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.