conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'Disturbing the Peace'
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Disturbing the Peace
  Entirely his business. For some time there was no sound but the clicking of ice in his glass while he thought it over. What the hell. It might help; it might "work"; and if it didn't he could always quit.
  But Janice was still tense, and Paul Borg made great flames as he tried to light his pipe for the third or fourth time. He didn't really know how to smoke the thing; maybe soon he'd stop trying. "There's just one hitch, John," he said at last. "Dr. Blomberg made it clear to me that he won't work with you unless you stop drinking."
  Then they heard a high, shy call from Tommy's room. Janice hurried to him, while Wilder finished his drink in a gulp, and when she came back she said "He wants to see you, John."
  Going down the hall he found he wasn't steady on his feet: he swayed and lurched against a wall with one shoulder.
  Tommy was sitting up in bed with the light on, surrounded by Yankee pennants and Kennedy posters. His pajamas were rumpled, his straight hair stuck out in all directions and he looked younger than ten. He looked about six or seven.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She had been slicing her cherry cheesecake into neat, moist sections; now she raised one piece to her bared teeth but it crumbled and part of it fell on her dress, and it seemed to be this small disaster as much as the spinal X rays that reduced her, once again, to tears.
  This was bad. If she started comparing him with Frank Lacy he might not survive the night. He got out of bed and put on the terry-cloth robe she had bought him for Christmas, and the feel of the robe alone was enough to brighten him. "Let's change the subject," he said. "In fact let's not talk about anything at all. Let's sing."
  He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, staring at his empty shoes, and the shape of his back must have been eloquent because her arms came tenderly around him from behind and her fingers played with the hair of his chest.
  He did begin to spend more time at home—he told Janice he would cut down to two or three AA meetings a week, instead of five—and though it meant less time with Pamela it made him feel like a responsible father. Twice he left work early to take Tommy to ball games (wasn't that the kind of thing responsible fathers did?), and both times, nursing an after-game beer in some clamorous eating place near the stadium, he tried to draw him out.
  Seeing Pamela only two or three nights a week did make a difference: every time, it seemed, she was full of news that had nothing to do with him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She had been slicing her cherry cheesecake into neat, moist sections; now she raised one piece to her bared teeth but it crumbled and part of it fell on her dress, and it seemed to be this small disaster as much as the spinal X rays that reduced her, once again, to tears.
  This was bad. If she started comparing him with Frank Lacy he might not survive the night. He got out of bed and put on the terry-cloth robe she had bought him for Christmas, and the feel of the robe alone was enough to brighten him. "Let's change the subject," he said. "In fact let's not talk about anything at all. Let's sing."
  He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, staring at his empty shoes, and the shape of his back must have been eloquent because her arms came tenderly around him from behind and her fingers played with the hair of his chest.
  He did begin to spend more time at home—he told Janice he would cut down to two or three AA meetings a week, instead of five—and though it meant less time with Pamela it made him feel like a responsible father. Twice he left work early to take Tommy to ball games (wasn't that the kind of thing responsible fathers did?), and both times, nursing an after-game beer in some clamorous eating place near the stadium, he tried to draw him out.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last five paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The state hospital looked pleasant enough from a distance, but up close you could tell what it was. Patients dressed in grey or green twill work clothes idled in the sunshine around the main door of John's building, and on the lawn near the parking lot a couple of heavy, slow-moving parents were bathing their grown son. They had removed his twill shirt to wash the upper portions of him, using a soaped washcloth and a plastic bucket of steaming water; then, after his father had turned him to face the building, his mother dropped his pants and carefully swabbed between his legs.
  The linoleum of the waiting room outside John's ward was being mopped, and the angry-looking black man who mopped it talked steadily to himself as he worked. There were only three or four other visitors sitting at chrome-and-plastic tables around the room. A short, grey-haired man in green came out, and she didn't recognize him until he drew a chair out from her table.
  It wasn't only that he'd turned grey; his face had gone slack and his eyes bland. He looked like a middle-aged man to whom nothing had ever happened.
  For a little while they sat like strangers sharing a table in a cheap cafeteria. Then she said "John? Is there anything you need? Anything I could get for you while I'm here?"
  She knew her next question would be a difficult one, but she decided to ask it anyway. She might never be in California again; she might never see him again. She had to wait for a swelling in her throat to go down before she could trust her voice. "John," she said, "have you made any plans or—you know—given any thought to what you might do when you leave here?"
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The state hospital looked pleasant enough from a distance, but up close you could tell what it was. Patients dressed in grey or green twill work clothes idled in the sunshine around the main door of John's building, and on the lawn near the parking lot a couple of heavy, slow-moving parents were bathing their grown son. They had removed his twill shirt to wash the upper portions of him, using a soaped washcloth and a plastic bucket of steaming water; then, after his father had turned him to face the building, his mother dropped his pants and carefully swabbed between his legs.
  The linoleum of the waiting room outside John's ward was being mopped, and the angry-looking black man who mopped it talked steadily to himself as he worked. There were only three or four other visitors sitting at chrome-and-plastic tables around the room. A short, grey-haired man in green came out, and she didn't recognize him until he drew a chair out from her table.
  It wasn't only that he'd turned grey; his face had gone slack and his eyes bland. He looked like a middle-aged man to whom nothing had ever happened.
  For a little while they sat like strangers sharing a table in a cheap cafeteria. Then she said "John? Is there anything you need? Anything I could get for you while I'm here?"
  She knew her next question would be a difficult one, but she decided to ask it anyway. She might never be in California again; she might never see him again. She had to wait for a swelling in her throat to go down before she could trust her voice.