"MY MENU. OKAY, GIVE ME the damn menu."

Sid opened it and stared.

"It's in French."

The angel brushed a crumb from her satin sleeve.

"Exactly."

"I don't read French."

"Exactly."

"So it's meaningless to... Oh."

"You see, Sid. Meaning is alway meaning to someone. The menu isn't "meaningful" or "meaningless" on it's own. It's meaningful to someone who speaks French, but meaningless to you. There's no such thing as 'meaning in general'—only meaning to a specific person."

"So you're saying..."

"I'm saying that the same is true for the kind of meaning you've been searching for your entire life. You keep wishing there were some pie-in-the-sky 'Meaning' in general, with a capital 'M', that stands on it's own, but you've missed the point."

"I've missed the preposition."

"Exactly."

She pulled out a kind of comb, lifted a wing over her left shoulder, and began to groom it.

"You've been right, in a way. There is no capital-M 'Meaning', but not because the universe is flawed. There's no meaning of that kind, because that's not the way meaning works. There's no capital-M meaning because meaning is always meaning to someone—someone in particular."

The waiter shrugged and went away.

Sid stared at his water glass, lost in thought.

The angel continued.

"Sid, remember when you first met Jessica?"

"Yeah. She was so... so beautiful, so bright, so kind..."

"And that meant nothing to you?"

He laughed and shook his head.

"Nothing? It meant everything."

"And when Simon was born?"

"Yes, of course. And before you ask, the grandchildren, and my first play, and our wedding day..."

"What about the night that Bud was in the hospital, and you drove through two states to get Ellie and bring her down? Did you find that 'meaningful'?"

"Okay..."

"Do you think it was meaningful to Ellie? To Bud?"

"Of course it was."

"Or when Bud showed up at your wedding, after not speaking to you all those years..."

"I get it."

"What about that homeless guy you bought a hamburger for, this morning? Or your grandson's school play last week, or the mockingbird's song outside your bedroom window, or taking Jessica to Paris, or..."

"I told you. I get it."

"Your entire life you thought meaning was missing. But all that was missing was..."

"A preposition."

"Exactly."

"So you're saying my whole philosophy, all that angst, was based on..."

The angel nodded.

"A gramatical error."