A man tries to determine the cost of a passionate but brief love affair, and his calculations lead him to a solemn but hopeful realization.

A Russian girl looks forward to occasional visits by her mother's best friend. When the friend soon plans to visit with her new deaf and blind lover, feelings of scandal, anxiety, and curiosity emerge in the girl's family.

A group of people at a bar discuss their experiences with an eccentric and impulsive boy as they anticipate his arrival.

When a graduate student makes his way to Colorado with his recently unemployed girlfriend to visit his married friends, an alarming development in his friends’ marriage causes him to reevaluate his own relationship and, in the process, make a grave mistake.

A young writer attends a writer's workshop where she begins a relationship with an author whose books she loves. But after they move in together, she finds that his life begins to suffuse every aspect of hers.

After visiting his terminally-ill classmate, a man heads to his 50-year high school reunion in Pennsylvania and reflects on an afternoon that brightened his life back when he was sixteen.

Two female biologists spend a few months in a hotel in the Northeastern United States to research shore life, and whereas one pursues romance with men, the other feels spurned by unrequited love.