conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'Desperate Characters'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Desperate Characters
  They ate from trays in the living room. Otto was afraid of spilling food on the Goum rug and he had to bend over too far to reach his plate. The room felt faintly hostile, as though it resented this misuse of its given function. Otto felt an obscure anger at the ineluctable force of custom. Why the hell couldn't he eat off the floor if he chose to? Yet he knew it was a violation of his own sense of fitness that was making him irritable.
  She looked at him defiantly. "He said you were cold and looked down at his clients, his 'black sharecroppers' he called them. He said he loved you and you treated him like a delivery boy. I didn't defend you the way I should have. I don't know why I didn't. Maybe because I've known him so long and the whole thing was peculiarly domestic—like one brother complaining about another."
  The door opened to an explosion of babble. A man's voice rose and fell in accents of hysteria. Otto backed into view, followed by a young Negro man waving his hands. His head was cocked at so extreme an angle that it was a wonder the leopard pillbox hat he was wearing didn't fall off. A brilliant red shawl, tied through the shoulder loop of his army shirt, trailed on the floor behind him.
  Robbery and murder appeared before her in two short scenes, clicked on and off like pictures projected on a screen.
  Both men disappeared. A minute or so later, Sophie heard the Negro asking for train times and the price of the fare in the same high monotone of panic and demand. After a short silence, she heard whispering. The Negro appeared suddenly in the hall in front of the living room. With an elaborate gesture, he snatched off his hat, smiled violently at her and nodded his head rapidly.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He didn't answer her and she didn't repeat her question. She felt a mild estrangement between them, just a little moment of tension. She thought about it, turning it over in her mind as she might have turned over an object in her hands, trying to understand her own intention, which she knew had been disruptive. Why interrupt the pleasant boredom of the drive? The sky was all clear now, a bland, washed blue, and the occasional house that could be glimpsed from the road looked freshly painted and prosperous and eternal; and Sophie thought of the great gray sea of sludge through which they had driven only an hour or so earlier.
  The village of Flynders, from which they were now only two miles, had a winter population of fewer than one hundred families, most of whom were entirely dependent on the summer people for their income. In the full summer swing of July and August, the population swelled to at least two thousand, and last summer this number had been augmented by a group of New York advertising agency people who had purchased an old estate, torn down the thirty-two-room house and outbuildings, subdivided the acreage, and started to build a group of houses that was supposed, eventually, to resemble a French farming community. As Otto drove past the area, a small sign nailed to an elm trunk announced its name—BUDDING GROVE. Sophie saw a sway-backed gray horse standing among the half-built structures.
  Flynders was on neither the ocean nor the bay so the rents for the old farmhouses that were still available were less than those farther out on the island in the Hamptons. There was no bank; one antique shop managed by an elderly and morose homosexual, who spent his winters in Sicily; an I.G.A. market; three gas stations; a post office in a large shed that also housed a laundromat; a general store (hardware, stationery, tennis shoes in large sizes); two public telephone booths, and a narrow dark restaurant which was open the year around. Old-time summer people made a ritual stop each year to make sure the restaurant's permanent exhibit had not been removed from its window—a plastic piece of apple pie, on top of which decayed from year to year a yellow scoop of Styrofoam.
  A few young people lived in Flynders, commuting many miles to work in distant towns. They lived in houses which they had bought, off the highway, green or blue or pink boxes stacked up into rooms over two-car garages, with Venetian blinds at the windows. A real-estate agent in Riverhead handled the Flynders rentals and sales.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Sophie made herself a cup of strong coffee and went to her desk in the bedroom. She must write to her mother before the urge died, before it was too late. She would have something to tell her this time, a story to cover the emptiness of the page, to belie the true silence between them which had begun when Sophie had left home, after she had awakened for the last time to that jeering applause. She would write her about the cat; her mother would enjoy that. She would describe the incident in such a way it would strike the exact note calculated to arouse the old woman's scorn and hilarity.
  From a drawer she took out paper and envelope. She filled the old fountain pen Otto had found for her in an antique shop from a small crystal ink bottle that stood on its own silver claw feet. The foot of the desk chair was caught in the fringes of the rug and, just as she bent down to disentangle it, she heard the sound of a key in the front door. She stood up and glanced at the bedside clock in surprise. It was a few minutes before noon. Otto's footsteps were audible on the stairs; then he walked into the bedroom.
  Otto winced. He didn't like that. Sophie laughed. "Oh, it was the correct adjective, filthy, the one she really meant to use. She is like a fairy, you know. Stop looking that way! I felt bad, but only for a second."
  The extension phone on the desk rang. With a certain reluctance, he reached for it. She shook her head and placed her hand on the receiver. "I know they won't call now. I tell you, I know it," she said irritably. She picked up the phone.
  The voice from the telephone went on and on like gas leaking from a pipe. Sophie and Otto had ceased to listen. Her arms fell away from his shoulders as they both turned slowly toward the wall, turned until they could both see the ink running down to the floor in black lines.