Five-forty-eight / John Cheever -- Distant music / Ann Beattie -- Sailor off the Bremen / Irwin Shaw -- Physics / Tama Janowitz -- Whore of Mensa / Woody Allen -- What it was like, seeing Chris / Deborah Eisenberg -- Drawing Room B / John O'Hara -- A sentimental journey / Peter Taylor -- Balloon / Donald Barthelme -- Smart money / Philip Roth -- Another marvellous thing / Laurie Colwin -- Failure / Jonathan Franzen -- Apartment hotel / Sally Benson -- Midair / Frank Conroy -- Catbird seat / James Thurber -- Snowing in Greenwich Village / John Updike -- I see you, Bianca / Maeve Brennan -- You're ugly, too / Lorrie Moore -- Symbols and signs / Vladimir Nabokov -- Poor visitor / Jamaica Kincaid -- In Greenwich, there are many gravelled walks / Hortense Calisher -- Some nights when nothing happens are the best nights in this place / John McNulty -- Slight rebellion off Madison / J.D. Salinger -- Brownstone / Renata Adler -- Cafeteria / Isaac Bashevis Singer -- Partners / Veronica Geng -- Evolution of knowledge / Niccolo Tucci -- Way we live now / Susan Sontag -- Do the windows open? / Julie Hecht -- Mentocrats / Edward Newhouse -- Treatment / Daniel Menaker -- Arrangement in black and white / Dorothy Parker -- Carlyle tries polygamy / William Melvin Kelley -- Children are bored on Sunday / Jean Stafford -- Notes from a bottle / James Stevenson -- Man in the middle of the ocean / Daniel Fuchs -- Mespoulets of the splendide / Ludwig Bemelmans -- Over by the river / William Maxwell -- Baster / Jeffrey Eugenides -- Second tree from the corner / E.B. White -- Rembrandt's hat / Bernard Malamud -- Shot : a New York story / Elizabeth Hardwick -- A father-to-be / Saul Bellow -- Farewell, my lovely appetizer / S.J. Perelman