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 it has but one rule: make it Six Sentences, binyons

Prompt word:

DIP

“Sidown.”

The two career-drinkers at the bar dividing the Bottom of the Sea’s Strip Club from it’s Lounge didn’t look up as I passed; opposite the bar a single row of booths ran down the street-side wall of  semi-opaque’d windows, tempting as it might be to think this was out of respect for the sensibilities of the stand-up folks walking by, all gainfully-employed, one would be wrong.

The owner, Lou Caesare’s office was the last booth on the right, to my left I could see through the shelving full of liquor bottles to the stage where a new stripper was giving a Kansas song, a markedly-odd musical selection, the ole college try; the result was visually more a fight between a meth-addled mime and first year jazz dance student over a liberal arts coed.

I paused, seeing the phone held to his right ear; I looked back towards the front entrance where Diane was now leading a billboard-famous personal injury attorney and his date, a girl who looked around the joint with all the confidence of a puppy at a drag-strip, to their table; hearing Lou say something into his phone that rhymed with ‘Motherfucker’, I remained standing as if it were the high point of my existence to simply be there.

You ever see a … not a tiger or crocodile, nobody sees those in person, lets make that a German Shepherd backed into a corner, not an excess of fangs showing, tail dipped low, no feinting motions, it’s the eyes that tell the story of violence without even the hint of negotiation, moderation or consideration of aftermath;

“You’re a standup guy, Devereaux, not a lot of the people in my… employ can lay claim to such status;” Lou leaned forward over the table between us while exhaling a cloud of grey-white cigar smoke and the story of the Flying Dutchman forced it’s way into my forebrain, luckily he continued, “The thing of it is, when you hold power in the world I exist in, there is never an end to people wanting to take you down, or at very least, try and get leverage on.”

“I’m telling you this because the job I asked you to do, watching out for Rosetta, is about to become a bit more interesting, so if you ain’t got the stomach for this life, I’ll understand,” this time he leaned back disappearing into the smoke, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘If the Buddha had a supply of Cubans, the Pope in Rome would be totally looking over his shoulder.’

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 it has but one rule: make it Six Sentences, binyons

Prompt word:

DIP

“Honey, wake up,” the man heard his wife’s voice as if from a distance, the part of his brain that controlled dreaming, the metaphorical oblongata stirred into action, words became a howling wind, a hand gently-shaking his shoulder now a boulder of tremendous proportion and the very familiar there-not-there-there soft mass of her breasts the inevitable avalanche of a glacier, with just a hint of suffocation.

“Wow,” the man turned towards the woman; her waves of sleep-conspired hair tumbling off his face, pooling on his shoulder, even as their years together made the nano-scraping of her eyelashes on his throat a simple, if not affectionate demand he provide an explanation.

“You remember how, last night, I said I had nothing worth publishing in the Sis Sentence Story weekly bloghop,” awake now, he avoided the punctuation common to interrogatives, the writer-who-would-be-a-character rushed onwards with what he hoped would be a soliloquy…

“Yes, you were all grumpy and didn’t want to stay up and said something about dreaming up a story,” his wife’s interruption had sufficient arch to convince him to let go of his resentment at the lost allegory or whatever the term in rhetoric might be.

“Well, I gotta say, I had a dark and restless night,” they each laughed to themselves, the better to propel the narrative, “and I had the most amazing lucid dream / fan-fiction mashup ever; I found myself in an episode of Community knowing I had to write my story so I ran around an elementary school screaming how I needed a pen and paper; Annie Edison (Alison Brie) was there and she offered me one, complete with that uber-cute head tilt thing, but every piece of paper she gave me had writing on both sides, I was starting to get a little crazy,” the man, trying to raise his hand to prevent a comment, found it was trapped somewhere between his wife’s breast and arm was resigned to having to go full-on stream-of-consciousness, “And the first and second graders were running around and laughing when Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) burst through these double-doors like to an auditorium or cafeteria, with an older-but-still-hot woman on one arm and pointing at me, said with a triumphant rise in volume, “We’ll see you there tonight and don’t forget to bring…” and I shouted, “a good dip!!”

The man, turning towards his wife, further tourniquet-ing the couple to each other so almost all he had available to ask the big question were his eyes, desperate for approval but willing to settle for permission.

“Kinda meta,” the waterbed seemed to ebb an invisible inch of tide, “But I love the show so, I totally enjoyed your little story.”

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. One requirement: story length to be 6 sentences.

previously…

Prompt Word:

EVEN

“Hello Diane; Lou, he’s here, right?”

The HVAC system of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge was state of the art, however the smoke particulate levels on a busy Thursday night would shame any 18th Century opium den or most church-basement AA meetings during the 1950s.

That said, the owner, Lou Ceasare, was known to decide his memories of growing up on the mean streets of the capital city should be shared and, with a call to his plumber, (the one who had a license to practice his trade, as opposed to anyone in his employ who might have added a reference to the tools of the trade, i.e. Seymour the Hammer or Lester Two-hands) and have the state-of-the-art, Health Department mandated air conditioning system shut down until closing or if one of his dancers complained, only then, waving his imported Cuban cigar like a thurible in a dark mass benediction, would he relent,

“Like a fuckin’ lagoon before the real predators show up, ya know what I mean?”

If a person, customer, performer or staff was in Lou’s company at such a moment of reminiscence, they would vigorously assert their knowledge of what the man in the last booth was asking.

Among the societal and cultural values of the myths of ancient times was to provide a variety of agencies to act as intermediaries between Man and Deity; they came in all shapes, sizes, dispositions and genders, the hostess of the Bottom of the Sea, Diane Tierney, if suddenly cast back in time, would be a shoe-in for the role of Semele.

“Yeah, Ian, but even if you’re a favorite at the moment, I’d advise you to keep your sentences short and your demands even more so,” she reached halfway towards my arm, seemed to think twice and, instead, walked towards the last booth on the right; she didn’t even once look back to see if I followed her.

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. One requirement: story length to be 6 sentences.

Prompt Word:

EVEN

“So why the sudden hard-on for intel from my organized crime task force?”

Detective Lieutenant Ed Pierce’s office lacked: a window, seating for more than one guest and adequate overhead lighting; it did have: a grey metal conference table piled with banker’s boxes of case files, a calendar extolling the desirability of a Caribbean vacation suspended by a yellow push-pin from the room’s mahogany paneling and a free-standing ashtray of bronze and amber glass; despite the solar eclipse circle of sterile light from the Tensor lamp on his desk, the office smelled of ambition and fear, the heart notes of most law enforcement establishments.

“I don’t know why the Department is suddenly interested in a twenty-something woman showing up in your town after bouncing around private schools in Europe for the last half of her teen years, but here I am, so help me out so I don’t have to have one of our quieter three-letter agencies tap your...everything,” FBI Special Agent Blake Carter always enjoyed invoking the real power in the Age of Information.

Ed Pierce, deciding that although his guest had the credentials to ask the questions, nothing said he had to make it easy, after lighting his own, he shook a staggered row of cigarettes from his pack of Marlboros and offered his guest one, the cloud of exhaled smoke obscures his smile at the look of revulsion on the young FBI agent’s face, and in a tone meant to imply capitulation,

“The girl is interesting, you’ll get no argument from me on that; fact of the matter is the first thing we hear is that Lou has her accepting a job at a local, off-the-wall nightspot,” holding up his hand towards his guest, “I know what you’re gonna say, “No shit, ain’t no business in this town that ain’t gonna say no when the owner of the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club & Lounge asks for a favor; don’t get me wrong, these people at this Café joint ain’t exactly Chamber of Commerce types, a real motley crew.”

“Don’t even get me started…you want to hear how weird this thing is, my boss told me to brush up on my German; and to expect a call from Interpol; that’s a lot of bandwidth for a twenty-something and a …a bunch of, whad’ja say they call themselves, Proprietors?”

“Well I’m just a local cop, but everything points to the girl being the key to bringing down Caesare and his organization.”

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, it requires one qualifying characteristic: to be of precisely six sentences in length,

The other half of the conversation? Here

Prompt word:

PARCEL

It’s not true I decided to quit graduate school and start a private investigation agency because of the elevator in an Art Deco office building; at least not entirely.

I smiled at my reflection, expanding into multiple parallelograms as the interior gate closed, each floor mutely shouting a number as the car rose in the shaft.

Picking up a parcel on the floor in front of my office, I passed through the outer office where the green-shaded lamp on my secretary’s desk cast half-hearted shadows on the reception area; at the end of her second day, when I reminded her that I didn’t need a night light after hours, she laughed her best bedroom laugh and said, “I didn’t say it was for you, it’s been my experience that if you find yourself feeling alone, you might want to say a prayer of gratitude.”

I pushed the cardboard-and-Tyvek package onto the top of my desk, a room-temperature icebreaker plowing through the off-white manila folders, cresting right to the edge of the scarred oak surface; deciding that if I couldn’t be where (and with whom) I would like, then I would be with whom I was paid to, so after swiveling my chair to face the windows looking out on the nighttime city, picked up my phone.

“Hello. Yeah, I’m calling on account of Lou; but if you tell him, I’ll deny it and your Saville Row tailored suit won’t make a difference, at least not one that counts…

Can we talk?”

“It’s just that while he appreciates your accommodation in the matter of Miz Storme, he does tend to be somewhat protective to those close to him, hence my reaching out to you.”

*