After her husband's ex-wife's 9-year-old daughter visits, a woman is eager to return the girl and have time alone again. However, when she drops the girl off, she is appalled by the state of the girl's home and moved by the girl's desire to go back with her. The next day, she takes the child back in secret.

An elderly academic with an anxious wife is enlivened by a trip to New York, where he has an unlikely series of encounters with the peculiar woman who sat beside him on the plane.

An academic who is dying from breast cancer and high on morphine reflects on her sense of failure in her lifelong pursuit of artistic brilliance. She decides her failing body has become her great work of art.

An older man meets with various friends and his ex-wife in New York City, where he has come after his fourth wife runs off with a poet.

A college student becomes infatuated with a classmate who is engaged to her long-distance-boyfriend. The romantic rollercoaster affects the ways he sees the world for years to come.