While in Istanbul, a lonely middle-aged scholar encounters a djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.

Three sailors have a 24-hour shore leave to enjoy New York. They are especially concerned with the female inhabitants of the city, and each finds his own to cuddle up with. Chip tries but can't resist the advances of a cab driver, Ozzie gladly fills the role of a lovely anthropologist's "prehistoric man," and Gabey finds the model who poses for the Miss Turnstiles advertisements, who isn't quite the glamorous celebrity he envisioned.

In this chronicle of San Francisco in the 1970s, the carefree chaos revolves around the funky old apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane where landlady Anna Madrigal welcomes tenants by taping homegrown joints to their doors and presides over their lives with an almost maternal affection.

The story takes place at the opening of a new century, one that held forth all kinds of promises, especially for women. In this post-Victorian Fifth Avenue milieu, Lily Bart, an unmarried woman of 29 with dwindling prospects, needs a husband badly. She lives beyond her means, relying on the grudging charity of her elderly aunt. She is the kind of girl who would make an admirable decoration on some fine gentleman's arm, but there is a liveliness--a...