From the dining room to the board room, Karl Milton could never shake his rival, Caldwell Van Buren …

Karl straightened his clip-on black bow tie, the worst part of the restaurant’s absurd uniform, and walked beneath the wind torn green awning with Wilshire’s emblazoned in antiquated script across the front, not so eagerly anticipating his first day on the job.  Neil Diamond’s “Love on the Rocks”, a favorite among the elderly matrons in baggy flower-printed sundresses who frequented the patio, blared from tinny speakers in the high corners of the two-story wall between the patio and the restaurant proper.  Windows ten feet tall stretched from one end of the white painted brick wall to the other, affording a peek inside where the echo of nineteenth century elegance lingered in the dining room’s crystal chandeliers, sunken parquet dance floor and stylized molding.  Across the square from the patio, an orange and white RTA train clattered westward towards downtown Cleveland.

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