"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.