"'I'll see if anybody's home,'" says the nameless boy in "Why don't You Dance?," the first short story of Raymond Carver's masterful collection [What We Talk About When We Talk About Love]. The boy and his girlfriend, who are furnishing their first apartment, have happened upon an odd yard-sale in which the contents of the house have been reassembled on the lawn exactly as they stood inside. An extension cord even allows the blender, television, and lamps to keep on whizzing and glowing in the twilight. "'Whatever they ask, offer ten dollars less,'" the girl advises. "'… they must be desperate or something.'" She is wrong only in using the plural pronoun. All the occupants of Carver's houses are desperately alone, whether or not they are living with each other.

Apparently the enigmatic man who lives in this house has been left by someone, and...