I saw the date on part I here – sorry it’s taken so long to get to part II. Hopefully it’s part II like “Godfather part II” and not “Charlie’s Angels part II”.
Shut up, I liked the original. Movies that rip off old tv shows rarely go well, and I still feel bad for Drew Barrymore.
Cue voice-over: “Previously, on E.P.:”
Last we saw, my ESL student Dmitri was driving me through the middle of nowhere back to my shitty little apartment in Achinsk, Siberia after a long night of English classes for a bunch of nice enough people who in retrospect all sounded like Borat. We stop behind a van that is in turn stopped at a railway crossing and see a tied-up and hooded guy fall out of said van and get run over a lil’ bit, at which point a few guys get out of the van and start kicking around the unlucky guy on the ground.
And so I’m freaking the fuck out.
***
I’m not jumping out of the car screaming and running away or anything, but I am checking really quickly to see if Dmitri’s cell phone is where he left it attached to the dash, and if I remember the podunk-Russian-middle-of-nowhere version of 911, and also wondering A LOT why Dmitri isn’t flooring it in reverse.
We look at each other and I say slowly and clearly, “we should go now” and even point to the side of the van away from the kicking guys, but Dmitri just kind of shrugs and gets out of the car and walks towards the guys who have by now stopped kicking the tied-up guy and instead shoved him back into the van.
I of course am not on board with this, but don’t say anything. I would have right away though if I’d noticed through my adrenaline that Dmitri took the keys with him.
The van guys see Dmitri coming up and come to meet him halfway between the car and van and now that they’re square in our headlights I see they’re very big, scary looking guys – extras from Eastern Promises rather than GoldenEye.
Dmitri waves and he and the scary men chat for a bit while I look around the car for a gun or samurai sword or rocket launcher, because at this point I’m thinking that there’s better than even odds that we’re about to be murdered and chucked into the woods to be eaten by wolves. Dmitri was driving a BMW M Series and a popular Russian pastime is carjacking, even when they’re busy kidnapping someone. Plus, there really are wolves everywhere in Siberia. That’s the reason why Prokofiev didn’t write a classical music piece called “Peter And The Duck”.
After ten seconds that seem like ten minutes, Dmitri shakes hands with the scary guys and comes back to the car. He hops in, starts it up and we watch the scary guys climb back into the Aerostar and drive off. I waited for their taillights to fade out in front of us as they pulled away before I said anything.
I was still very freaked out, so I don’t remember word for word what I said, but it was something close to “I wrote down their plate number, we can call the police and let them know what’s going on.”
However, I do remember exactly what Dmitri said, in his broken English and thick Russian accent: “Oh, is okay. They are the police.”
Ah, Russia. Home of frostbite, the $20 Big Mac, and the tax police who will do things to you that make Guantanamo look like Disneyworld.
Years later now, I’m sitting in our condo in Vancouver, watching the rain fall (even though I can’t hear it anymore) and thinking about my adventures in Russia… I don’t miss it even a little tiny bit.
