Vito Spatfore's lost weight. No more manicotti, steamy saucy red and heavy on his plate. No more melting mozzarell, oozing creamy white. No more meat. No meat, only baby carrots, slimy and bland as tap water in their plastic bag. Vito cracks a carrot open with his two front teeth, carrot carrot carrot. Everyone is complimenting him -- so trim so fit you look so good. He's good. He's being good. He's a good worker (mob boss Tony said so), good earner, good husbandfather, good man, good boy being so good with his baby carrots.

Can you blame him for once being fat? His job was to sit and watch a construction site where nothing got built, a lot of red dirt in New Jersey where muscled men moved bricks and splintered wood back and forth and back and forth in the screaming summer sun and so Vito sat for days in plastic chairs with his mob brothers and licked the sweet sludge off his Dunkin Donuts and watched and watched the muscled men, wet with sweat, biceps-triceps straining against the stolen planks of wood, heaving huffing grunting. Vito's tongue would lick loose gobs of frosting still stuck on his lips. That's the thing about hunger, the hole that's never filled, the more you feed it, the emptier it gets.

Vito watched the site's security guard, too, and then Vito found himself wedged against a car's front seat, his lips stuffed with another man. The security guard's salt dripped in Vito's eyes, his hair in Vito's teeth, it tasted so good, a craving satisfied. But then, a spying witness to the ecstasy, pale beautiful birdboy with long hair and mob boss Tony's daughter pledged to him in marriage, the birdboy saw it all. Vito threatened birdboy: you tell Tony and you die. Threatening other men with a fist and a gun -- that's all Vito's good for anyway.

So Vito's being good now. At dinnertime's desert, his wife feeds sticky sugary tiramisu to their guests and Vito swallows slick bland slices of cantaloupe. He's being so good.

But when night oozes milk-black into his window, Vito, charmed by the moon, climbs out the house and into the driver's seat, where he has a spare of clothes, a policeman's leather cap and a black latex collar that sits so tight against the throat, and then he's at the club, hungry eyes on men with so little clothes and so much hair and finally his greedy fingers touch meat again and he feels something like happiness and then, and then, he's spotted by a colleague in his business of blood and violence, and there's no hiding, and so, Vito runs.

He packs: his three nicest shirts, ten thousand dollars in crumpled cash, a framed photo of his kids, a gun. He's driving away forever. The windshield smears with sudden rain. The night-black woods swallow his car. In his lap, white styrofoam smeared with sauce. With teeth alone, he strips a smoked rib bare. The sauce soaks his good shirt, plops on his wheel. It tastes so good. He's driving north. Tomorrow, he'll be in some small and quaint coastal town in a quiet bed and breakfast. Tomorrow, he'll go to a diner, where a beautiful man with a beautiful mustache will make him pillowed stacks of pancakes. Tomorrow, he'll go to the antique store and hold with gentle hands the most delicate blue-green vase he's ever seen and the man behind the counter (who smells like smoke and roses) will watch him, will tell him he's got a good eye, will tell him that in that whole damn store, Vito Spatafore immediately picked up the loveliest and most expensive thing.