Mad Dogs

Chapter One We should have realized that something was dangerously wrong during our Tuesday Morning Group while Russell lied about garroting the Serb colonel. "Get this," said Russell as sunshine streamed past the jail bars over our windows and drew parallel shadows on the Day Room's lemon wood floor. "That whole scene was like a flipped coin spinning in the air, one side ordinary, one side surreal." Like us then: five men and one woman perched on circled metal folding chairs. "There I was," said Russell, "walking another patrol in the Balkan slaughterhouse. Main Street buildings were smeared smoke black. Busted windows. Rubble littered the road. We tramped past a fire-bombed Toyota. Every step, something crunched under your boot. A laptop computer. A woman's purse. Three ropes dangled from a street lamp, but they were cut empty, so the rumors about a cleanup were probably true." "What isn't true?" said Dr. Friedman. Dr. Leon Friedman had brown hair. Emerald eyes inside gold metal glasses. As he had for each of the fourteen days he'd spent with us, he wore a tweed sports jacket. That last day, he had on a blue shirt, no tie. "Place like that," said Russell, "everything is true, nothing is true." "I see," said Dr. Friedman. "No you don't," I said. "Not if you're lucky." "'Xactly," said Zane, who looked like an albino Jesus. "We're listening to Russell now," said Dr. Friedman. Russell was fronting his rock star look: midnight lens aviator shades, a black leather sports jacket over an indigo T-shirt emblazoned wilco for the band, not the military response he'd been taught. He wore blue jeans, retro black-and-white sneakers. "Make it late May 1992," said Russell. "We were jazzed to get somewhere safe." Hailey picked scabs into her ebony-skinned arm, mumbled: "No such place." Russell ignored her. "That once-was-Yugoslavia town smelled like gunpowder and burned wood. Rotten garbage and rats, man, I can still see badass rats with red eyes. "The restaurant had cardboard over two windows but a sign that read open. When the Colonel swung the door in, a bell tinkled. He turns to us nine guys, says: 'We take turns.' Then he beckons me and his two favorite goons, a couple of thrill-kill boys Milosovic sprang from prison and made 'militia.' We go in. The place has a handful of customers, all true Serbs like us, and fuck everybody else." The white Styrofoam cup trembled as Russell raised it to his lips. "Where was I?" Dr. Friedman said: "You just said, 'Fuck everybody else.'" Russell swallowed more coffee. "I mean, where was I in my story?" "Ahh," said the therapist: "Your story. Of your spy mission." "Got it," said Russell. "The maitre d' glides through the restaurant like he's skating on ice. He's hairless. Pale as a bone. Milky eyes. Stone cold. Four werewolves in army fatigues with AK-47s walk in and ding his bell but he doesn't blink. He's wearing a black bow tie, a white shirt, blue jeans, a black tuxedo tails coat like Dracula. Plus, one hand ballerina waitress style, he's balancingGrady, James is the author of 'Mad Dogs ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780765355614 and ISBN 0765355612.