You’re in a generic parking lot next to a generic office building. The A/C is cranked up but it’s otherwise quiet in the car as you peruse The New Yorker magazine from April 2006, brazenly flouting Big Calendar’s insistence that it is currently May 2026.

Turning to the index, you close your eyes and jab an index finger onto the page, allowing fate to choose: A book review of Everyman, by Philip Roth.

Not exactly being an admirer of Mr. Roth’s work, immediately you want a do-over but do not take it because, you remind yourself, it’s your own fault for subscribing to The New Yorker year in and year out even though everybody knows it’s a magazine of, by and for East Coast Elites and their far-flung snobbish ilk.

Besides – subscribed for more than 20 years and now you suddenly can’t abide the existence of Philip Roth? No. A do-over would be intellectually dishonest and, if nothing else, good sportsmanship requires that you consider Everyman.

But first, for some reason it suddenly seems vitally important that you get to the bottom of just exactly why it is that you patronize such an icon of limousine liberalism and echo-chamber privilege as The New Yorker.

You, self-professed person of the people, tireless champion of the downtrodden and the woebegone.

You, proud public school graduate and unapologetic former food-stamp recipient.

You, who on general principle automatically dislike and distrust anyone who acts/looks/talks like they stepped out of a Nancy Meyers movie. [Excuse me: Nancy Meyers film.]

You, who believe that anyone who owns more than two pairs of shoes is just showing off.

What explains your decades-long subscription to The New Yorker?

A few possibilities:

• really good tote bag free with subscription
• “…and your enemies closer”
• weirdly gratifying secret feeling of superiority over anyone who finds reliably unfunny* New Yorker cartoons amusing, since an actual sense of humor is obviously way more impressive than a house in the Hamptons or summers on the Vineyard
• Charles Simic might show up
• Creme de la Creme of pedantic-academic Letters to the Editor

Just as you’re thinking the answer is probably D) all of the above, a car door slams. Looking toward the noise, you see a man and boy next to a large, sleek SUV at the other side of the lot. Watching as they approach the sidewalk and head toward the building, you think the man seems in a hurry but the boy not so much.

The man looks to be in his mid- to late-40’s. He is wearing beautifully tailored clothes and an expensive haircut, carrying a briefcase. The boy appears maybe 8 years old and walks several paces behind the man.

(You know that movie trope where some slick guy with places to go and people to see who doesn’t have time to babysit some snotnosed kid, goddammit!, aggressively walks down the street and a ragtag little kid who barely knows Mr. Slick but has been placed in his care for some tortuously contrived reason jog-run-walks behind the fast-moving Mr. Slick, struggling to keep up? This is kind of and also nothing like that.)

Your kid – not literally, you know, your kid but, you know, “your” kid – keeps up pretty well with Briefcase guy, which you guess means he’ll have to dumb down his keeping-up game if he has a hope in hell of landing the “adorable snotnosed tagalong” role.

As they’re just about to pass directly in front of you, ever so surreptitiously you lower the car windows a few inches. When they’re maybe 10 feet away, the boy says, “Daddy?”

Now that they’re closer, you can see that he’s mini-me doppelganger of the man. Similar fancy haircut and the boy, like the man, is outfitted in fine expensive clothing and shoes. No briefcase, but strapped across the boy’s small chest is an exquisite leather child-sized messenger-style bag.

The boy has barely looked up from the sidewalk since you first spotted them. Now he does glance up. Says again, more loudly: “Dad.” This time a statement, not a question.

The man does not seem to hear, does not break stride. Four, five, six steps. Finally: “Come on, Daniel,” he says. Abruptly he stops and turns toward the boy, who stops too and, you swear, for a split second looks utterly confused.

Now the man extends a hand toward the boy, which you guess clears up the confusion, for now the boy almost, not quite, but almost smiles and sure enough reaches right out and takes the man’s hand.

“What, Danny,” says the man. Statement; not question.

Apples and trees, you think. Apples and trees.

The boy releases the man’s hand, adjusts the strap across his small chest, and asks, “Will you test me?”

Will he ever, you think. Will he ever.

A small notebook is on the passenger seat next to you.
You pick it up and write this.