The Bureau of Lost Dreams by Harlan Finchley

Author:Harlan Finchley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Culbin Press
Published: 2024-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

Mr. Zilch

Belinda lowered her notepad. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Snergelberk.”

“Call me Wayne,” Mr. Snergelberk said.

With a damp tongue, he licked his fat lips. Then he provided Belinda with the least appealing smirk she had ever suffered and roved his tongue over the palm of his hand. Still smirking, he smoothed down an already damp strand of hair across the desert wilderness of his balding head.

Belinda shrank behind her desk. She concentrated on her notepad to avoid noticing which disgusting habit, in Mr. Snergelberk’s huge armory of bad habits, he’d show her next. Belinda gave him no time to discover a new one and forced herself to lean forward. To mask the rotting food smell emanating from her client, she dabbed at her nose and dragged out a smile.

“You wouldn’t be related to the people behind the company Snergelberk, Snergelberk, Berk and Snergel, would you?” she asked out of politeness.

“No,” he said, while scratching a damp armpit. “They’re a different line of Snergelberks and Snergels, although I am related to a Berk.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Belinda said and checking her watch, amazed that only two minutes had passed since Mr. Snergelberk had entered her life. She adopted her best summing-up voice. “So, Mr. Snergelberk, would you please take away the questionnaire and, having completed it at your leisure, return it to my office in – let’s say – a week.”

“The name’s Wayne and can’t I fill it in now? I’m hot and ready to go, if you know what I mean.”

He boggled his eyes, pumped his bent arms back and forth and grinned with more hope than he deserved to have.

“As are the young ladies on our books and they completed the questionnaire, but you’ll find that our questions will take more than a few minutes to answer.”

Belinda reached into her top drawer and deposited the quarter-inch thick questionnaire on to her desk with a satisfying thud. If anything, Mr. Snergelberk’s eyes boggled more.

“Is this a dating agency or the IRS? You mean I have to fill in all that to get a woman?”

He snuffled deep in his throat, producing a prolonged bubbling noise. Then, with an exaggerated jutting of his jaw, he coughed something into his mouth and rolled it around his tongue before chewing.

Belinda smiled her practiced grin. She’d love, just once, to tell a client that completing her questionnaire wouldn’t help him find marriage, love, a soul mate, a friend, or even the result this man was looking for.

She just didn’t have any women on her books that liked terminal body odor, weeping blackheads, eye-wincing bad breath, Hitler-mustache nasal hair, the personality of a sewer and all the social graces of a cesspit. But Mr. Snergelberk’s money was as good as the rest and maybe before he died, some equally unappealing woman would come to this office and prove compatible to this walking nightmare.

“Yes, you must complete all the questions in our questionnaire to join our dating agency. Just put aside some time, Mr. Snergelberk, and be honest with your responses.

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