conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Central, Valley, Vietnam with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'First, Do No Harm'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book. End with the sentence '"'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: First, Do No Harm
  Never in my life had I heard anyone speak to my father in anything like those words and that tone. And "Sammy"? I'd never heard anyone even call him Sam, not his friends, not my mother. But he didn't seem to notice, just said lightly, "How're you doing, Oscar?"
  By the time I realized he was talking to me, Samuel said, "I've just come from Murray's, Os. Sorry, but I've got bad news for you."
  A laugh, more disparaging than the last. Oscar turned around, then waddled back inside the house. Samuel followed. I kept at a safe distance behind him.
  When we reached the living room, Oscar stopped, shoved his cigar back into the corner of his mouth, looked both of us up and down. The room was a pigsty. Few lumpy chairs, a sofa with springs protruding through the seat. All over, dust. Papers and odd chunks of metal here, there, everywhere. A half-eaten plate of food sat on a battered three-legged table to my left. Oscar shot a stream of brown saliva, ping, into a grimy steel spittoon. "Jonas, Christ! Thank God it was him, not Murray." He peered at Samuel, trying to make contact beneath the brim of my father's Panama, which he hadn't removed. "Hell'd he die from?"
  Oscar cackled, poked Samuel in the chest with his cigarless hand. "Ol' Os never was one for big fancy words," he said. "Plain fact, Jonas was a cunt first-class. Talk, he was good at, but I hadda kick his ass 'least once an hour to get a decent day's work outa him." Oscar launched another missile into the spittoon, then squinted at Samuel. "Now, if you're all done here, kindly get your cheesy ass outa my house and keep it out. Tomorrow, while you're gettin' paid for finger-fuckin' the mayor's wife, you can think about me havin' to go find some half-wit nigger or spic or dago who ain't been drafted, who might just put in maybe half a day's work for two days' pay."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: five more paragraphs. End with the sentence '"'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Dexter doffed his hat again, then turned and disappeared around the corner. Oscar sent an evil eye after him. "I don't like that son of a bitch. Acts like he knows more about our business'n we do."
  Murray laughed. "He's got his ways, is all. I figure with what he's doing for us, I like him just fine." Murray put a hand to my shoulder. "Okay, come on, Dockie, deal's a deal. Get ourselves another Pepsi, then I'll show you how to put that music box back together." Another poke in the ribs. "Girls don't wait around forever for a guy."
  We went out back, pulled the tarp off the table. Murray studied the array of shiny brass and steel, belched absentmindedly, then pointed with the Pepsi bottle. "First off, we gotta put all them little pieces into their right groups. Spring-barrel parts, governor, cylinder, comb. Four piles. Like we just did with the metal out there."
  I must've been concentrating hard on making big pieces out of little ones because when Oscar barked, "Somethin' I want to tell you," I shot to my feet, scattered music box parts all over the table. Oscar snickered. "Oh, dearie me." Gruff falsetto. "Did I frighten Little Miss Pussy? Make her drop her pretty music box?"
  Blood zipped straight through my cheeks into my brain. "You want to tell me something, you can call me by my name," I snapped. "Leo."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Against my will, I saw my sixteen-year-old father, sitting in the kitchen with Samuel, storm about to break, Samuel's face aglow. "Yes," Samuel said. "Yes. I love it."
  After I got Helene cooled off and under the covers, I put our uneaten dinner into the fridge, dragged myself into the living room, flopped on my back on the couch. That was hours ago. I doze, come around, doze again. A Mobius-strip movie runs on the ceiling above my head, story without end. There's my young father, Murray Fleischmann, Lily. Oscar, George, Harmony. Ramona and Samuel...or is that me? I snap awake, pull the photo from my pocket, play stare-down with my grinning mirror-image. Don't ask who blinks.
  I stretch, swing my feet to the floor, take Harmony's death certificate from my pocket, tear the paper into tiny bits, watch them flutter into the wastebasket next to the couch. Then I pull out my grandfather's certificate, and tuck it with his photo between the back of Dad's painting and the wooden stretcher-frame. Carefully, quietly, I hang the painting on the front wall of the living room, eye-level, where I can't help but see it every time I reach for the doorknob. "He knew what to do for everybody in Hobart—how could he not know for himself?" Good question. Goddamned good question.
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