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 each week by Denise, the rules are simple, the stories are always a surprise.

The prompt word:

LOUNGE

“I trust you won’t take this wrong, but you and your friends are pretty damn weird.”

The Sophomore sat on the end of a mostly-intact, wooden-slat chaise lounge which made up a grouping of furniture along the lefthand boundary of the urban dog park; this collection of furniture a product of the same urban tides that put shopping carts in church parking lots and three-wheeled green vinyl office chairs next to random bus stops.

“Coming from a kid who looks like he just walked off the set of ‘Dazed and Confused Too’, I’ll take that as high compliment, no blunt intended,” the tall, thin man lowered the now-filled plastic bag to the ground in slow, but surely unconscious, imitation of the biological process that prompted his clean-up visit and shrugged into his suit coat.

‘Now that we’ve completed Mimi’s arukuzen, what say we repair to a place less pungent and regale the others with tales of our triumph over excrement and subsequent, if not momentary, satori,” the Proprietor of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro waited, as towards the sidewalk the younger man slouched, “Lets push this narrative back back on a track less exotic, shall we?”

“Despite what I said about your friends,” the young man in the long coat, it’s collar turned up and tasseled with an archaic ponytail, smiled, “That Café of yours is way cool, so yeah, like we used to say, back at my old school, ‘lets show ’em the cool shit we got’.”

Veering into the middle of the street to bypass the line extending half-a-block from the entrance to the SSC&B,  both men, (one young, the other experienced), laughed and began to sing, “Bad boys, Bad boys...”

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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, this is the only one rule: the story needs to involve the week’s prompt word and be precisely six sentences in length.

Been a while since we’ve checked in with our favorite P.I., Ian Devereaux. With the number of new Readers these days, I think it would be to our advantage to do a ‘character flashback’. In this case, Diane Tierney. Diane is the hostess at the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge. In the timeline of today’s Six, she’s just returned from a sabbatical. (I know! Sabbatical from working at a strip club!? Well, if there’s anything we hope to incorporate in these serial stories, intriguing incongruity is our highest ambition.) So, from the first Ian Devereaux story, ‘the Case of the Missing Starr’ allow me to introduce Ms. Tierney:

“You already know what’s on the menu,” Putting the red-stringed laminated folder in front of me, Diane Tierney slid into the opposite side of my table.

Turning her head to keep an eye on the door, the tables around the dance floor and the few other customers, a tidal wave of chestnut brown hair escaped the elaborate restraints that held her very long hair off her shoulders. Her hands were beautiful. If there was a term, ‘dancer’s hands’ it would apply, fingers perfectly proportioned and, somehow, elegant. If her hands were the only thing to go on, you’d be guessing ‘fifteen-year-old-girl… from an old-money family’.

Prompt word:

ZEST

God I hate February.

Without Hazel, my admin, the transformation of my office in a pre-War Art Deco building into Dante’s Ninth Circle was fairly complete, down to the cast-iron radiators clanging like funeral bells; her son was with her ex and she was testing the whimper-bang theory of death on her boyfriend, State Police Lt. Elizondo Cardoso on some beach at a consulting-adults-only resort in the Caribbean with the unlikely name: ‘Death-by-Zest’ (motto: everyone has a limit, let us help you find yours).

There was work on my desk, emails in my computer and messages on my phone but the sky was grey, the light passing through the windows behind me tenebrous, like in the thesaurus and, did I mention I fuckin hate winter?

‘When in doubt, Ian, do something, anything,’ my old man used to say, well, in the interest of full disclosure, it was more, ‘When the world and everyone around you seem indecisive, doing even stupid things will look like inspired leadership; so I found my coat and grabbed my hat and headed down the linoleum checkerboard corridor to the elevator and headed for the Bottom of the Sea Stip Club and Lounge, a poor substitute to that mountain-top cave and wise guru, but you work with what you have.

Stepping through the glass ‘n brass door, the warm-Italian-cuisine/cigarettes-and-hormone scented atmosphere embracing me, I was brought up short by a woman, her back to the door as a twist in my stomach promised more misery, unless it decided on bliss instead; she was not one the interchangeable temps Lou hired to cover for the extended absence of the hostess who worked for Lou for as long as anyone remembers.

Diane Tierney turned with the grace and force of the changing of the season, her eyes taking inventory, her lips smiling in approval, “Ian, it’s March not February, you made it through the winter,” again a barely noticeable smile, “everything will get better”.

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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 each week by Denise, the rules are simple, the stories are always a surprise.

The prompt word:

WRAP

“Sorry man, the correct pronunciation is ‘Deeej and Skinner’ (Number 10 Savile Row);” a tear in the mass of facial hair grew upwards at an angle, non-verbal assertion of an error also once shared, as the Gatekeeper sat back in his chair behind the Sophomore, opposite the bar that ran along the right-hand wall of the Six Sentence Café & Bistro.

At that moment, the tall, thin man walked out of the dark of the hallway at the far end of the bar, pulling at the lapels of his suit-coat and staring, in unselfconscious awe, at how the crease in his trousers never broke in a way that might diminish the perfect fit of his new suit; looking back to the man following him, yellow cloth tape measure, a master tailor’s tzitzit, the Proprietor applauded quietly, ‘Your taste is impeccable, your craftsmanship without peer and I thank you and your staff for yet another masterpiece of clothing.’

The Sophomore lit a cigarette and wrapped(sic) on the scarred-wood table top, “Dude, I think I get why a bespoke suit costs as much as my second car.”

Continuing along the bar towards the exit, the Proprietor passed the Sophomore when an arm appeared at chest level from the bar side of the aisle holding a nylon rake with an adjustable handle and a dustpan, (with an equally adjustable handle), “Shar, besides being the day of delivery of your new suit,” Mimi turned, on her barstool to smile at the man, now holding the two utensils, “Today is the start of your week as clean-up at Café dog park.”

The tall, thin man turned enough to lock eyes with the woman in the floral print dress, with complimentary black freshwater pearl necklace; their shared expression was that of two staring down at a recently recovered manuscript; after a pause, she smiled and he nodded with the single word acknowledgement, “Sensei” and continued towards the door.

“Young time traveler dude, as Mimi has so eloquently reminded me, while the material things of the world are as beautiful as money can buy, the responsibilities to one’s chosen family is a gift beyond price; to the dog park that we might re-find a Path with Heart!”

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

Below is the Wakefield Doctrine’s most recent contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted by Denise, there are only one rule: let there be Six Sentences!

The prompt word:

DATE

“Your first Six Sentence Story was published on what date?”

“That would have July 3,2013, I have the link if you need it.”

“That won’t be necessary, we have access to everything you’ve written and posted on the internet.”

The woman on the far side of the counter paused, as if to decide the tenor of her participation, “What is it you are asking of us?”

“Thing of it is, to the best of my recollection I’ve never missed a Thursday deadline; and tonight is trying become a first in that regard, so I was wondering if there was some sort of special dispensation for any of us caught in the grip of basketball-skull on top of tapioca-filled lungs, to, you know, get an extension?”

“While I have not personally experienced such an accommodation, I would suggest you throw your self on the mercy of the Readers and writers of the Six Sentence Story bloghop;” at that point the plexiglass barrier between the two vanished, leaving no further setting for either of the characters to continue to interact.

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

This is the Doctrines contribution to the Six Sentence Story bloghop.

Hosted each week by Denise, the rules are simple, the stories are always a surprise.

(Previously in the story of Sybil Trainor)….

The prompt word:

BUBBLE

“No, not that I don’t like her, I mean its been two days since she created Chateau Disaporea… well, I have to laugh or I’d be sleeping in my car.”

The Fay House, serving as it did as the sole first-year student housing on the Radcliffe Quad, had the advantage of being a one-hundred-seventy-three year old mansion, and as such, was to modern dormitory living as was a live TikTok app to ‘Little Women’; it was perfect for subdivision into rooms to be shared by two young women/total strangers during a time in life characterized by triumph and despair.

“… not to worry, she’s out… for a girl from the Mid-West my roomie seems awful comfortable here in Cambridge, no, I don’t have any classes with her, thank god… just intense. Yeah, I’ll hold…

“…remember that American exchange student back in our senior year …yeah, except I’m thinking this one would’ve slipped the overdose to the guy instead of drinking it… <laughter>  you remember the picture of the orientation guy I sent you the day I moved in…well that afternoon, I no sooner dumped all my stuff on the bed nearest the door… and in walks this girl, tall, dark hair and without a glance to me, nodded at the bed on the far side of the room, and the guy walks over and puts a single piece of a fake-blue-marble Samsonite luggage on the bed, and, still not a word, they both walk out of the room, ikr?”

Asked his opinion of the influence of Victorian style on the still-developing architectural lexicon of the New World, a soon-to-be-famous philosopher said, ‘The intricacies of detail and (its) ponderous form speaks to a vision of heaven carved by a sinner hoping to win heaven or rule hell’; as much as a soap bubble is the epitome of short-lived beauty, the mark left by the dark-wood floors and shadowy halls of some older residences was often the difference between one longing for the past and seeking the future.

“Hey, Sybil I didn’t hear you come in… (くそ, gotta go…“)

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