Life of My Life is the tale of young Salvator Cavriaghi, a Sicilian-American butcher living in Oakland, California, who, though he did not plan it this way, falls in love with one Anna Toscana, the daughter of two people Salvator''s father quite simply does not like. Unfortunately for Salvator, it would seem Anna doesn''t like him either . . . even when he starts to sing ancient Italian love poetry to her in an Italian operatic accent. Oh, but how he perseveres . . . Hi everyone: Thanks for taking the time to take a look at LIFE OF MY LIFE. I hope you enjoy it! Best, Vincent Cardinale Vincent Cardinale was born and raised in Oakland, CA, and now lives with his wife and children in western New York. Here are the first three paragraphs of LIFE OF MY LIFE . . . Everything began to unravel when he stepped from the cold-storage with a hindquarter of beef balanced on his right shoulder and a cloud of frozen air swirling at his feet. He steadied the meat with his right hand and turned and latched the door with his left. He extended his left arm out from his side for balance, paused a moment to thank the beef for cooling him off on this blistering Oakland day, then looked, as he always did at this point, to the front of the shop, towards the counter, to see if any customers needed help. There, surrounded in a heavenly and luminous aurora, stood the most eloquent expression of flesh God s good hand had ever fashioned. The supple arms and tender fingers. The black and braided hair. Eyes so green the Napa Valley foothills must have gone yellow from envy. Donna valente, he thought. Rare woman. For two seconds though not even he knew it Salvator Cavriaghi s heart stopped beating and his lungs, suddenly filled with her sweet scent, refused! to exhale. This is when the beef began to slip. He thought: I must act, I must try to save this meat from falling; I don t want to lose it. So, risking pulled back-muscles, a sprained wrist, even a bruised tailbone, Salvator Cavriaghi, his feet jerking like a tap dancer s, heaved and grunted and wiggled and manipulated his grip, until, by some monumental failure of finesse and speed-prayer, he managed to catapult the hindquarter of beef under his butcher s block in just enough time to fling his arms backwards and minimize the embarrassment of his fall. The meat hit the floor with a loud thwack! and, slick with fat and frost, slid under and past his block and crashed into the legs, eight feet away, of his father s old roll-top desk. Salvator closed his eyes for one second, shook his head, stood, pulled in a breath and held it. Love, armed in a full battle sun dress, pearl skin, and God help him perky breasts, had just entered the store and acted. He exhaled, flicked his hands down the front of his smock, then glanced over towards his father s other two employees. Paulo was already laughing and shaking his head, downright sinister; Nino was on his way over to offer some help. And his father? Claudio Cavriaghi did not turn around. Salvator could tell by the tightening of his father s neck, the way it cinched up like a yanked knot, that Claudio s level of happiness had just plummeted from its usual plateau of endearing old-fart grumpiness to a widening valley of genuine anger. Claudio wrapped the girl s five pounds of ground sirloin in a paper trough and white butcher paper and handed her the meat. He waved his hand to say no when she handed him the money. Then, in a move never before seen in Cavriaghi s ! Meats, Claudio Cavriaghi acted with a hint of malice towards a customer: he pointed to the door and said, Just get out. In the ten years since Salvator Cavriaghi had been a full-fledged butcher he had never dropped a piece of meat. Never. To do that would violate his father s unspoken promises to his customers: every customer shall be treated with dignity and respect; every customer shall have beautiful, pristine meat. In one day, and in less than two minutes, a singular woman of incomprehensible beauty had precipitated the collapse of these two sacred commandments.