Firmin by Sam Savage

tepee and dragged on the ground. The bottom edge was rimmed with mud. She had been hanging around for a while, apparently browsing, but I think really just working up the courage to speak. As soon as she had voiced her request - if voiced is the word for her blushing whisper - Norman had spun on his heels and strode confidently back to the shelves of paperback novels, his arm outstretched before him, his thick fingers curling in anticipation. You could almost imagine the book jumping off the shelf into his hand. But this time, you would imagine in vain. This time, the vast cerebral file-and-retrieve system failed to perform. You could almost hear the clunking sound in Norman’s head as the apparatus malfunctioned. No book leaped, no fingers grasped. I watched with growing anxiety as he searched up and down the shelf where it was supposed to be, tapping the rows of books nervously with his forefinger as if counting them, and then ransacking the shelves above and below, his gestures ratcheting from smoothly confident to convulsive and distraught. When finally it was clear to everyone that the book was simply not there, obviously not there, painfully not there, his manly shoulders sagged in defeat.
     
    ‘Well, I thought we had it, but it seems I was mistaken. I am truly sorry.’
     
    He said this to the floor just in front of his feet, unable to look the disappointed customer in the eye. He looked awfully upset, and I could tell he had upset the dwarf as well, who no doubt regretted she had ever asked. Oh, how I longed then to leap from my hiding place, to call out, ‘Here it is, Mr Shine’ - I would be careful to call him ‘Mr Shine’ to his face - ‘I have it over here - it got slipped in with the cookbooks.’ Astonished, he would stammer, ‘B-but how did you know that?’ And I would say, ‘Pembroke Books is more than just a business to me, sir - it is my home.’ He would be terrifically impressed, and also moved. And that would be just the beginning. In my dream he took me on as an apprentice. I rapidly ‘rose through the ranks’ to chief clerk. I wore a green eyeshade. I loved the way I looked in that eyeshade, sitting at the front desk late at night, catching up on paperwork - I reminded myself of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life.
     
    The news from out in the world was bad. According to the Globe , General Logue had submitted his final battle plans to the city council. Lawyers for a couple of doomed families west of the Square were fighting on, but their cause was considered hopeless. And in June, the council gave its approval: in a matter of months the destruction would begin. Acres of heavy machinery stood on the outskirts, oiled and waiting. Every night or so after the council’s decision another building burned as landlords struggled to cut their losses. The nights were laced with sirens, and sometimes the smoke was so thick it was hard to breathe in the streets. I kept working on my ‘Ode to Night.’ I thought of it as ‘His Famous “Ode to Night.”’ Yet even with the store on its deathbed Norman kept on buying books. I guess he was like a shark too, worried about drowning.
     
    I was always the dreamy type. And given my situation, what else could I be? But I also knew how to put four feet on the ground when I had to. And then - drenched, so to speak, by the drizzle of the real - I felt bad that in practice I could do nothing to help old Norman out. Feelings of Inadequacy and the Origin of Depression in Males . So I began to bring home little gifts. One night while scavenging popcorn on the floor of the Rialto, I found a gold ring. It was in the form of two intertwined serpents. At the top of the ring the opposite-facing heads lay side by side. They had tiny emeralds for eyes. Though I could have put the ring in a place where it would be found by the cleaning ladies, I did not do that. In fact, I stole it without the slightest twinge of conscience. I had long before discovered on my