Finally satisfied with the quality of the cuts, he took a roller stamp and smacked purple United States Department of Agriculture insignias all over the cut-up carcass.
Two weeks later, Vinnie Angus left his wood-paneled, windowless office in the basement of his split-level home in Woodbridge, Connecticut, and got into his Monte Carlo sedan, the one he hoped he still had the good taste to hate.
His wife had harangued him into buying it to show their neighbors the higher status they had achieved by opening the second Vinnie's Steak House in Milford, just before the West Haven town line.
Before the Monte Carlo, there had been the swimming pool and the split-rail fencing all around their home and a gigantic station wagon and professional landscaping. All for status.
"What is this status thing that keeps eating at you?" Vinnie asked his wife. "Status? I sell steaks and hamburgers."
"Stop it, Vincent," his wife said. Her mouth puckered up. "You make it sound as if you were running McDonald's."
"If I was really making it, I'd be McDonald's. I'm not that good, so I run Vinnie's Steak House. So come off all this status thing, will you. I'm not made out of money."
"Is it that you don't have it, or you just don't wish to spend it on me and the girls? You always seem to have enough money for what you want, though. Those hunting trips. I've never heard you put one oif because you didn't have the money."
"It costs me a tank of gas to go hunting, for Christ's sakes. What do you spend hunting?" asked Vinnie.
"Not much more than you spend around here on us, I guess," his wife said, her voice biting.
"Ah, stuff it. Buy what you want," Vinnie said. And she had. And the latest was this pussy car Monte Carlo that he hated.
His mood improved as he drove away from the house. He could mock his wife's insistence on status, but Vinnie Angus had come a long way from dishwasher in a greasy spoon in South Boston, where success meant not getting killed by getting in between the blacks and the Irish who kept trying to murder each other.