His good mood went as fast as it had come.
What had it all gotten him? A too-big house with a too-big mortgage. A wife who covered her age with so much makeup that he had not seen the skin of her face in 10 years. A pair of daughters who were God's gifts to the orthodontics profession. And this gas-guzzling pussy car that he hated.
He had two restaurants, both successful, but the government and rising prices took out the money faster than his customers could put it in. Yet what else could he do but keep doing what he had always done? A failure, it occurred to him, could stop anywhere and start over, but a success was doomed to ride on the back of the tiger forever.
Vinnie Angus turned onto the Post Road and moved north, past the garbage antique shops, the railroad salvage stores, the tacky shoe stores, all the colored lights, the sparkling signs, the neon, the plastic, and turned left into his parking lot.
The warm gray-brown of his exterior wood visually softened the area. The muted lights glowing through the thick dark-yellow drapes gave the restaurant a glow even in the daytime.
When Vinnie Angus entered the restaurant, he forgot his problems. He was in another world, a world of his own creating.
Sitting on a crate in the simple cement block kitchen was his cook.
"It in yet?" Vinnie asked.
"Yeah," the cook said. "Just this morning."
The man got up and moved past Vinnie to the floor-to-ceiling refrigerator. He pulled out a slab of flank steak, sliced away at the outlying fat, poked it professionally a few times with a large two-pronged fork, then slapped it on the grill.
"Easy, you sucker," the cook said. He always talked to his meat.
"I'll be at the bar," Vinnie said.
Vinnie sat at the bar telling the bartender how he kept trying to teach grill jockeys that a good piece of meat was like a good whore. Slap her around a little and she'll get nice and soft for you. But beat the hell out of her and she'll be tough as nails.
"I hear you talking," said the bartender and poured another beer.
Twelve minutes later, the cook was out of the kitchen with a brown stoneware plate with beige trim clutched in a towel in his hand. Sitting in the middle of the dish was a dark, sparkling hunk of prime steak.
Vinnie cut into it, exposing a grey-orange plateau that seemed to suck at the blade of the knife.
"Nice," Vinnie commented. "Texture's good."
He sliced crossways with the serrated edge of the knife, then harpooned a piece with a thick silver fork the bartender laid in front of him. Vinnie plopped it into his mouth, ran his tongue across the outside for any sign of charcoal, then bit down.
The meat seemed to make way for his teeth until he got to the other side where, along the edge, it became tough and tinny for a microsecond, then seemed to melt and dissolve down his throat.
Except for that split second, it was the best flank steak Vinnie Angus had ever tasted. He finished it in seven big bites.
"There you go, sucker," said the cook to the empty plate on the way back to the kitchen. And Vinnie Angus went to his office to complain to Peter Matthew O'Donnell about the tinny taste around the government's USDA insignia.
"It's like eating goddam solder," Vinnie roared into the telephone.
"Easy, Big Vin. Easy. I'll light a fire under the ass of those Texas bastards. It won't happen again."
"Okay," said Vinnie Angus.
The Anguses has tuna casserole that night. Vinnie poked at three noodles, excused himself, then went upstairs to pack for his hunting trip the next day.
"Can hardly wait, can you?" said his wife in a tone somewhere between snide and shrill, from the other end of the table.
"Now, now," said Vinnie with practiced patience. He winked at his daughters as he disappeared out of the room.
Behind him he heard Rebecca, his younger daughter, say: "Do I have to? Daddy didn't."
"You want to look like him when you grow up? Eat," said Mrs. Angus.
And his older daughter, Victoria, said sharply, "Stop it, mother." He could hear her chair push back from the table.
Vinnie, Angus sat down on the hard, thick wooden chair in his stuffy study. The chair creaked uncomfortably under the 20 pounds he had put on in the last five years.
He looked at his trophies and guns and looked forward to tomorrow. His throat would be scraped raw by the cold morning air. His breath would come in huge noisy gasps. His arms would grow tired from holding his twelve-gauge shotgun. His legs would ache by mid-morning. And he would love it. When he hunted, he was alone with himself, young again.
All he had to do now was to saddle soap his Timberline boots, make a lunch, pack his equipment, set his alarm clock for 4 a.m. and…
He remembered one more thing he had to do. His monthly call.
He had been making them for eleven years, back since the time when the first Vinnie's Steak House had just opened and was floundering. The rich college kids had not yet discovered it and the visiting businessmen had not known it was there. Angus was desperate for money and the banks were not listening.
Then a Massachusetts friend had told him about a number he could call just to give information on the latest developments in the American meat industry. And Vinnie would get money for it.
By then, Vinnie would have separated his mother into cold cuts for cash, so he called.
A recorded voice told him to talk so he did, rambling on for 10 minutes on prices, stock, supply, preparation, control, and service. The recording asked him if he was finished, after a 10-second silence, then thanked him. Three days later in his mailbox, Vinnie found a postal money order for $500. With no return address.
When he tried calling back, the recording told him to return his call on the first of the month. And for 11 years, on the first of every month, Vinnie Angus called the number and rambled for cash.
He wasn't sure that he liked it but the 66,000 tax free dollars he was sure he liked. And what law could he be breaking?
Vinnie picked up the telephone, dialed the area code and seven-digit number, stuck the receiver between his jaw and shoulder, then started picking apart and cleaning his .9 mm sharpshooter's rifle.
The line rang twice before Vinnie heard a series of tonal clicks and then a monotone female voice said: "State name, address, zip code, and information please."
Vinnie was so anxious to get it over with that he did not recognize one more soft click as the upstairs extension phone was lifted.
"Supply has been steady," he said, "but it tapers off in different areas each month. This month it's shank. The quality of the meat itself is the best in years, so I'm expecting a price rise pretty soon.
"I've bitched to my distributor about the USDA markings being darker and deeper than usual. Today I bit into one and it was like eating tinfoil. We have to cut a little more of the fat to insure it all coming out."
Vinnie kept talking until he began to hear another conversation going on dimly in the background. At first he thought it was just a telephone echo, but then he was able to distinguish what was being said.
"Spock. This is no time for logic."
"Doctor. There is always time for logic."
"Are you saying, Mr. Spock, that Jim is lost out there somewhere and we are powerless to do anything about it?"
"It is a big galaxy, doctor."
Vinnie Angus quickly finished up. The recording thanked him, there were another series of clicks and the extension was broken.
"Viki?" he exploded. "Is that you?"
Far in the distance, he heard Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise answer: "Warp Factor Eight. Now!"
"Viki? Are you there?"
His oldest daughter answered over the extension from upstairs. "Yes, Daddy. Who you talking to?"