"Do you remember our meetings?"

Actually, from Saturday to Monday, I try not to think about politics and not to remember about politicians- I give a dismissal head that has enough roof and weekly television and radio programs ... No, however, there are sanitary standards!

And no Sunday television analytics, God forbid! Putin on the weekend is too much. “You’ll come home - here you are sitting” ...

On my Sunday gatherings on Radio “Freedom”, I also try to call mainly not politicians, but people educated and lovely (this sometimes coincides, of course, but rarely).

Last Sunday, I prepared a royal gift for myself in advance: I called on the air of the hereditary translator Viktor Petrovich Golyshev - “The whole royal army”, half of Faulkner, Salinger ... Name of the heart!

Nothing foreshadowed trouble.

I wandered along the sunny passionate boulevard towards the radio station, when a sad man came out of the Shangri-La casino to meet me. I, alas, could not recognize him-it was the vice speaker of the State Duma Arthur Chingarov.

Why he was so sad, I don't know. Maybe I thought about life in Russia outside the Shangri-La casino ... or (as a member of the State Duma Committee on Defense) grieved about the state of the Russian army? Don't know! A stranger soul is a dark.

But Chilingars looked like a very lost person.

The young count Rostov in a similar case went to dad for money.

The middle -aged deputy of Chilingar, presumably, goes to the treasury.

My assumption is based on the fact that I saw extremely rarely, but every time in a casino or near it, alive. Without a single exception!

Our first -time meeting took place in the era of “dolls”. My rubber brothers and I gave something like a concert in the Shatillon casino, near Mosfilm. I was joking as much as possible, and a deputy of Chilingarov sat at the table and measuredly laid the chips in front of the croup of the chip, each of which cost fifty US dollars.

He put them with a medium speed of the chip per minute. And when we arrived in the casino, and during the performance ... When we left the same center of culture and leisure, he, without changing his facial expressions, continued to put.

Then there was a meeting in St. Petersburg* - Chilingarov and his comrades flew to the constituent congress of the party “Fatherland - the whole of Russia” and was preparing to save the fatherland directly in Astoria. The salads there were worth twenty cu, hot at forty, drinks went towards W.E. Three -digit, but none of the future saviors of the Fatherland (deputies, of course) denied anything to themselves.

As an avid state employee, I had an acute feeling that I was treating ...

Having leaning, threwing on my money, Chilingarov went straight to where the chips were laid.

And so, therefore, again.

At the time of our meeting in Shatillon, Arthur Nikolaevich was a deputy from the “Ivan Rybkin bloc”. By an hour in Astoria, Vice -Prime, from the deputy group of Russian regions. From Shangri-la, a large Unicorn came out to meet me.

How this political evolution is reflected in the color of the chips, I can’t know, but I believe, not for the worse.

On the face - is reflected quite regrettable.

The sad vice speaker sat in a BMW with a miletic, tactfully standing not at the casino, but next door, in the courtyard of the Ministry of Printing - and left to meet further service to the people.

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* - Read more about this meeting - see in the book "Raisins from the Book."