Firmin by Sam Savage Page A

cranium a longish lump, almost a ridge, which according to Hans Fuchs - the man who first made use of Gall’s science for practical police work - is a sure sign of ‘criminal proclivities’ and ‘moral degeneration.’ In fact, except for an obvious disqualification, I fit perfectly into Fuchs’s category of monstrum humanum , the lowest order of criminal types. I knew there was no point in putting my conscience up to a battle it was bound to lose. As I said, I can be quite practical when I have to be. So I carried the ring home and placed it on Norman’s desk next to his coffee mug, and there he found it the next morning. Clasping it with thumb and forefinger, he studied it a long time, he even tried it on, holding his hand out in front of him and turning it from side to side like a woman. Then he put it in a desk drawer. I figured he would think a customer must have lost it and I expected him to tack up a paper saying RING FOUND - CONTACT MANAGEMENT. He did not do that, though, and a week later I noticed the ring on his finger.
     
    Another time, when I was skulking home from the Rialto just before dawn, I came across a man and a girl having some sort of dispute on Cambridge Street, which was deserted except for them. She was really going at him, shouting ‘You fucker, you goddamn fucker’ over and over, and each time she said ‘fucker’ she stamped her foot, as if keeping count of how many times she could say ‘fucker’ in a row. The man was swaying and trying to hold her by the shoulders but she kept shaking him off. He seemed really loaded, the way he was swaying. She had on silver shoes with very high heels, which reminded me of my Lovelies and made me feel sorry for her. Mentally, I was on her side, for what that was worth. In fact it was worth exactly nothing - why should a pretty girl like her give a shit that some scroungy little rat was on her side? She was holding a big bouquet of yellow roses in her hand, and at the end of perhaps the fifteenth ‘fucker’ she slapped him right across the face with the flowers, which went flying everywhere, and then she ran across the street and down into the subway. I shouted silently, ‘Take that, you weasel!’ The man just stood there a while, swaying slightly as if to a gentle breeze, among all those scattered roses like yellow flames on the sidewalk. Then he started stepping on them, pushing them down against the pavement with a twisting motion of the toe of his shoe. This was mirrored by a nearly identical twisting motion of his mouth. She stamps, he twists. He didn’t miss even one. And then he walked slowly away down the street. I waited to make sure that he was not coming back, then I crept out and grabbed one of the roses, the one that seemed least damaged, and carried it home, where I straightened it out as best I could. It was almost opening time when I finally got it into the empty coffee mug on Norman’s desk. I would have liked to put water in too but I had no way of doing that.
     
    When I saw Norman’s reaction to the flower, it occurred to me that I might have gone too far. He seemed frankly spooked. He stared at the strange yellow rose in his coffee cup, his eyes widening, and then he looked all around, even under the desk, as if worried somebody was about to jump out at him. He took the rose out of the mug and laid it on the desk. He kept shooting glances at it during the morning, as if he expected it suddenly to do something to explain its presence, and then after lunch he tossed it in the trash can. My gift had backfired. Instead of comfort, I had handed Norman just one more thing to worry about, and I was sorry. I didn’t bring him any more presents after that.
     
    I have never been right in the head, but I am not demented. You may raise an eyebrow here, you may raise both eyebrows, but the fact remains, daydreams and mental tricks are one thing, nuts is another. And I am not the kind of creature who can be crazy without knowing it. There