conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled Half in Love about Richard, McAllister, Cabinet with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Richard McAllister, a young minister in the government, has temporarily left the Cabinet while recovering from being stabbed by a thug at a football match. He has decided, while recuperating, to go to South Africa to research a relative and his account of the horse in the Boer War. While in Mafeking, he is called back to London because his passionate affair with an actress has become public knowledge. From that moment, the love affair becomes almost impossibly fraught. The press hound them, the government spin doctors try to suppress all news and Joanna's husband becomes very vindictive. The lovers are parted, and Joanna goes to America. This is a novel about contemporary politics, the power of film, the nature of history and above all about two people caught hopelessly in love, subject to the stresses of fame and scandal. It is an exceptional achievement.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first four paragraphs for this story.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Half in Love
  FOR EIGHT MONTHS, I had been telling my client he had no tort claim. Sawyer had worked construction for thirty years, building houses for people with Montana fantasies. He was putting up a roof when one of the trusses fell, collapsing the others and taking him down with them. He started to have fainting spells and memory loss and couldn't work. We got a settlement, not a great one but not bad. The contractor was clearly negligent, having failed to brace the trusses, but workers' compensation precluded the tort claim—we couldn't sue.
  Sawyer had worked active, outside jobs all his life, and suddenly he could do nothing. It seemed to be the idleness, more than the brain damage, that made him crazy. He couldn't read, because the words came out scrambled, and he could barely sit still to try. He phoned me three times a day. My secretary stopped putting his calls through, so he came to the office, on foot because they wouldn't let him drive. He was a big, graying, blond-bearded man, my father's age, muscular but getting fat without his work. He treated me like a daughter, scolding and cajoling me. His wife was sick of his moping at the house, and his friends had been the men he'd worked with; he'd lost everything he liked about his life. I knew workers' comp and I tried to explain: he'd gotten what he was going to get. There was nothing more I could do for him.
  I thought, That's what it's like to be a man. If I were a man I could explain the law and people would listen and say, "Okay." It would be so restful.
  We went back outside. The lawyer's office had a view of the cliffs. We'd been in Billings fifteen minutes and had nothing to do but drive home. My client shook my hand, and his wife, a small, curly-haired woman who had been pretty once, gave me a quick motherly hug. She smelled like roses and cigarettes. When I stopped at the mall for a sandwich, they pulled up in the parking space next to mine. Sawyer got out of the car screaming at his wife about her fucking attitude, grabbed his jacket from the seat and slammed the door.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Add another sentence about wanted, demanded.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Half in Love
  FOR EIGHT MONTHS, I had been telling my client he had no tort claim. Sawyer had worked construction for thirty years, building houses for people with Montana fantasies. He was putting up a roof when one of the trusses fell, collapsing the others and taking him down with them. He started to have fainting spells and memory loss and couldn't work. We got a settlement, not a great one but not bad. The contractor was clearly negligent, having failed to brace the trusses, but workers' compensation precluded the tort claim—we couldn't sue. 
  Sawyer had worked active, outside jobs all his life, and suddenly he could do nothing. It seemed to be the idleness, more than the brain damage, that made him crazy. He couldn't read, because the words came out scrambled, and he could barely sit still to try. He phoned me three times a day. My secretary stopped putting his calls through, so he came to the office, on foot because they wouldn't let him drive. He was a big, graying, blond-bearded man, my father's age, muscular but getting fat without his work. He treated me like a daughter, scolding and cajoling me. He wanted to sue, demanded to sue. His wife was sick of his moping at the house, and his friends had been the men he'd worked with; he'd lost everything he liked about his life. I knew workers' comp and I tried to explain: he'd gotten what he was going to get. There was nothing more I could do for him. 
  I thought, That's what it's like to be a man. If I were a man I could explain the law and people would listen and say, "Okay. " It would be so restful. 
  We went back outside. The lawyer's office had a view of the cliffs. We'd been in Billings fifteen minutes and had nothing to do but drive home. My client shook my hand, and his wife, a small, curly-haired woman who had been pretty once, gave me a quick motherly hug. She smelled like roses and cigarettes. When I stopped at the mall for a sandwich, they pulled up in the parking space next to mine. Sawyer got out of the car screaming at his wife about her fucking attitude, grabbed his jacket from the seat and slammed the door.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I watch downriver where the birds went and something sinks in me, some chance I thought I had. I grab for the remaining one. "My father's coming," I say. "I've asked him to. He'll look at her."
  I look at Inger again. Her face is hard, but then it crumples. Fear for Jo has become more familiar to me than my own hands, more expected than the every-five-minutes trucks on the highway, but now it blazes up again, so I can hardly see through it. Inger's close enough to touch, and I wipe her cheek with my thumb.
  She laughs and moves toward me. I can feel the outline of her face against my chest, the hollow of her eyes, the curve of her nose. I'm naked under the water and nervous to have her so close. I squeeze her narrow shoulders with both arms and tell her Jo'll be okay. Is okay. Inger eases herself away from me, then splashes water on her face, so her eyelashes stick together in spiky points. We dress on the bank without looking at each other, then she stands on her toes to kiss my mouth. She's kissed me before, as a joke, in Jo's presence, but I've never noticed the wetness inside her lower lip or the pressure of her hand on my arm as she reaches up to me.
  We walk back through the pasture, and when we reach the screenhouse, Jo sits naked on a cooler, combing her hair in long even strands. When she sees us, she ducks inside. The solar-shower bag hangs on the boat rack on the truck, and Inger goes first. I sit on the truck's bumper with my back to her and look at my hands on my knees: rough old boatman's hands that Jo complains are scratchy. The thumb that touched Inger's cheek is cracked and dry.
  Inger finishes her shower, wrapped in her towel. She smells like strawberries. A reddish station wagon drives by on the road, too far away to see us. Inger takes my place on the truck's bumper and asks if I ever wanted kids.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Inger takes my place on the truck's bumper and asks if I ever wanted kids. I grab for the remaining one. "My father's coming," I say. "I've asked him to. He'll look at her."
  I look at Inger again. Her face is hard, but then it crumples. Fear for Jo has become more familiar to me than my own hands, more expected than the every-five-minutes trucks on the highway, but now it blazes up again, so I can hardly see through it. Inger's close enough to touch, and I wipe her cheek with my thumb.
  She laughs and moves toward me. I can feel the outline of her face against my chest, the hollow of her eyes, the curve of her nose. I'm naked under the water and nervous to have her so close. I squeeze her narrow shoulders with both arms and tell her Jo'll be okay. Is okay. Inger eases herself away from me, then splashes water on her face, so her eyelashes stick together in spiky points. We dress on the bank without looking at each other, then she stands on her toes to kiss my mouth. She's kissed me before, as a joke, in Jo's presence, but I've never noticed the wetness inside her lower lip or the pressure of her hand on my arm as she reaches up to me.
  We walk back through the pasture, and when we reach the screenhouse, Jo sits naked on a cooler, combing her hair in long even strands. When she sees us, she ducks inside. The solar-shower bag hangs on the boat rack on the truck, and Inger goes first. I sit on the truck's bumper with my back to her and look at my hands on my knees: rough old boatman's hands that Jo complains are scratchy. The thumb that touched Inger's cheek is cracked and dry.
  Inger finishes her shower, wrapped in her towel. She smells like strawberries. A reddish station wagon drives by on the road, too far away to see us.I watch downriver where the birds went and something sinks in me, some chance I thought I had.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.. End with the sentence ' She lives in California.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The horses had picked out the alfalfa from a new batch of hay and left piles of oat straw on the ground. My father decided that rather than let the leftovers rot in a pile, we should spread them around the field to mulch. He hoped some of it would seed, and I didn't argue. I raked trampled straw into piles, and he lifted it to the truckbed in forkfuls of shiny gold.
  When we had filled the truck, he climbed in with his pitchfork to scatter the hay. I rolled down the window, sitting on the edge of the seat to get the clutch in, and started the engine. The radio blared on and I fumbled for the volume.
  In the rearview mirror my father leaned on the pitchfork for balance. I let the clutch out in the compound gear and the truck rolled itself forward. He rocked and recovered in the mirror, and pitched the hay out in dusty yellow clouds. His face was red under his hat. At the far corner of the field I braked, and his breathing grew easier until he gave me a thumbs-up in the mirror to start again.
  He held on while I turned the truck around, and we headed back across the dry late-summer field. The wind changed direction and blew a storm of golden straw through the open window into the hot cab of the truck. I rolled the window up against the flurry, and the flakes spun in the light as we drove back to the barn for another run.
  Maile Meloy was born in Helena, Montana. She received the Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for the best story of 2001 in The Paris Review. Her stories have also appeared in The New Yorker and in Ploughshares. She lives in California.