Summary

In “For a Good Time, Call,” a woman begins receiving calls from men asking for a woman named Gail. The woman is not Gail, and she guesses that Gail must be a woman giving out the phone number to men she does not wish to see again. One day, the woman answers one of these calls and does not deny being Gail. She says that she and the man should meet in person. The man is divorced and is about a decade older than her. He sees that the woman is not Gail, but they talk anyway. They bond over their mutual loneliness. They eventually go back to the woman’s apartment and share a kiss.

The next story is entitled “Nakano Takeko is Fatally Shot, Japan, 1868.” Nakano is a woman and a rebel against...