by Ron Singer

The point is that George missed the point. Usually not by a lot, but he missed the point. I didn't mind, I was used to it. Julia was, too, but she did mind.

"No, no, George," she would say, her heart-shaped face wearing a look of smiling exasperation. "As usual, you're missing the point." And she would toss her dark shoulder-length hair back, somehow conveying by this gesture a dismissal of George, who, like the tossed hair, was a lightweight.

Was George aware of his point-missing tendency? He was. Experience, presumably, had been his teacher. In most cases he would realize he was missing a point even before Julia could say, "No, no, George."

He would go through a rapid three-step process. First, as realization dawned, anxiety would appear in his eyes. Second, he would become bluff, overly hearty, as he pushed down his own and, he hoped, our awareness of what was happening. Finally, he would spend a lot of energy on smoke screens, such as elaborate segues to new topics. I wouldn't swear to it, but I think he may have come to our place armed with these topics to which he could flee in moments of need.

The benefit of the three-step process was that it pre-empted Julia's "No, no, George." She was not the kind of person to say, "Getting back to the point, George, you missed it." As our frequent dinner guest struggled through Stage Three, she and I would try not to look at each other. After he left, while we cleaned up we would have more or less the same conversation.

"Well," she would say, "he did it again, he missed the point."

"At least he didn't miss it completely."

"Oh? It seems to me you either get a point or you don't." And we would go on disagreeing for several minutes, finally shrugging into a silent huff, each of us sure he/she was right.

After a while I grew tired of these stand-offs, so I abandoned "At least, he didn't miss it completely" in favor of, "What does it matter?" Julia would just give me a look which said "It does matter." And we would leave it at that.

. . .

Does it matter? Or, rather, did it? About a year ago, George's bank transferred him to Chicago, where missing the point must matter more or less than, or about the same as, it does in New York. We have only seen him once since then, and I have the feeling we may not see him again. The best way to resolve these abstract questions is through examples. Of course, the short answer is "sometimes" or "it depends": no single example can be said to constitute real proof, only "anecdotal evidence." What's more, even though I think I have a good example, it supports Julia's position.

It comes from around the middle of the two-year period before the transfer, during which Bachelor George was invited to dinner on average of once every three months by Old College Chum John (although I hardly knew him back then), and John's Clever Wife Julia. We were discussing politics: specifically, whether we would support the President's rumored plan to invade Iraq in the name of the "War against Terrorism." Speaking as if there were at least ten people at the table, George was lecturing us on our duty.

"You have to support your country at a time like this," he said, waving his fork in the air. "It's everyone's duty to be patriotic."

"Patriotic, yes, I agree. But nationalistic, not necessarily." Julia made this distinction with the polite little smile she puts on and off in the presence of people like George.

"What!" he said. "What are you talking about? There's absolutely no difference."

"George Orwell thought there was," she ventured. "Your namesake? Or are you his namesake? I can never remember which way it goes. Can it go both ways, John?"

"George would be Orwell's namesake," I said, "but only if he was named after him intentionally. Were you, George?" He was not, of course. Julia could miss a point, too, thank God, or at least she did not know everything.

George stuck to the point he was missing. "Orwell was neither a patriot nor a nationalist," he unwisely proclaimed. "He was a Socialist."

Julia's mouth opened, but she thought better of it and instead pushed her glasses back up on her nose. "Whatever," she said. "Pass the rice, please, John."

Anyone who knows anything about George Orwell, besides the fact that he wrote one book killing Communism and another predicting a global nightmare, knows that throughout his short eventful life and equally eventful political evolution the Burmese policeman remained a zealous patriot. Did it matter that our George was unaware of both Orwell's patriotism and the distinction between patriotism and nationalism? Would George okay a bank loan, say, to some xenophobic scoundrel whom he regarded as a patriot? Of course, if everyone thought nationalism and patriotism were the same thing, that would matter a lot.

An interesting feature of this example is that it ended with neither "No, no, George" nor the three-step process. The anomalous ending --Julia's dropping the subject-- possibly underscores the seriousness of the missed point. So I am forced to repeat that my example supports Julia's position, not mine. I should have chosen a more trivial example.

Even after our George was transferred to the Windy City, he remained a source of amusement --in my case guilty amusement, in hers, I'm not sure. Within a few weeks we had invented the term "Georgism," the meaning of which can easily be inferred.

George was transferred in September. On December 11th, he e-mailed me to say that he would be back in town after Christmas and would like us to be his dinner guests at a chic new fusion restaurant on lower Madison Avenue about which he had read a rave on a Foodie website. We had read a rave, too, in the Times.

"What do you say, Jewel?" I asked, fingers poised at the keyboard. "The 28th? We're free."

"Why not? Sure. It will reduce his dinner ohn." Excuse me for mentioning that ohn is a mixture of debt and moral obligation in Japanese culture. Julia was seated about eight feet to my left in the living room watching "L.A. Law" (or, as she calls it, "La La Law") without the sound. "Give George my love," she added.

Not to sensationalize the ordinary, but as the evening of the dinner approached a feeling redolent of vampirism arose in me: I was looking forward to at least two or three Georgisms.

"You're a naughty boy, Johnny," she said when I confessed, and the naughty way she said it assured me that she shared the predatory impulse. We have been married six-and-a-half years. To say we are becoming similar would be a cliché or, if you like, a truism, yet it might not miss the point --at least not completely. In the event, however, our predatory impulse was thwarted.

The 28th was the sort of warm evening that used to be rare in December, so Julia and I were not even wearing coats. As we were led by the hostess into the large, loud, swank room (the place had been cleverly carved out of a former bank lobby), George spotted us, half-stood up, and cheerfully waved. George is fat, wears loud ties, sweats, and has a kindly demeanor. He had not visibly changed over the four months.

Greetings, first drinks, initial catching up, and food orders having been taken care of, it was time for George to miss the point. I took the lead. "Well, George, how do you like the Second City?"

"That's a good name for it. But no complaints, so far at least."

"Well," said Julia, "it does have the tallest building in the U.S. of A."

"Especially now," he said. Which was exactly the point. Did I mention that George did not always miss the point?

"But even that can be regarded as a sign of the second rate," she prompted.

"It sure can." He ate a few peanuts. "Cities, people, with low self-esteem, etc. They always have to be Number One: the biggest, richest, meanest, smartest --whatever."

Was that an anomalously clever and caustic dig? at us? He changed the subject, then, asking Julia what was new at the college (community) where she taught (English-as-a-Second Language).

"Oh, just politics-as-usual. A faction in the Department is after the Department Head's head. They think it's time for a woman to have a turn."

"You take turns? Where do you stand on the gender issue?"

"Well, I certainly don't want the job. On the issue? I think I'm a fence-sitter, but if there were two fairly equal candidates I guess I'd go for the woman. What do you think, George?"

He shrugged. "No opinion. John?"

"Agree with Julia."

As the conversation proceeded (the food came, it was good, we ate it), I became aware of a change in George: apart from the little salvo about Number One, he seemed subdued, even guarded. And it would probably be fair to say that he did not say a single thing which blatantly, at least, missed the point.

Something had happened to our friend. The ebullience that had made us like him and made him miss the point so dependably had been tamped down. At first I guessed it might be job-related, but then, almost immediately, I thought of a less congenial explanation: George was being careful because he had fully and finally realized that he needed to be careful --with us. And rightly or not, I felt guilty for having participated to whatever extent in the lowering of this man's naturally high spirits: I felt small-minded.

Julia seemed to share the feeling. "Hey, George," she said as we picked at our desserts, "you seem different ... quieter. What, have they made you a Vice President or something? 'Weary the head...' and all that?"

He toyed with his cake, parsing it with his fork. "No, not really," he shrugged.

"People just change as they grow older," I suggested, then segued into an amusing anecdote about an amusing memory lapse recently suffered by my amusing seventy-eight year old uncle.

The dinner having ended, there was a ritual scuffle over the bill. We let him pay, of course, then thanked him several times and made some noises about getting together again. Out on the sidewalk, George announced his intention to walk back to his midtown hotel; Julia and I would head south to our apartment. Halfway down the block, just as he did, we turned around. We waved to him, and he held his hand up stiffly in a way that reminded me of a cigar-store Indian: "How!"

By the time we got home, it was a little after ten. While Julia took a shower I stayed in the kitchen finishing the paper. When I came into the bedroom, she was standing in front of the full-length mirror wearing only her small black-rimmed glasses. Turning this way and that, she was scrutinizing her body.

For the hundredth time I did a little evaluation of my own. Jewel is a delectable nude: lovely skin, a little full in the hips and thighs, but large, round breasts, so that the whole form is in fine proportion.

"Well, John," she said, with her ironic little smile. "Be honest! Am I the most beautiful woman you've ever seen?"

"Yes," I lied. "Pass, with High Honors."

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