The man tells the young woman to put a record on, and, when the music begins, asks the couple to dance.

He says his kids were crazy and so was his wife, Myrna, who eventually fell for another man named Ross whom she met at Alcoholics Anonymous.

He remembers how his father died and suggests to Myrna that they "hug awhile" and have a "real nice supper," and she responds somewhat lukewarmly.

Set in a roomy upstairs suite, motel managers Holly & Duane discuss the disintegration of their marriage.

She realizes it's the open gate, and hesitantly she goes to the kitchen to smoke for a while before going out to investigate, leaving her alcoholic husband Cliff "passed out" and snoring loudly in bed.

At the fence, Nancy meets her neighbor Sam, a widower, who is spreading insecticide to kill slugs which are ruining his garden.

Les, a textbook salesman, reflects back a year ago on an incident where he met up with his father in a Sacramento airport.

"The Bath" is a predecessor of "A Small, Good Thing," one of Carver's most famous stories, which was published in Cathedral.

It is much shorter than "A Small, Good Thing" and ends on an ambiguous note as Scotty's mother goes home from the hospital to take a bath, which is where this version of the story gets its name.

Two close childhood friends, identified by the author as Bill Jamison & Jerry Roberts, are out of school and have married.

They pull up to the women and Bill introduces himself and Jerry, but the girls, named Barbara and Sharon, seem completely uninterested.

James and Edith Packer, an elderly couple, go out for the night to play bingo at the local community center.

That night as the Packers are getting ready for bed, Edith reveals to James that she's been "bleeding" and "spotting," and she'll require medical attention.

As she is having breakfast, Claire, is shocked to learn that her husband, Stuart, and his three buddies found the body of a girl washed up on the rivershore upon arriving in the afternoon for their yearly camping trip, as reported by the morning newspaper that day.

Later, after the body is identified and Stuart is at work, Claire reads the funeral plans in the newspaper and decides to attend.

As he reaches for her breasts, she hears water running in the sink and is reminded of the girl floating in the river.

The story ends with Dummy murdering his wife and committing suicide by drowning in his beloved pond.

On Boxing Day, Burt comes back to his wife's house to try and explain away his poor behavior from the night before.

On his way out to make room for Vera's boyfriend Charlie, Burt finds it appropriate to steal six pies from the kitchen counter left unattended.

Burt leaves calmly and, as he drives away in his car holding their ashtray, he is deludedly convinced that in a few weeks they'll have a "serious talk" and get back together.

The protagonist is seen first packing a suitcase, all the while a woman swears at him and yells loudly, glad that he's finally leaving her.

The story ends with the man and the woman pulling tremendously on the baby, with somewhat ambiguously grim and dark possibilities.

Soon afterward, Mel begins a story about an elderly couple struck by a drunk driver, a teenager who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mel's point in telling the story is the husband's consternation when the couple was moved into the intensive care unit.

Mel strays from the topic with more talk about Ed, his personal thoughts about love, hatred toward his ex-wife, and life as a knight.

Carver's original draft, released by his widow Tess Gallagher and published[4] in a December 2007 issue of the New Yorker, reveals the extensive edits.

In Carver's original version, the two had separate rooms, which caused them to pine for each other and eventually led to a scene when they met again.

Lish removed all of this, rewrote the couple into the same room, but in body casts that prevented them from seeing each other, and then explained the old man's distress thus: "I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything.

There was some contention between Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish over several stories in the collection; the author complained about the "surgical amputation and transplant that might make them someway fit into the carton so the lid will close.

[5] These original versions eventually appeared in Beginners, published by Jonathan Cape in 2009, and in the Library of America volume Collected Stories.