Two months later, Sifkitz got a package.
It was waiting for him in the lobby of his building when he got back from having
dinner with his agent (Sifkitz had fish and steamed vegetables, but followed it with a
crème brûlée). There was no postage on it, no Federal Express, Airborne Express, or
UPS logo, no stamps. Just his name, printed in ragged block letters: RICHARD
SIFKITZ. That’s a man who’d have to print CAT underneath his drawing of one, he
thought, and had no idea at all why he’d thought it. He took the box upstairs and used
an X-Acto knife from his work-table to slice it open. Inside, beneath a big wad of
tissue paper, was a brand-new gimme cap, the kind with the plastic adjustable band in
back. The tag inside read Made In Bangladesh. Printed above the bill in a dark red
that made him think of arterial blood was one word: LIPID.
“What’s that?” he asked the empty studio, turning the cap over and over in his hands.
“Some kind of blood component, isn’t it?”
He tried the hat on. At first it was too small, but when he adjusted the band at the back,
the fit was perfect. He looked at it in his bedroom mirror and still didn’t quite like it.
He took it off, bent the bill into a curve, and tried it again. Now it was almost right. It
would look better still when he got out of his going-to-lunch clothes and into a pair of
paint-splattered jeans. He’d look like a real working stiff…which he was, in spite of
what some people might think.
Wearing the LIPID cap while he painted eventually became a habit with him, like
allowing himself seconds on days of the week that started with S, and having pie a la
mode at Dugan’s on Thursday nights. Despite whatever the Hindu philosophy might
be, Richard Sifkitz believed you only went around once. That being the case, maybe
you should allow yourself a little bit of everything.