conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled In the Walled City about English, Cornell, University with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is a lecturer in the English department at Cornell University.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In the Walled City
  Jim Junior is a white head, his body hidden by a driving forward, the bleacher crowd dark, lost beyond the flash. The ball, between the opposing player's fingertips and the rim, commands his attention. His mouth is open, his eyes wide. The editor finds it inappropriate.
  Carolyn June Steckler and Marcia Lynn Steckler do not appear in his files. He searches the elementary school homeroom photos, but their faces are too small, and blowing them up would make them grainy.
  Nadine goes into town once a week with Myra Simms. With the telephone shut off, Nadine needs these trips to catch up on gossip. But lately there has been little to say. Both the Simmses' and Stecklers' finances are dwindling, and Nadine and Myra have run out of wishful solutions. Each trip, after a few minutes of speculation, they ride silently, watching the miles of fence snake by. In town they walk the store aisles, pointing to things they like, then leave without buying.
  Before the letters from the credit association and the sheriff's office began, Nadine would wait at the front window for the mail jeep. She walked down the drive in her apron, fresh from the heat of making lunch for the girls. There were flyers from the stores in town and coupons from clearinghouses and letters from her mother. On the way back to the house, the coupons and flyers tucked in her apron pocket, she would read her mother's letters out loud. Now, the girls in school, the mail threatening, she sits in the back room, reading library novels, trying to ignore the approaching engine.
  Sometimes Jim Ed comes home from town drunk, but she understands. He has been as good a husband as she had hoped for when she was young. On those nights he comes home drunk, she prepares his supper specially and shoos the kids upstairs. After he eats they sit in the back room and talk. They will move, they will both get jobs in town, or in Carnegie or Chickasha. Everything will work out fine, she says. Everything will be all right.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know four more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sheila tucked the money into the pouch of her purple sweatshirt. "Ready," she prompted. She took her beige coat from the pegboard beside the door, revealing beneath a laminated plaque with the slogan "One day at a time." There were similar plaques nailed to the pine paneling throughout the house, and each time Sheila noticed one, her head gave a jerk, reared back as if struck.
  Mrs. Wystrzemski had seen the girl twitch before, and thought it a nervous tic. The older woman attributed it to too much thinking. She tucked her hair inside her collar, knotted her lime babushka under her chin, and pulled on her black trench coat. "All right," she said, stuffing the foil-wrapped sole into her purse.
  On Long Island she and John had lost their house. One afternoon he had come home drunk and announced that Grumman had laid him off. He slouched in a chair and wept while Sheila held him.
  She was not working at the time, but as soon as she found day-care for Becky, she went back to her job as a foster child caseworker. John took two jobs to meet the mortgage payments, but it wasn't enough, and whenever Sheila suggested that her parents could help, he said, "We'll do it ourselves," and refused to discuss it further.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs? Start with the sentence 'Soon the orderly had to lift him from his seat and carry him out the door'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Soon the orderly had to lift him from his seat and carry him out the door. He arrived early each day so the others wouldn't see him, and when they left he stayed in his seat and talked with Willie T. until the orderly wheeled the chair to the curb. He spoke of his childhood, his adventures as a young man, his career, his marriages. History poured out of him. Willie T. tried not to judge. As Mr. Fergus grew weaker, his ramblings took in his whole life. One minute he'd be talking about the wharves in Brooklyn, the next the rotten food in the cafeteria. He repeated episodes and forgot important details, and yet he seemed to be concentrating, correcting himself, as if every new version were the last and had to be perfect. Willie T. never interrupted. He told himself that the urgency in Mr. Fergus's voice was natural.
  And one August morning they were five again. They crossed the river south, the river east, silent. He told Eddie how brave Mr. Fergus was.
  After dinner, Christine left Willie T. to himself. He sat in his stuffed chair and drank beer, ignoring the TV, and by bedtime he was drunk. Christine turned off all the lights and asked, "You coming?"
  The beer was warm and sour going down. He slouched in the chair, the blue ghosts of the TV racing around the walls. He went to the kitchen for another beer, came back and watched the ceiling flow. It was two o'clock when he finished the last one, the national anthem long past, the screen a blur of grinding static.
  Barefoot, he crept into the dark bedroom. The closet door squeaked. He dug through boots and shoes to the box. In the living room the glare of the TV flashed like summer lightning over the walls. He flicked the bathroom switch, set the box on the toilet, and sat down on the lip of the tub. A grainy Mr. Fergus smiled up at him. Willie T. took the first sheet from the box, held it above the sink, and began to read. In the mirror his lips moved, his voice soft in the cold, tiled light, murmuring as if in prayer.