conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about span><span, Journal</span></span></span with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Treasure Island!!!'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book? Start with the sentence 'Treasure Island!!!
  Nancy, who had an immigrant's mistrust of banks, kept a box of petty cash in the back room'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Treasure Island!!!
  Nancy, who had an immigrant's mistrust of banks, kept a box of petty cash in the back room. A few times I had seen her open the box before she sent me out, like an errand girl, for feed. Now I removed the key from its hiding place and though the lock was very stiff, I turned it and threw back the lid. A faint smell rose from the interior, almost like scented toilet paper or over-ripe apples, but nothing was on top except a plastic tray containing a few pieces of junk jewelry, a pair of foam earplugs, and a harvest of bright red, floozy-length Lee Press-On Nails. I pulled up the tray with impatience, and there lay ten crisp one hundred dollar bills. Nancy! I'd never dreamed she had this much capital! If only she would trust me with it—and here I lost a few moments to a potent daydream in which I tore out the Library's U-shaped circ desk and installed a slab of black walnut. Or Zebra Wood. Then I shook myself awake and pocketed the cash. I returned the key to its hiding place, and was about to make for the door when I heard a sound that brought my heart into my mouth—the door chime chirp, alerting me that we had a patron. As I came out of the back room, I saw it was a boy come to return a goldfish. He was about ten years old and walked, the little glass loaner bowl close to his chest, as if he had another ten years to make the journey from the door to...
  On the pavement the boy threatened to walk my way, but by lingering at the corner and pretending that I was about to catch a bus, I quickly shed him. You have to be careful in this job; certain kids glom on to a Pet Librarian as if to a celebrity. Something of the animal glamour attaches, the way it would for a zookeeper or a lion tamer. I don't pretend to understand it, but fortunately this boy wasn't too hard to shake. "You ever think about maybe getting a panda?" he said dreamily. When I roared, "No!" he scuttled off.
  For reasons I don't wish to go into, I don't have a car, and I was too impatient to wait for a bus, so I began to walk. Walk and walk and walk, past pizzerias and dry cleaners and fast lube franchises until I reached Cutwater Mall, a downscale place with a crappy food court and a hideous green and black linoleum floor rolling past stores with names like Gifts 'n' Things and Sox 'n' Stuff. My family used to go here before a better mall was built—one with skylights and a fiberglass reproduction of the Trevi fountain.
  The pet shop I wanted sat in a dark corner on the lower level, its floor seething with woodchips and hair. Puppies and kittens cowered in the front window, fish tanks bubbled and glowed along the sides. I threaded my way through the mess and found a regal teenaged girl, her hair done up so elaborately she appeared to wear a Zulu basket on her head. Lethargically she unpacked a crate of ferret shampoo.
  For the benefit of anyone who has never been to a mall pet store, the people who work there don't know a thing about pets, nor would they care to. Without any affect she led me to aisle nine. There, in the fluorescent corridor, after rows of twittering songbirds, none of whom caught my fancy, I discovered a cage labeled "Yellow-Naped Amazon." Its occupant was one foot high and came at my eye like a bit of migraine, its feathers so brightly colored the air around them seemed to pulse. I studied the hard curled beak and two glittering eyes, one of which studied me. Then the bird made an unearthly noise, a metallic call pitched to pierce through hundreds of miles of Amazon canopy.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I pushed aside an empty basket and sat down on the counter, thinking about Patty. How we had shared her heart-shaped bangles, her dolphin rings. Her puffy-sleeved, round-collared, pastel-colored blouses. The holiday concert to which she wore a blouse of slippery, white sateen. Her charm bracelet with a heart toggle clasp, my own parrot green windbreaker whose white hood ties I had chewed to a pulp, her pale pink car coat made of light brushed wool which hung on the peg in the cloak room three pegs down from mine. And her umbrella! Also pink, with a white handle in the shape of a swan.
  But later I marched into Adrianna's room and said, "How many times has Mom pulled you aside, and told you in a calculatedly casual way, 'Your father feels this,' 'What's important to your father is that'?"
  Apparently when I had been at pains to share a crucial incident in a life-changing novel, she had given her mind permission to wander, and it had wandered right into the cul-de-sac of her sorry-ass relationship. I couldn't pretend to be surprised, but I did pretend briefly not to know who she was talking about. Her need to confide was so great that she let my jibe pass.
  Here, I am embarrassed to say, I let my gaze wander to her mattress, under which she stored her horrid collection of billet-doux. She followed my gaze and blushed deeply.
  Back at the ranch, I discovered that someone had placed a letter into Chapter 1: The Old Sea Dog at the 'Admiral Benbow.'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: How we had shared her heart-shaped bangles, her dolphin rings. Her puffy-sleeved, round-collared, pastel-colored blouses. The holiday concert to which she wore a blouse of slippery, white sateen. Her charm bracelet with a heart toggle clasp, my own parrot green windbreaker whose white hood ties I had chewed to a pulp, her pale pink car coat made of light brushed wool which hung on the peg in the cloak room three pegs down from mine. And her umbrella! Also pink, with a white handle in the shape of a swan.
  But later I marched into Adrianna's room and said, "How many times has Mom pulled you aside, and told you in a calculatedly casual way, 'Your father feels this,' 'What's important to your father is that'?"
  Apparently when I had been at pains to share a crucial incident in a life-changing novel, she had given her mind permission to wander, and it had wandered right into the cul-de-sac of her sorry-ass relationship. I couldn't pretend to be surprised, but I did pretend briefly not to know who she was talking about. Her need to confide was so great that she let my jibe pass.
  Here, I am embarrassed to say, I let my gaze wander to her mattress, under which she stored her horrid collection of billet-doux. She followed my gaze and blushed deeply.
  Back at the ranch, I discovered that someone had placed a letter into Chapter 1: The Old Sea Dog at the 'Admiral Benbow.'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: At 2 A.M. my parents staggered into the house, looking grey and haggard. The TV had been blaring in their ears all night; they had eaten a lot of candy bars in the waiting room. Adrianna still hadn't seen a doctor and there was some concern about the ulnar or maybe it was the median nerve. I got the distinct feeling that my parents' patience with me had been exhausted. All these years in which I had refused to drive a car, all these months in which I had refused to get a job, they had indulged me without seeming to indulge me, but now they spoke to me with a flat expectancy in their voices that almost embarrassed me with its bare expression of confidence: as if I had been walking around naked all this time, and someone had casually handed me a towel.
  I adjusted the driver's seat and the mirrors and took a moment to remind myself how to work the gear-shift (it was automatic, but still: it had been a while). Despite my sweating palms, I managed to inch my way to the driveway's end before I realized I didn't know whether to turn right or left. My cell rang. I put the Taurus into park and, as I answered, looked to the top of the drive where I saw my father's face pressed against the kitchen window, staring back.
  Sometimes I think all my problems stem from the simple fact that my parents never know when to back off.
  I knew what the emergency waiting room of a metropolitan hospital would be like. Once when I was about ten, I'd gone with my mother after she had stepped on a nail while building a birdhouse. The place was like a bus station, with a dirty floor and aisles and aisles of vinyl chairs, bonded together as if in punishment. We'd waited an hour for my mother to get called for her tetanus shot. Seated near us were a man and a woman, neither obviously injured, both obviously insane, wearing matching running suits, and staring in front of them, without expression. There was also an old man who had fallen asleep and was drooling on his collar, and a few rows beyond him, a partially bald woman, her eyes bruised, her cheek bleeding. While we waited, a battered, foul-smelling man came in, half-naked, and screaming at the top of his lungs in a language I couldn't understand. Two men appeared and restrained him; I can't remember if he was led in or out. Children, my age and younger, cried, and whined, and slept on the chairs. The place smelled of urine, disinfectant, and fear. When it was all over, my mother had bought me a candy bar and said cheerfully, "Well, that's done!" as if she and I had just bought a fine bundle of corn at the farmers' market, and not languished for an hour in the company of human misery.
  Thanks of every coinage to my bold, but kind, agent Emily Forland, my sharp and fearless critic Jennifer Ruth, my early reader Janet Desaulniers, and my late and crucial reader James McManus. Moidores and sequins to Carol Anshaw. Doubloons and double guineas to Alice Sebold. A gold piece bored through the middle to wear around the neck to Chris Gaggero. And for Judith Pascoe, who sailed with me the whole way, the vast, uncountable heap.