He had watched and learned and saved his money, then made the jump to his own restaurant in New Haven. Everyone said that a good steakhouse could not be successful in a college town. Vinnie had made it work. He got the restaurant rolling and married the cute, leggy Jewish chick behind the cash register and moved into the suburbs.

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."