K8 the GR8

A year ago I answered the door to a foreign dude who was selling paintings.  You know the type I’m sure, as every household in Ireland must have been scourged by this phenomenon at some point or another.  I bought two rather excellent paintings which now hang proudly in my livingroom.

On Good Friday, I was having a lazy day.  The hair was greasy, the PMS bad skin was in full eruption, and my slobaround tracksuit was mismatched and stained with motherhood.  TAT was out bringing the car for its NCT. 

A strange car arrived outside at 2.30pm and the doorbell rang.  It was the same guy who had sold me the paintings the year before, but he was emptyhanded.  This is an abundantly friendly guy, so I invited him in, not having the heart or valid excuse to turn him away.  The shock of having this relative stranger in the house gave me quite a dose of the shakes, which - let’s call him… Boris - noticed with amusement.  I supplied coffee and we chatted, while he played some of his CDs for me on the stereo. 

When TAT finally arrived home, Boris kindly let us copy every CD that his car posessed, then stuck around while we burned him a CD of his own.  By this stage it was about 6pm.  I left to buy Easter eggs and a few groceries, and when I eventually returned, I saw that Boris was still well rooted.  By 10.30pm, I was wondering if this guy didn’t have a home to go to, but felt too polite to ask, so I cooked some food and asked him if he’d like to stay over and have a drink or two with us.  He ran on delighted little legs to his car, and returned with DVDs which we watched, then proceeded to play BUZZ and cards until around 5am.

The next morning found me shouting to God on the big white telephone as a result of an overdose of Screwdriver, while Boris and TAT amused themselves on the xbox.  We finally had to kick him out at 2pm so that we could begin our weekend visitings.

This, in itself, might not sound weird, but a few points are niggling me:

1. I still don’t know where this guy is from… I know he was born in Moscow, then lived in Israel and worked for the army for a good while, but the details are hazy.  I know he was in prison for a short while, the word murder was mentioned, but I was watching ‘The Big Lebowski’ at the time and was too distracted by The Dude to notice details.

2. Boris has an extraordinarily nice car for a travelling painting salesman.

3. I witnessed some very strange clandestine phonecalls during his stay which were held in Russian, but noticed some strange english phrases thrown in such as ‘to be observed’, and ‘not a threat’, though I could be wrong.

4. Boris repeatedly mentioned that he was single.

5. He seems to be an extremely talented musician, cook, artist, and photographer, but asked me to look up strange unrelated jobs on the internet.

6. He also seemed very interested in my drug-taking history.

7. On Easter Monday when we returned home from our visitings, we found the bathroom window open, and I noticed that some things in the house had seemingly been moved, though again, I could be wrong.

7. I have emailed Boris once or twice, but with no reply.

I might just be paranoid, as I usually am, but doesn’t this seem fishy?  Where do you buy those gizmos that detect hidden bugs and cameras?  Have I been watching ‘The Wire’ too much?