islands of flaky dough, confectioner’s sugar and a peripheral zephyr of cinnamon.

The tall, thin man smiled at the incidental benediction of a brass bell shouldered aside by the oak-and-glass entrance door; the Bartender, already looking for something to brush the powdered sugar from her lips was muttering, “Lions and tigers and bear claws, oh my!”

Offering his hand to the woman, the Six Sentence Café & Bistro manager smiled, “My associate and I would like to discuss establishing a business arrangement, one we trust our fellow Proprietors, Mimi and Chris and the Gatekeeper and, of course, Tom will surely applaud,” the more subversive of his eyebrows broke loose in the direction of the Bartender, “With or without exotic dancers, of course.”