In September my subscription to The New Yorker expired. I didn’t renew it.

I’d been a subscriber for more than 25 years, and I felt that a lapsed subscription, due nothing more than a change in credit card number, deserved a call from Calvin Trillin to make sure everything was okay.

No call came. So I let it lapse.

Eight months passed.

Today I opened my mailbox to find the May 4, 2020 issue waiting for me, with a label indicating expiration a year hence.

It was not outside the realm of possibility that I had inadvertently renewed the subscription: I haven’t been 100% myself for some time; who knows what I get up to in my dark midnights.

I called The New Yorker.

I talked to the friendliest person I’ve ever talked to on the phone. Way better than Calvin Trillin.

She looked up my record.

“You’ve received a gift subscription!”, she exclaimed.

“From whom?”, I asked, surprised.

“All it says in the system is ‘a friend’,” she replied.

“Isn’t it nice when that happens: you’ll always be wondering…”, she added.

“Indeed I will,” I chuckled.

We said hearty goodbyes, better-than-Calvin-Trillin clerk and I.

Whoever you may be, friend, þúsund takk.