He now lifted a one-pound piece of rib-eye steak from the refrigerator and unwrapped the thick white waxed paper. He himself had been responsible for this perfectly sized and edged piece. Every month or so, Swann would buy a half side of beef, which was kept in a cold-storage meat facility for people like him—amateur butchers. He would reserve a whole glorious day to slice the meat from the bones, shape it into sirloin, short ribs, rump, chuck, flank, brisket.

Some people who bought in bulk enjoyed brains, intestines, stomach and other organ meats. But those cuts didn’t appeal to him and he discarded them. There was nothing morally or emotionally troubling about those portions of an animal; for Swann flesh was flesh. It was merely a question of flavor. Who didn’t love sweetbreads, crisply sautéed? But most offal tended to be bitter and was more trouble than it was worth. Kidneys, for instance, stank up your kitchen for days and brains were overly rich and tasteless (and jam-packed with cholesterol). No, Swann’s time at the two-hundred-pound butcher block, robed in a full apron, wielding saw and knife, was spent excising the classic cuts, working to achieve perfectly shaped specimens while leaving as little on the bone as he possibly could. This was an art, a sport.

This comforted him.

My little butcher man…

Now he set his rib eye on a cutting board—always wood, to save his knives’ edges—and ran his fingers over the meat, sensing the tautness of the flesh, examining the grain, the marbling of the fat.

Before slicing, however, he washed and re-edged the Kai Shun on his Dan’s Black Hard Arkansas whetstone, which cost nearly as much as the knife itself and was the best sharpening device on the planet. When he’d been sitting atop Annette, he’d moved from tongue to finger, and the blade had an unfortunate encounter with bone. It now needed to be honed back to perfection.

Finally, the knife was ready and he turned back to the steak, slowly slicing the piece into quarter-inch cubes.

He could have made them bigger and he could have worked faster.

But why rush something you enjoy?

When he was done he dusted the cubes in a mixture of sage and flour (his contribution to the classic recipe) and sautéed them in a cast-iron skillet, scooping them aside while still internally pink. He then diced two red potatoes and half a Vidalia onion. These vegetables he cooked in oil in the skillet and returned the meat. He mixed in a bit of veal stock and chopped Italian parsley and set the pan under the broiler to crisp the top.