Vosper Lupine wore a potter’s smock and a necktie with a scout’s cinch-knot, too-tight shoes and a yardman’s cap. He had a staff infection, red blotches and yellow-blue bruising and hip dysphasia, as he spoke through a trumpet hole in his pelvis, just below his navel and to the right of a benign mole. The day he lost his yardman’s cap was a Sunday, December 10th nineteen-43, a rainy, sleety day, a day even a yardman wouldn’t care to be out in. He remembered having the cap on his head when he left home at seven-30 that morning, but has no recollection of when or how he lost his cap. He took his usual breakfast at the nine-15 diner, a bowel of Rice Crispies, wheat toast, a glass of grapefruit juice and two cups of black coffee, no sugar. He remembers leaving the diner at exactly eight-23, his hat still on his head, and making it to work for 8-thirty, give or take a few seconds, as his leg was bothering him. Up to that point, and until he lost his cap, he has no recollection of either having his cap on his head, or not. He posted flyers to that effect and hoped for the best. He died at two-37am on a Wednesday, the third of January, not from a staff infection or a malignancy, but when the trumpet hole in his pelvis clogged up with spittle, cutting off blood-flow in the femoral vein.
