conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Obama, Mankoff, Chauncey with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'Fixers'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Fixers
  Most of the stuff was, as I'd expected, high-end boilerplate corporate "gifting," chosen by administrative assistants and contract shopping consultants. When I finished opening the lot, I reckoned I was looking at around $5K in Madison Avenue store credit, sufficient to see Maecenas through a significant part of our own business-gift budget for 2015.
  Today's the big day, the day I drop off the diary at Marina's. It's been a pretty unexciting four days since Christmas. There've been the usual hassles to deal with. Clients having trouble finding a notary in Anguilla; last-minute changes in this or that subvention; client-requested billing adjustments; problems with naming rights. One client who wanted to know whether I think his decision to give up his U.S. citizenship for tax reasons will affect NYU's plan to give him an honorary degree this spring.
  Lucia called yesterday from London to wish me Happy New Year and to report that her concierge business is going great guns, with her Russian clients spending like crazy on property and furnishings now that Putin is sticking it to the oligarchs and they're shoveling their rubles out of the motherland as fast as they can. She's also seeing a decided uptick in her "sheik" trade. She attributes this to fear on the part of Saudi royals, UAE emirs, and other potentates that ISIS may be a real threat down the line, and they better be ready to bail the instant the bad guys in black appear within fifty miles of Riyadh or Doha. London's no longer as hospitable to these people as it was, and Nevada now seems to be emerging on as the escape hatch of choice, probably because it's mainly desert and, well, full of hookers.
  It was a logical guess. Most people would pick a company that transacts a lot of face-to-face, voice-to-voice business with the public, and if you've ever wrestled with Citi's phone tree, you'll know why the big bank was Lucia's first choice. Besides, only two weeks ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who has turned out to be Wall Street's biggest Washington nemesis, got up on the Senate floor two weeks ago and really laid into Citi, urging the government to break it up.
  I knew she'd gotten it. "Right the fourth time!" I exclaimed. "The mighty TARPworm, ruler of all it devours! They're top of the charts—and by a healthy margin. For the way they treat their first-year hires."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Frankly, I'm at sixes and sevens. But what was I to do or say to Artie? I'm all for giving virtue and good intentions every chance, but what I possess is dynamite, and the targets I have in mind still seem well worth blowing up.
  Is the nation really that fragile? I just don't know, and should that really deter me? Maybe we deserve to be blown up and let the next generation start over.
  I went to bed in a sulk and woke up in a sulk. It's hard to accept Marina's turndown. Still, what can I do? If I try to take the diary to a journalist I don't know, either I have to find someone to make the introduction or make a cold call myself. In both cases, there'll be some preliminary explaining to do, which risks tipping my hand. And suppose whoever I approach turns me down the way Marina has? Sees things the way she and Artie do, that everything provoked by the disclosure won't be so much a healing catharsis but a destructive convulsion? Frankly, I doubt there's much of a risk of rejection. Most journalists would sell their mother for a scoop of the magnitude I'm offering. So I'm inclined to see if I can find a discreet path to Matt Taibbi. He's right up there with Marina when it comes to high-grade muckraking; he calls 'em as he sees 'em; he's a really good, strong writer. But I want to think this over.
  Anyway, nothing can get done until the New Year. B gets here tomorrow, and her visit will take up my time and energy for the next couple of days. She leaves the morning of the 2nd; by then, my sulks will have faded—I know myself well enough to be sure of that—and I'll be able to think clearly about what to do next. If anything.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Time now to lower the curtain once and for all. These revels really are now ended and how and by what my little life will ultimately be rounded will be decided by fate and the woman I love. Who knows, maybe I'll pop the question.
  So this is it for us, old soul. God knows when you'll be reading this. Anyway, I wish you well, I wish us well, I wish the republic well; in its best moments, this is a country very much worth saving from itself, if that's still possible and it might not be—so far have we fallen, so deeply have we been corrupted, so degraded are we intellectually. Still, there's always hope, but that will require forces more convincing and formidable than I could ever set in motion.
  If I may rephrase the end of my favorite novel, here we are again then, boats against currents that drag us relentlessly into the future. There's nothing left to say, Gentle Reader, except what I think Tiny Tim would have said for all of us, to all of us, were he alive today:
  Finally, there is my girlfriend, now my wife, Tamara Glenny. In trying to list the ways in which she has made such a difference, I run out of nouns and adjectives. She is a fierce line editor, wielding a blue pencil like a scimitar; as a copy editor, she can pick nits with the best of 'em; as a taskmaster, she knows exactly when to wield the carrot and when the stick. She has been by turns supportive, critical, thoughtful, argumentative, sympathetic, intemperate, caustic, demanding, selfless, witty, and loving. Everything one craves in a wife and an editorial helpmeet.
  I can't close without a shout-out to my children and stepchildren, their spouses and children, and certain old friends. Just knowing you're out there has kept me going.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Time now to lower the curtain once and for all. These revels really are now ended and how and by what my little life will ultimately be rounded will be decided by fate and the woman I love. Who knows, maybe I'll pop the question.
  So this is it for us, old soul. God knows when you'll be reading this. Anyway, I wish you well, I wish us well, I wish the republic well; in its best moments, this is a country very much worth saving from itself, if that's still possible and it might not be—so far have we fallen, so deeply have we been corrupted, so degraded are we intellectually. Still, there's always hope, but that will require forces more convincing and formidable than I could ever set in motion.
  If I may rephrase the end of my favorite novel, here we are again then, boats against currents that drag us relentlessly into the future. There's nothing left to say, Gentle Reader, except what I think Tiny Tim would have said for all of us, to all of us, were he alive today:
  Finally, there is my girlfriend, now my wife, Tamara Glenny. In trying to list the ways in which she has made such a difference, I run out of nouns and adjectives. She is a fierce line editor, wielding a blue pencil like a scimitar; as a copy editor, she can pick nits with the best of 'em; as a taskmaster, she knows exactly when to wield the carrot and when the stick. She has been by turns supportive, critical, thoughtful, argumentative, sympathetic, intemperate, caustic, demanding, selfless, witty, and loving. Everything one craves in a wife and an editorial helpmeet.
  I can't close without a shout-out to my children and stepchildren, their spouses and children, and certain old friends.