conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Lewis, Through, Lighthouse with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Literary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'He Wants'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.. End with the sentence '
  Lewis turns to look at the man who is moving away from the bar, who is scanning the room for a table he wants, and Lewis sees, with a rush of indignation, that it is him, the Goldschläger man, who has decided to eat instead and is settling down now at a corner table, waiting for his suet pudding to arrive.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He Wants
  There is no clock. Sometimes the pub has lock-ins. With the door bolted and the curtains closed, you can lose your sense of time. Each time he enters, he half expects to smell Woodbines, to see, through a smoky haze, an old man sucking on a cigarette, the ash dropping off, the end of the cigarette smouldering. There is no smoking in the pubs, though, these days.
  Taking his hat off and putting it down on the bar, he asks for a shandy. While she is pulling his half, she says to him, 'I didn't win.' She means the lottery. Lewis has seen the advert, the giant hand in the sky, a formation of stars, the finger pointing, 'It could be you'. He hasn't seen it for a while though. He has a feeling all of that's long gone now; there'll be a new slogan. Miranda plays every Saturday but has won nothing yet. 'The minute I do,' she says, 'I'm out of here.' Edie used to play at work, in a syndicate. At least once, maybe twice, they won ten pounds and shared it between them.
  Miranda puts his drink down on the bar and turns to another customer who has come in, who is asking for Goldschläger. 'We don't have that,' says Miranda. They watch the man turn away and then Miranda says to Lewis, 'Have you ever had Goldschläger?'
  Lewis shakes his head. What kind of a man, he thinks, walks around asking for Swiss liqueurs with bits of gold in? He stands at the bar with his drink, thinking about the things he's never had and never will.
  Lewis turns to look at the man who is moving away from the bar, who is scanning the room for a table he wants, and Lewis sees, with a rush of indignation, that it is him, the Goldschläger man, who has decided to eat instead and is settling down now at a corner table, waiting for his suet pudding to arrive.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The walls here are the colour of honey-and- lemon Strepsils. He once became addicted to Strepsils. He could get through a strip of twelve in an hour when the maximum dosage was one lozenge, dissolved slowly in the mouth, every two to three hours, and no more than twelve in a day. He'd had to hide the empty packaging from Edie – she'd have seen it, the unusual amount of it, in the kitchen bin. Sharing it out between the various household waste baskets would have been equally risky. She would have come to him, holding the recently discarded packets, asking him if his cough had not yet gone. Instead, he put the blister packs and little cardboard boxes in his coat pocket and dropped them into a public bin on his way to work. He tried to wean himself off them, these lozenges that were like sweets but with a little kick, that were yellow with an S on the front, slightly raised so that he could feel it with his tongue. He cut down to half a strip a day and then only a few lozenges and then just one in the morning, but he always went back onto them, especially after a lunchtime shandy. In the end, he bought a tin of lemon drops and whenever he wants a Strepsil he has a lemon drop or a lemon sherbet or a jelly baby instead, although it is not really the same.
  After fifteen minutes, Lewis approaches the reception desk and asks why he has not been called. 'You'll be called when it's your turn,' says the receptionist.
  Lewis tells her how long he has been waiting but he gets no reply. She is holding a phone to her ear although she does not seem to be having a conversation with anyone on the other end. He returns to his seat.
  Lewis looks up at the information screen ('DO YOU SMOKE?' it says) and then at the clock. He wonders whether Sydney is still outside in his car, whether he has waited for him. Lewis has been waiting in here for twenty minutes. He thinks he has waited long enough. He wants someone to call his name. They don't do that any more though. They put the names up on the screen. Lewis wants it to be his turn; he wants to be seen.
  There is a beep, and when Lewis looks up he sees his name and a room number displayed. He leaves his uncomfortable, slippery chair and goes off to find the right room.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It is not much use, anyway, locking his doors and windows, when he will see Barry in the nursing home at teatime on Sunday. He pictures a showdown in the lavender-coloured living room, a heated confrontation with dolphin song in the background. Lewis will say that he does not have the car, that Sydney has it. Barry, standing a touch too close, will ask where Sydney is, and Lewis will say, quite honestly, that he does not know.
  Lewis is sitting on something hard. Reaching under his bottom, he extracts his spare pair of glasses. They are a bit bent but not broken. He puts them on, twisting round the rearview mirror to look at his face, clean-shaven but no longer smooth-skinned; at his shorn hair, his schoolboy cut, all the colour and thickness gone. He looks nothing like a schoolboy; he looks like the old man he is.
  Even though he cannot see the back of his neck, the site of the mole's removal, he is aware of the growth having gone, and of feeling strangely bare. It feels sore. He thinks about Sydney's hand being there, about his dirty fingers, his being a bit rough. He feels as if the stitches – the stitch – might have been pulled through the edge of the wound, opening it up again. He imagines a small hole in his body, his insides showing. He will have to walk back to the surgery and it will make his knee hurt. When he gets home, he will go to the bathroom and inspect the wound using Edie's hand mirror. Perhaps he will find that the wound is fine and looks just as it did before.
  They speed down the long, dark country lane with their headlights on full beam and it makes Lewis think of flying, of what flying might be like, and of how you would be fine, you would be safe, up there in the air.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: They speed down the long, dark country lane with their headlights on full beam and it makes Lewis think of flying, of what flying might be like, and of how you would be fine, you would be safe, up there in the air.. Perhaps he will find that the wound is fine and looks just as it did before. When he gets home, he will go to the bathroom and inspect the wound using Edie's hand mirror. He will have to walk back to the surgery and it will make his knee hurt. He imagines a small hole in his body, his insides showing. He feels as if the stitches – the stitch – might have been pulled through the edge of the wound, opening it up again. He thinks about Sydney's hand being there, about his dirty fingers, his being a bit rough. It feels sore.
  Even though he cannot see the back of his neck, the site of the mole's removal, he is aware of the growth having gone, and of feeling strangely bare. He looks nothing like a schoolboy; he looks like the old man he is. He puts them on, twisting round the rearview mirror to look at his face, clean-shaven but no longer smooth-skinned; at his shorn hair, his schoolboy cut, all the colour and thickness gone. They are a bit bent but not broken. Reaching under his bottom, he extracts his spare pair of glasses.
  Lewis is sitting on something hard. Barry, standing a touch too close, will ask where Sydney is, and Lewis will say, quite honestly, that he does not know. Lewis will say that he does not have the car, that Sydney has it. He pictures a showdown in the lavender-coloured living room, a heated confrontation with dolphin song in the background.It is not much use, anyway, locking his doors and windows, when he will see Barry in the nursing home at teatime on Sunday