The Wolf of Wall Street

^{CHAPTER 30} NEW ADDITIONS

August 15, 1995

(Nine Months Later)

You little bastard!” screamed the delivering Duchess, sprawled out on a birthing table in Long Island Jewish Hospital. “You did this to me, and now you’re stoned during the birth of our son! I’m gonna rip your lungs out when I get off this table!”

It was ten a.m., or was it eleven? Who knew anymore?

Either way, I had just passed out cold, my face on the delivery table, as the Duchess was in the middle of a contraction. I was still standing, though hunched over at a ninety-degree angle, with my head between her puffy legs, which were now propped up on stirrups.

Just then I felt someone shaking me. “Are you all right?” said the voice of Dr. Bruno, sounding a million miles away.

Christ! I wanted to respond, but I was just so damn tired. The Ludes had really gotten the best of me this morning, although I had my reasons for getting stoned. After all, giving birth is a very stressful business—for the wife and the husband—and I guess there are some things that women just handle better than men.

It had been three trimesters since that very candlelit evening, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional had continued unabated. Suzanne had kept my confidence, and Aunt Patricia’s children had gone to Switzerland and claimed their inheritance. Agent Coleman, I assumed, had shit a pickle over the whole thing, and the last I’d heard of him was when he’d made an unannounced morning visit to Carrie Chodosh’s house, threatening her with jail time and the loss of her son if she refused to cooperate. But those were desperate words, I knew, from a desperate man. Carrie, of course, had stayed loyal—telling Agent Coleman to go fuck himself, in so many words.

And as the first trimester had become the second, Stratton continued to spiral downward, no longer able to pay me a million dollars a month. But I’d been expecting that, so I’d taken it in stride. Besides, I still had Biltmore and Monroe Parker, and they were each paying me one million per deal. And further cushioning the blow was Steve Madden Shoes. Steve and I could hardly keep up with all the department-store orders, and the program Elliot had laid out was working like a charm. We had five stores now and plans to open five more over the next twelve months. We were also starting to license our name, initially with belts and handbags and moving on to sportswear. And most importantly, Steve was learning to delegate authority and we were well on the way to building a first-class management team. About six months ago, Gary Deluca, aka the Drizzler, had finally convinced us to move our warehouse to South Florida, and it had turned out to be a fine idea. And John Basile, aka the Spitter, was so busy trying to keep up with our department-store orders that his spit storms were becoming less and less frequent.

Meanwhile, the Cobbler was making money hand over fist—although not from Steve Madden Shoes. Instead, it was coming from the rathole game, with Steve Madden Shoes representing his future. But that was fine with me. After all, Steve and I had become the closest of friends and were spending most of our free time together. On the other hand, Elliot had succumbed once more to his drug addiction—sliding deeper and deeper into debt and depression.

At the beginning of the Duchess’s third trimester I had my back operated on, but the procedure was unsuccessful—leaving me in worse shape than before. Perhaps I deserved it, though, because I had gone against the advice of Dr. Green, electing to have a local doctor (of dubious reputation) perform a minimally invasive procedure called a percutaneous disk extraction. The pain going down my left leg was excruciating and ceaseless. My only solace, of course, was Quaaludes, which I was always quick to point out to the Duchess, who was becoming increasingly annoyed at my constant slurring and frequent blackouts.

Nevertheless, she had fallen so deeply into the role of the codependent wife that she, too, no longer knew which way was up. And with all the money and the help and the mansions and the yacht and the sucking up at every department store and restaurant or wherever else we went, it was easy to pretend things were okay.

Just then, a terrible burning sensation under my nose—smelling salts!

My head immediately popped up, and there was the delivering Duchess, her gigantic pussy staring at me with contempt.

“Are you okay?” asked Dr. Bruno.

I took a deep breath and said, “Yeah, I’m zine, Dr. Bruno. I just got a little bit queasy zrom the blood. I need a splash some water on my face.” I excused myself and ran to the bathroom, did two blasts of coke, and ran back to the delivery room, feeling like a new man. “Okay,” I said, no longer slurring. “Let’s go, Nae! Don’t give up now!”

“I’ll deal with you later,” she snapped.

And then she began to push, and then she screamed, and then she pushed some more, and then she grit her teeth, and then suddenly, as if by magic, her vagina opened up to the size of a Volkswagen and—pop!—out came my son’s head, with a thin coating of dark black hair. Next came a gush of water and then a moment later a tiny shoulder. Dr. Bruno grasped my son’s torso and twisted him gently, and just like that he was out.

Then I heard, “Waaaaahhhhhhhh…”

“Ten fingers and ten toes!” said a happy Dr. Bruno, placing the baby on the Duchess’s fat stomach. “You have a name yet?”

“Yes,” said the fat, beaming Duchess. “Carter. Carter James Belfort.”

“That’s a very fine name,” said Dr. Bruno.

In spite of my little mishap, Dr. Bruno was kind enough to allow me to cut the cord, and I did a good job. Having now earned his trust, he said, “Okay, it’s time for Daddy to hold his son while I finish up with Mommy.” With that, Dr. Bruno handed me my son.

I felt myself welling up with tears. I had a son. A boy! A baby Wolf of Wall Street! Chandler had been such a beautiful baby, and now I would get my first look at the beautiful face of my son. I looked down and—what the hell? He looked awful! He was tiny and scrunched up, and his eyes were glued shut. He looked like an underfed chicken.

The Duchess must’ve seen the look on my face, and she said, “Don’t worry, honey. Most babies aren’t born looking like Chandler. He’s just a little premature. He’ll be as handsome as his daddy.”

“Well, hopefully he’ll look just like his mommy,” I replied, meaning every word. “But I don’t care what he looks like. I already love him so much I wouldn’t care if he had a nose the size of a banana.” As I looked at my son’s perfect, scrunched-up face, I realized there had to be a God, because this couldn’t possibly be an accident. It was a miracle to create this perfect little creature from an act of love.

I stared at him for what seemed like a very long time, until Dr. Bruno said, “Oh, Jesus, she’s hemorrhaging. Get the operating room ready now! And get an anesthesiologist in here!” The nurse took off like a bat out of hell.

Dr. Bruno regained his composure and calmly said, “Okay, Nadine, we have a slight complication. You have placenta accreta. What that means, honey, is that your placenta has grown too deeply into the uterine wall. Unless we can get it out manually, you could lose a great deal of blood. Now, Nadine, I’m gonna do everything possible to get it out clean”—he paused, as if trying to find the right words—“but if I can’t, I’ll have no choice but to perform a hysterectomy.”

And before I even had a chance to tell my wife I loved her, two orderlies came running in and grabbed her bed and wheeled her out. Dr. Bruno followed. When he reached the door, he turned to me and said, “I’ll do everything possible to save her uterus.” Then he walked out, leaving Carter and me alone.

I looked down at my son, and I started to cry. What would happen if I lost the Duchess? How could I possibly raise two children without her? She was everything to me. The very insanity of my life depended on her making everything okay. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. I had to be strong for my son, for Carter James Belfort. Without even realizing it I found myself rocking him in my arms, saying a silent prayer to the Almighty, asking him to spare the Duchess and to bring her back to me whole.

Ten minutes later Dr. Bruno came back into the room. With a great smile on his face, he said, “We got the placenta out, and you’ll never believe how.”

“How?” I said, grinning from ear to ear.

“We called in one of our interns, a tiny Indian girl, who has the most slender hands imaginable. She was able to reach up inside your wife’s womb and manually pull out the placenta. It was a miracle, Jordan. A placenta accreta is very rare, and it’s very dangerous. But it’s fine now. You have a perfectly healthy wife and a perfectly healthy son.”

And such were the famous last words of Dr. Bruno, the King of Jinxes.

^{CHAPTER 31} THE JOY OF PARENTHOOD

The next morning, Chandler and I were alone in the master bedroom, engaged in a heated debate. I was doing most of the talking, while she was sitting on the floor, playing with multicolored wooden blocks. I was trying to convince her that the new addition to the family would be a good thing for her, that things would be even better than before.

I smiled at the baby genius and said, “Listen, thumbkin, he’s so cute and little, you’re gonna fall in love with him the second you see him. And just think how much fun he’ll be when he gets older; you’ll be able to boss him around all the time! It’s gonna be great!”

Channy looked up from her construction project and stared me down with those big blue eyes she’d inherited from her mother, and she said, “No, just leave him in the hospital.” Then she turned back to her blocks.

I sat down next to the baby genius and gave her a gentle kiss on the cheek. She smelled clean and fresh, just the way a little girl should. She was a little more than two years old now, and her hair was a glorious shade of chestnut brown and fine as corn silk. It went down past her shoulder blades, and there were tiny curls on the bottom. I found the mere sight of her touching beyond belief. “Listen, thumbkin, we can’t leave him at the hospital; he’s part of the family now. Carter’s your baby brother, and the two of you are gonna be best friends!”

With a shrug: “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, I have to go to the hospital now and pick him and Mommy up, so either way he’s coming home, thumbkin. Just remember that Mommy and I still love you just as much. There’s enough love to go around for everybody.”

“I know,” she replied nonchalantly, still focusing on her construction project. “You can bring him. It’s okay.”

Very impressive, I thought. With a simple okay she had now accepted the new addition to the family.

Rather than going directly to the hospital, I had to make one quick stop along the way. It was an impromptu business meeting at a restaurant called Millie’s Place, in the tony suburb of Great Neck, about a five-minute car ride from Long Island Jewish. My plan was to blow out of the meeting quickly and then pick up Carter and the Duchess and head out to Westhampton. I was running a few minutes late, and as the limo pulled up I could see Danny’s boiling white teeth through the restaurant’s plate-glass window. He was sitting at a circular table, accompanied by the Chef, Wigwam, and a crooked lawyer named Hartley Bernstein, whom I was rather fond of. Hartley’s nickname was the Weasel, because he was the spitting image of a rodent. In fact, he could have been a Hollywood stunt double for the comic book character BB Eyes from Dick Tracy.

Although Millie’s Place wasn’t open for breakfast, the restaurant’s owner, Millie, had agreed to open the restaurant early to accommodate us. That was appropriate, considering that Millie’s Place was where the Strattonites would come after each new issue to drink and eat and fuck and suck and drop and snort and do whatever else Strattonites did—and it was all done courtesy of the firm, which would receive a bill, between $25,000 and $100,000, depending on how much damage was done.

As I approached the table I noticed a fifth person sitting there: Jordan Shamah, Stratton’s recently appointed Vice President. He was a childhood friend of Danny’s and his nickname was the Undertaker, because his rise to power had little to do with his performance and more to do with his undermining every last soul who’d stood in his way. The Undertaker was short and pudgy, and his primary undertaking method was good old-fashioned backstabbing, although he was also adept at character assassination and rumormongering.

I exchanged a quick round of Mafia-style hugs with my erstwhile partners-in-crime and then settled down in an armchair and poured myself a cup of coffee. The goal of the meeting was a sad one: to convince Danny to close down Stratton Oakmont, using the Cockroach Theory, which meant that before he actually closed Stratton he would first open a series of smaller brokerage firms—each of them owned by a front man—and then he would divide the Strattonites into small groups and shift them to the new firms. Once the process was complete, he would close Stratton and move himself to one of the new firms, where he could run it from behind the scenes, under the guise of being a consultant.

It was the generally accepted way for brokerage firms under regulatory heat to stay one step ahead—essentially, closing down and reopening under a different name, thereby starting the process of making money and fighting the regulators all over again. It was like stepping on a cockroach and squashing it, only to find ten new ones scurrying in all directions.

Anyway, given Stratton’s current problems, it was the appropriate course of action, but Danny didn’t subscribe to the Cockroach Theory. Instead, he had developed his own theory, which he referred to as Twenty Years of Blue Skies. According to this theory, all Stratton had to do was get past its current wave of regulatory hurdles, and it could stay in business for twenty more years. It was preposterous! Stratton had a year left at most. By now all fifty states were circling above Stratton like vultures over a wounded carcass, and the NASD, the National Association of Securities Dealers, had joined the party too.

But Danny was in complete denial. In fact, he had become a Wall Street version of Elvis in his final days—when his handlers would cram his enormous bulk into a white leather jumpsuit and push him onstage to sing a few songs. Then they would drag him back off before he passed out from heat exhaustion and Seconals. According to Wigwam, Danny was now climbing on top of desks during sales meetings and smashing computer monitors onto the floor and cursing the regulators. Obviously, the Strattonites ate this sort of shit up, so Danny was now kicking it up a notch—pulling down his pants and pissing on stacks of NASD subpoenas, to thunderous applause.

Wigwam and I locked eyes, so I motioned with my chin, as if to say, “Offer up your two cents.” Wigwam nodded confidently and said, “Listen, Danny, the truth is I don’t know how much longer I can even get deals through. The SEC’s been playing four-corners defense, and it’s taking six months to get anything approved. If we start working on a new firm now, I could be in business by the end of the year—doing deals for all of us.”

Danny’s reply wasn’t exactly what Wigwam had hoped for. “Let me tell you something, Wigwam. Your motives are so obvious it’s fucking nauseating. There’s lots of time left before we need to consider cockroaching it, so why don’t you take your fucking rug off and stay awhile.”

“You know what, Danny? Go fuck yourself!” snapped Wigwam, running his fingers through his hair, trying to make it look more natural. “You’re so drugged out all the time you don’t even know which way is up anymore. I’m not wasting my life away while you drool in the office like a fucking imbecile.”

The Undertaker saw an opportunity to put a hatchet in Wigwam’s back. “That’s not true,” argued the Undertaker. “Danny doesn’t drool in the office. Maybe he slurs once in a while, but even then he’s always in control.” Now the Undertaker paused, searching for a spot to inject his first dose of embalming fluid. “And you shouldn’t be one to talk, by the way. You spend your whole day chasing around that smelly slut Donna, with her putrid armpits.”

I was fond of the Undertaker; he was a real company guy—way too dumb to actually think for himself, expending most of his mental energy conjuring up devilish rumors about those he was looking to bury. But in this particular instance his motives were obvious: He had a hundred customer complaints against him, and if Stratton went under he would never be able to get registered again.

I said, “All right, enough of this shit—please!” I shook my head in disbelief; Stratton was totally out of control. “I gotta get to the hospital. I’m only here because I want the best for everyone. I personally couldn’t care less whether or not Stratton pays me another dime. But I do have other interests—selfish interests, I admit—and they have to do with all the arbitrations being filed. A lot of them are naming me, in spite of the fact that I’m not with the firm anymore.” I looked directly at Danny. “You’re in the same position as me, Dan, and my sense is that even if there are Twenty Years of Blue Skies ahead, the arbitrations aren’t gonna stop.”

The Weasel chimed in: “We can take care of the arbitrations through an asset sale. We would structure it so that Stratton sold the brokers to the new firms, and, in return, they would agree to pay for any arbitration that came up for a period of three years. After that, the statute of limitations will kick in and you guys will be in the clear.”

I looked at the Chef, and he nodded in agreement. It was interesting, I thought. I had never paid close attention to the wisdom of the Weasel. In essence, he was the legal counterpart to the Chef, but unlike the Chef, who was a man’s man—overflowing with charisma—the Weasel lacked those traits entirely. I had never thought him to be stupid; it was just that every time I looked at him, I imagined him nibbling a block of Swiss cheese. Nevertheless, his latest idea was brilliant. The customer lawsuits were troubling me, totaling more than $70 million now. Stratton was paying them, but if Stratton went belly-up, it could turn into a real fucking nightmare.

Just then Danny said, “JB, let me talk to you by the bar for a second.”

I nodded, and we headed to the bar, where Danny immediately filled two glasses to the rim with Dewar’s. He lifted one of the glasses, and said, “Here’s to Twenty Years of Blue Skies, my friend!” He kept holding his glass up, waiting for me to join the toast.

I looked at my watch: It was ten-thirty. “Come on, Danny! I can’t drink right now. I gotta go to the hospital and pick up Nadine and Carter.”

Danny shook his head gravely. “It’s bad luck to refuse a toast this early in the morning. You really willing to risk it?”

“Yes,” I snarled, “I’m willing to risk it.”

Danny shrugged. “Suit yourself,” and he downed what had to be five shots of scotch. “Ho baby!” he muttered. Then he shook his head a few times and reached into his pocket and pulled out four Ludes. “Will you at least take a couple Ludes with me—before you ask me to shut the firm down?”

“Now you’re talking!” I said, smiling.

Danny smiled broadly and handed me two Ludes. I walked over to the sink, turned on the water, and stuck my mouth in the water stream. Then I casually stuck my hand in my pocket and dropped the two Ludes in there for safekeeping. “Okay,” I said, rubbing my fingertips together, “I’m a ticking time bomb now, so let’s make it fast.”

I smiled sadly at Danny and found myself wondering how many of my current problems could be attributed to him? Not that I had deluded myself to the point where I was laying all the blame on his doorstep, but there was no denying that Stratton would have never spun this far out of control without Danny. Yes, it was true that I had been the so-called brains of the outfit, but Danny had been the muscle, the enforcer, so to speak—doing things on a daily basis that I could have never done, or at least couldn’t have done and still looked at myself in the mirror each morning. He was a true warrior, Danny, and I didn’t know whether to respect him or loathe him for it anymore. But above all I felt sad.

“Listen, Danny, I can’t tell you what to do with Stratton. It’s your firm now, and I respect you too much to tell you what you have to do. But if you want my opinion, I’d say close it down right now and walk away with all the marbles. You do it just the way Hartley said: You have the new firms assume all the arbitrations and then you get paid as a consultant. It’s the right move, and it’s the smart move. It’s the move I would make if I were still running the show.”

Danny nodded. “I’ll do it, then. I just wanna give it a few more weeks to see what happens with the states, okay?”

I smiled sadly again, knowing full well that he had no intentions of closing down the firm. All I said was, “Sure, Dan, that sounds reasonable.”

Five minutes later I had finished my good-byes and was climbing into the back of the limousine, when I saw the Chef coming out of the restaurant. He walked over to the limo and said, “In spite of what Danny’s saying, you know he’s never gonna close down the firm. They’re gonna have to take him out of that place in handcuffs.”

I nodded slowly and said, “Tell me something I don’t know, Dennis.” Then I hugged the Chef, climbed into the back of the limousine, and headed for the hospital.

It was only by coincidence that Long Island Jewish Hospital was in the town of Lake Success, less than a mile from Stratton Oakmont. Perhaps that was why no one seemed surprised as I made my way around the maternity ward passing out gold watches. I had done the same thing when Chandler was born and had made quite a splash then. For some inexplicable reason I got an irrational joy out of wasting $50,000 on people I would never see again.

It was a little before eleven when I finally completed my happy ritual. As I walked into the room where the Duchess was staying, I couldn’t find her. She was lost amid the flowers. Christ! There were thousands of them! The room was exploding with color—fantastic shades of red and yellow and pink and purple and orange and green.

I finally spotted the Duchess sitting in an armchair. She was holding Carter, trying to give him his bottle. Once more, the Duchess looked gorgeous. Somehow she had managed to lose the weight in the thirty-six hours since she’d given birth, and she was now my luscious Duchess again. Good for me! She had on a pair of faded Levi’s, a simple white blouse, and a pair of off-white ballet slippers. Carter was swaddled in a sky-blue blanket, and all I could see was his tiny face poking out from beneath it.

I smiled at my wife and said, “You look gorgeous, sweetie. I can’t believe your face is back to normal already. You were still bloated yesterday.”

“He won’t take his bottle,” said the maternal Duchess, ignoring my compliment. “Channy always took her bottle. Carter won’t.”

Just then a nurse walked into the room. She took Carter from the Duchess and started to give him his exit exam. I was still packing the bags when I heard the nurse say, “My, my, my, what wonderful eyelashes he has! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such beautiful ones on a baby. Wait until he unfolds a bit. He’s gonna be awfully handsome, I bet.”

The proud Duchess replied, “I know. There’s something very special about him.”

And then I heard the nurse say, “That’s strange!”

I spun on my heel and looked at the nurse. She was sitting in a chair, holding Carter—pressing a stethoscope against the left side of his chest.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” replied the nurse, “but his heart doesn’t sound right.” She seemed very nervous now, compressing her lips as she listened.

I looked over at the Duchess, and she looked like she’d just taken a bullet in her gut. She was standing, holding on to the side of the bedpost. I walked over and put my arm around her. No words were exchanged.

Finally the nurse said in a very annoyed tone: “I can’t believe no one’s picked this up. Your son has a hole in his heart! I’m certain of it. I can hear the backflow right now. It’s either a hole or some sort of defect with one of the valves. I’m sorry, but you can’t take him home yet. We need to get a pediatric cardiologist up here right now.”

I took a deep breath and nodded slowly, vacantly. Then I looked at the Duchess, who was in tears—crying silently. In that very instant we both knew our lives would never be the same again.

Fifteen minutes later we were in the lower bowels of the hospital, standing in a small room filled with advanced medical equipment—banks of computers, monitors of various shapes and sizes, IV stands, and a tiny examining table, on which Carter was now lying naked. The lights had been dimmed and a tall, thin doctor was now in charge.

“There, you see it?” said the doctor. He was pointing his left index finger at a black computer screen, which had four amoebalike swaths in the center of it, two of them red, two of them blue. Each swath was the size of a silver dollar. They were interconnected and seemed to be draining into one another in a slow, rhythmic fashion. In his right hand he was holding a small device, shaped like a microphone, and he was pressing it against Carter’s chest and moving it in slow, concentric circles. The red and blue pools were echoes of Carter’s blood as it flowed through the four chambers of his heart.

“And there,” he added. “The second hole—it’s a bit smaller, but it’s definitely there, between the atria.”

Then he turned off the echocardiogram apparatus and said, “I’m surprised your son hasn’t gone into congestive heart failure. The hole between his ventricles is large. There’s a strong likelihood he’ll need open-heart surgery in the next few days. How’s he doing with his bottle? Is he taking it?”

“Not really,” said the Duchess sadly. “Not like our daughter did.”

“Has he been sweating when he feeds?”

The Duchess shook her head. “Not that I’ve noticed. He’s just not that interested in feeding.”

The doctor nodded. “The problem is that oxygenated blood is mixing with deoxygenated blood. When he tries to feed it puts a great strain on him. Sweating during feeding is one of the first signs of congestive heart failure in an infant. However, there’s still a chance he might be okay. The holes are large, but they seem to be balancing each other out. They’re creating a pressure gradient, minimizing backflow. If it weren’t for that, he’d be exhibiting symptoms already. Only time can tell, though. If he doesn’t go into heart failure in the next ten days, he’ll probably be okay.”

“What are the chances of him going into heart failure?” I asked.

The doctor shrugged. “About fifty–fifty.”

The Duchess: “And if he does go into heart failure? Then what?”

“We’ll start by giving him diuretics to keep fluid from building up in his lungs. There are other medications too, but let’s not put the cart before the horse. But if none of the medications work, we’ll need to perform open-heart surgery to patch the hole.” The doctor smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry to give you such bad news; we’ll just have to wait and see. You can take your son home, but watch him carefully. At the first sign of sweating or labored breathing—or even a refusal to take his bottle—call me immediately. Either way, I’ll need to see you again in a week”—I don’t think so, pal! My next stop is Columbia-Presbyterian, with a doctor who graduated from Harvard!—“to take another echocardiogram. Hopefully, the hole will have started to close by then.”

The Duchess and I immediately perked up. Sensing a ray of hope, I asked, “Do you mean it’s possible that the hole could close on its own?”

“Oh, yes. I must have forgotten to mention that”—Nice detail to leave out, slime bucket!—“but if he doesn’t have any symptoms in the first ten days, then that’s most likely what’ll happen. You see, as your son grows, his heart will also grow, and it’ll slowly envelop the hole. By his fifth birthday it should be completely closed. And even if it doesn’t close completely, it’ll be so small that it won’t give him a problem. So, again, it comes down to the first ten days. I can’t stress it enough—watch him carefully! In fact, I wouldn’t take my eyes off him for more than a few minutes.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” said a confident Duchess. “There’s gonna be at least three people watching him at all times, and one of them is gonna be a registered nurse.”

Rather than going to Westhampton, which was a good seventy miles to the east, we headed straight to Old Brookville, which was only fifteen minutes from the hospital. Once there, our families quickly joined us. Even the Duchess’s father, Tony Caridi, the world’s most lovable loser, showed up—still looking like Warren Beatty, and still looking to borrow money, I figured, once all the commotion died down.

Mad Max led the vigil, quickly turning into Sir Max—assuring the Duchess and me that everything would work out fine; then he went about making phone calls to various doctors and hospitals without losing his temper once. In fact, there would be no sign of Mad Max until the crisis resolved itself, at which point Mad Max would magically reappear—making up for lost time with vicious verbal tirades and belligerent smoking strategies. My mother was her usual self—a saintly woman who prayed Jewish prayers for Carter and offered moral support to the Duchess and me. Suzanne, the closet anarchist, chalked Carter’s holes up to a government conspiracy, which included the doctors, who, for some inexplicable reason, were in on it.

We explained to Chandler that her brother was sick, and she told us that she loved him and that she was glad we decided to bring him home from the hospital. Then she went back to playing with her blocks. Gwynne and Janet stood vigil, too, but only after they’d recovered from six hours of hysterical crying. Even Sally, my lovable chocolate brown Lab, got into the act—setting up camp at the base of Carter’s crib, leaving only for bathroom breaks and an occasional meal. However, the Duchess’s dog, Rocky, evil little bastard that he was, couldn’t have cared less about Carter. He pretended nothing was wrong and continued to annoy every person in the house—barking incessantly, peeing on the carpet, pooping on the floor, and stealing Sally’s food from her dog bowl, while she was busy sitting vigil and praying with us like a good dog.

But the biggest disappointment was the baby nurse, Ruby, who came highly recommended from one of those WASPy employment agencies that specialize in providing wealthy families with Jamaican baby nurses. The problem started when Rocco Night picked her up from the train station, and he thought he smelled alcohol on her breath. After she’d finished unpacking her bags, he took it upon himself to search her room. Fifteen minutes later she was in the backseat of his car, being led away, never to be heard from again, at least by us. The only fringe benefit was the five bottles of Jack Daniel’s that Rocco had confiscated from her, which were now in my downstairs liquor cabinet.

The replacement nurse showed up a few hours later. It was another Jamaican woman, named Erica. She turned out to be a real gem—instantly clicking with Gwynne and the rest of the crowd. So Erica joined the menagerie and stood vigil too.

By day four Carter still hadn’t shown any signs of heart failure. Meanwhile, my father and I had made dozens of inquiries as to who the world’s foremost pediatric cardiologist was. All our inquiries pointed to Dr. Edward Golenko. He was the Chief of Cardiology at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.

Alas, there was a three-month wait for an appointment, which quickly turned into a surprise cancellation the following day, after Dr. Golenko was made aware of the $50,000 donation I was planning to make to Mount Sinai’s Pediatric Cardiology Unit. So on day five Carter was on another examining table, except this time he was surrounded by an elite team of doctors and nurses, who, after spending ten minutes marveling over his eyelashes, finally got down to business.

The Duchess and I stood silently off to the side, as the team used some sort of advanced imaging apparatus—looking much deeper into Carter’s heart and with much greater clarity than with a standard echocardiogram. Dr. Golenko was tall, thin, slightly balding, and had a very kind face. I looked around the room…and counted nine intelligent-looking adults, all in white lab coats, all peering down at my son as if he was the most precious thing on earth, which he was. Then I looked at the Duchess, who, as usual, was chewing on the inside of her mouth. She had her head cocked in an attitude of intense concentration, and I wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking, which was: I had never been happier that I was rich than right now. After all, if anyone could help our son it would be these people.

After a few minutes of doctor-to-doctor medi-talk, Dr. Golenko smiled at us and said, “I have very good news for you: Your son’s going to be just fine. The holes have already started closing, and the pressure gradient has eliminated any backflow between—”

Dr. Golenko never finished, because the Duchess charged him like a bull. Everyone in the room laughed as she threw her arms around the sixty-five-year-old doctor’s neck, wrapped her legs around his waist, and started smooching him.

Dr. Golenko looked at me with a shocked expression, his face slightly redder than a beet, and he said, “I wish all my patients’ moms were like this!” And everyone laughed some more. What a wonderfully happy moment it was! Carter James Belfort was going to make it! God had placed a second hole in his heart to balance out the first, and by the time he was five, both holes would be closed, Dr. Golenko assured us.

On the limo ride home, the Duchess and I were all smiles. Carter was sitting between us in the backseat, and George and Rocco were sitting up front. The Duchess said, “The only problem is that I’m so paranoid now, I don’t know if I can treat him the way I treated Chandler. She was so big and healthy, I never thought twice about anything.”

I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Don’t worry, sweetie. In a couple a days everything will be back to normal. You’ll see.”

“I don’t know,” said the Duchess. “I’m scared to even think what might happen next.”

“Nothing’s gonna happen next. We’re over the hump now.” And for the remainder of the ride I kept my fingers, toes, hands, legs, and arms crossed.

^{CHAPTER 32} MORE JOY

September 1995

(Five Weeks Later)

It was appropriate, I thought, for the Cobbler to be sitting on his side of the desk and wearing the proud expression of a man who had the world by the balls. For the calendar year 1996, we were shooting for $50 million in revenue, and each division was hitting stride simultaneously. Our department-store business was off the charts; our private-label business was booming; our licensing of the Steve Madden name was way ahead of schedule; and our retail stores, of which there were now nine, were making money hand over fist. On Saturdays and Sundays, in fact, there were lines out the doors, and Steve was becoming a celebrity of sorts, the shoe designer of first choice to an entire generation of teenage girls.

What wasn’t appropriate was what he said to me next: “I think it’s time to move out the Drizzler. If we get rid of him now, we can still take his stock options from him.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Anyway, if he works for us much longer, his options are gonna vest, and then we’re fucked.”

I shook my head in amazement. The true irony was that the amount of stock options the Drizzler owned was so minuscule that it didn’t matter to anyone, except, of course, the Drizzler, who would be rocked if his stock options were to simply vanish into thin air—a victim of the fine print in his employment contract.

I said, “You can’t do that to Gary; the guy has worked his ass off for us for over a year now. I’m the first to admit he’s a royal pain in the ass sometimes, but, still, you just don’t do that to one of your employees, especially one like Gary, who’s been a hundred ten percent loyal. It’s fucking wrong, Steve. And just imagine the signal it sends to everyone else. It’s the sort of shit that destroys a company’s morale. Everyone out there takes pride in their stock options; they make them feel like owners; they feel secure about their futures.”

I took a weary breath, then added, “If we’re gonna replace him, that’s fine, but we give him what he’s due, and a little bit extra, if anything. That’s the only way to do it, Steve. Anything else is bad business.”

The Cobbler shrugged. “I don’t get it. You’re the first one to make fun of the Drizzler, so why the fuck would you care if I take his stock options?”

I shook my head in frustration. “First of all, I only make fun of him so the day passes with a few laughs. I make fun of everyone, Steve, including myself and including you. But I actually love the Drizzler; he’s a good man, and he’s loyal as hell.” I let out a great sigh. “Listen, I’m not denying that Gary might’ve outlived his usefulness, and maybe it is time to replace him with someone with industry experience, someone with a pedigree who can talk to Wall Street—but we can’t take away his stock options. He came to work for us when we were still shipping shoes out of the back of the factory. And as slow as he moves, he’s still done a lot of good things for the company. It’s bad karma to fuck him.”

The Cobbler sighed. “I think your loyalty is misplaced. He’d fuck us in two seconds if he had the chance. I’ve—”

Cutting off the Cobbler, I said, “No, Steve, he wouldn’t fuck us. Gary has integrity. He’s not like us. He lives by his word, and he never breaks it. If you want to fire him, that’s one thing. But you should let him keep his stock options.” I realized that by using the word should, I was giving Steve more power than he deserved. The problem was that, on paper, he was still the majority owner of the company; it was only through our secret agreement that I maintained control.

“Let me talk to him,” said the Cobbler, with a devilish look in his eye. “If I can convince him to go peacefully, then why should you care?” He shrugged. “I mean, if I can get his stock options back, we can divide ’em up fifty–fifty, right?”

I dropped my chin in defeat. It was 11:30 a.m., and I felt so fucking tired. Too many drugs, I thought. And life at home…well, it hadn’t been a bowl of cherries lately. The Duchess was still a wreck over Carter, and I had basically thrown in the towel on my back pain, which haunted me twenty-four hours a day now. I’d set October 15 as a tentative date to have my spine fused. That was only three weeks from now, and the very thought of it terrified me. I would be undergoing general anesthesia—going under the knife for seven hours. Who knew if I’d ever wake up? And even if I did, who was to say I wouldn’t wake up paralyzed? It was always a risk when you underwent spine surgery, although with Dr. Green I was definitely in the best hands. Either way, I was going to be out of commission for at least six months, but then my pain would be gone once and for all, and I would have my life back. Yes, the summer of 1996 would be a good one!

Of course, I had used this as a rationalization to step up my drug habit, promising both Madden and the Duchess that once my back was fixed I would push the drugs aside and become the “real Jordan” again. In fact, the only reason I wasn’t stoned right now was because I was just about to leave the office and pick up the Duchess in Old Brookville. We were heading into Manhattan for a romantic night together at the Plaza Hotel. It had been her mother’s idea—that it would be good for us to get away from all the worry that seemed to have gotten the better of us since Carter’s heart debacle. It would be an excellent chance to rebond.

“Listen, Steve,” I said, forcing a smile, “I already have enough stock options and so do you. And we can always print more for ourselves, if we get the urge.” I let out a great yawn. “Anyway, do whatever the fuck you want. I’m too tired to argue about it right now.”

“You look like shit,” said Steve. “I mean that in a loving way. I’m worried about you, and so is your wife. You gotta stop with the Ludes and coke or you’re gonna kill yourself. You’re hearing it from someone who knows. I was almost as bad as you”—he paused as if searching for the right words—“but I wasn’t as rich as you, so I couldn’t sink as deep.” He paused again. “Or perhaps I sank just as deep, but it happened a whole lot quicker. But with you it could drag on for a long time, because of all your money. Anyway, I’m begging you—you gotta stop or else it’s not gonna end well. It never does.”

“Point taken,” I said sincerely. “You have my promise that as soon as I get my back fixed I’m done for good.”

Steve nodded approvingly, but the look in his eyes so much as said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

The brand-new, pearl-white, twelve-cylinder, 450-horsepower Ferrari Testarossa screamed like an F-15 on afterburners as I punched down the clutch and slapped the stick into fourth gear. Just like that another mile of northwestern Queens zipped by at a hundred twenty miles an hour, as I weaved in and out of traffic on the Cross Island Parkway with a joint of premium-grade sinsemilla dangling from my mouth. Our destination was the Plaza Hotel. With one finger on the wheel, I turned to a terrified Duchess and said, “Don’t you just love this car?”

“It’s a piece of shit,” she muttered, “and I’m gonna fucking kill you if you don’t put out that joint and slow down! In fact, if you don’t, I’m not gonna have sex with you tonight.”

In less than five seconds the Ferrari was doing sixty and I was putting the joint out. After all, I hadn’t had sex with the Duchess since two weeks before Carter was born, so it had been over two months. Admittedly, after seeing her on the delivery table with her pussy looking big enough to hide Jimmy Hoffa, I hadn’t been too much in the mood. And the fact that I’d been consuming an average of twelve Ludes a day, along with enough coke to send a band marching from Queens to China, hadn’t done wonders for my sex drive.

And then there was the Duchess. She had stayed true to her word: Despite Carter remaining perfectly healthy, she was still on edge. Perhaps two nights at the Plaza Hotel would do us some good. I took one eye off the road and replied, “I’ll gladly keep the speedometer below sixty, if you agree to fuck my brains out for the entire night; deal?”

The Duchess smiled. “It’s a deal, but first you gotta take me to Barneys and then to Bergdorfs. After that, I’m all yours.”

Yes, I thought, tonight was going to be a very good night. All I had to do was make it through those two overpriced torture chambers and then I’d be home free. And, of course, I’d keep it under sixty.

Barneys had been nice enough to rope off the top floor for us, and I was sitting in a leather armchair, sipping Dom Perignon, while the Duchess tried on outfit after outfit—spinning and twirling deliciously, pretending she was back in her modeling days. After her sixth spin, I caught a pleasant glimpse of her loamy loins, and thirty seconds later I was following her into the dressing room. Once inside, I attacked. In less than ten seconds I had her back against the wall and her dress hiked up above her waist and I was deep inside her. I was pounding her against the wall as we moaned and groaned, making passionate love to each other.

Two hours later, just after seven, we were walking through the revolving door of the Plaza Hotel. It was my favorite hotel in New York, despite the fact that it was owned by Donald Trump. Actually, I had a lot of respect for the Donald; after all, any man (even a billionaire) who can walk around town with that fucking hairdo and still get laid by the most gorgeous women in the world gives new meaning to the concept of being a man of power. Anyway, trailing us were two bellmen, holding a dozen or so shopping bags with $150,000 of women’s clothing inside. On the Duchess’s left wrist was a brand-new $40,000 Cartier watch studded with diamonds. So far, we’d had sex in three different department-store dressing rooms, and the night was still young.

But, alas, once inside the Plaza, things began to quickly go downhill. Standing behind the front desk was a rather pleasant-looking blonde in her early thirties. She smiled and said, “Back so soon, Mr. Belfort! Welcome! It’s good to see you again!” Cheery, cheery, cheery!

The Duchess was a few feet to the right, staring at her new watch and, thankfully, still a bit wobbly from the Lude I’d convinced her to take. I looked at the check-in blonde with panic in my eyes and started shaking my head rapidly, as if to say, “Good God, my wife is with me! Pipe the fuck down!”

With a great smile, the blonde said, “We have you staying in your usual suite, on the—”

Cutting her off: “Okay then! That’s perfect. I’ll just sign right here! Thank you!” I grabbed my room key and yanked the Duchess toward the elevator. “Come on, honey; let’s go. I need you!”

“You’re ready to do it again?” she asked, giggling.

Thank God for the Ludes! I thought. A sober Duchess would never miss a trick. In fact, she’d already be swinging. “Are you kidding me?” I replied. “I’m always ready with you!”

Just then the resident midget came scampering by, in a lime-green Plaza outfit with gold buttons running up the front and a matching green cap. “Welcome back!” croaked the midget.

I smiled and nodded and kept pulling the Duchess toward the elevator. The two bellmen were still trailing us, carrying all our shopping bags, which I had insisted we bring to the room so she could try everything on for me again.

Inside the room, I tipped each bellman one hundred dollars and swore them to secrecy. The moment they left, the Duchess and I jumped on the king-size bed and started rolling around and giggling.

And then the phone rang.

The two of us looked at the phone with sinking hearts. No one knew we were here except Janet and Nadine’s mother, who was watching Carter. Christ! It could only be bad news. I knew it in my very heart. I knew it in my very soul. After the third ring I said, “Maybe it’s the front desk.”

I reached over and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Jordan, it’s Suzanne. You and Nadine need to come home right now. Carter has a hundred-and-five fever; he’s not moving.”

I looked at the Duchess. She was staring at me, waiting for the news. I didn’t know what to say. Over the last six weeks she’d been as close to the edge as I’d ever seen her. This would be the crushing blow—the death of our newborn son. “We need to leave right now, sweetie. Carter’s burning up with fever; your mom said he’s not moving.”

There were no tears from my wife. She just closed her eyes tightly and compressed her lips and started nodding. It was over now. We both knew it. For whatever reason, God didn’t want this innocent child in the world. Just why, I couldn’t figure out. But right now there was no time for tears. We needed to go home and say good-bye to our son.

Tears would come later. Rivers of them.

The Ferrari hit 125 miles per hour as we crossed over the Queens–Long Island border. This time, though, the Duchess’s take on things was slightly different. “Go faster! Please! We have to get him to the hospital before it’s too late!”

I nodded and punched down the accelerator, and the Testarossa took off like a rocket. Within three seconds the needle was pegged at 140 and still climbing—we were passing cars doing seventy-five as if they were standing still. Just why we’d told Suzanne not to take Carter to the hospital I wasn’t quite sure, although it had something to do with wanting to see our son at home one last time.

In no time we were pulling into the driveway; the Duchess was running to the front door before the Ferrari had even come to a stop. I looked at my watch: It was 7:45 p.m. It was usually a forty-five-minute ride from the Plaza Hotel to Pin Oak Court: I had made it in seventeen minutes.

On our way back from the city, the Duchess spoke to Carter’s pediatrician on her cell phone, and the prognosis was horrific. At Carter’s age, an extreme fever accompanied by lack of movement pointed to spinal meningitis. There were two types: bacterial and viral. Both could be deadly, but the difference was that if he made it through the initial stages of viral meningitis, he would make a complete recovery. With bacterial meningitis, however, he would most likely live out the rest of his life plagued with blindness, deafness, and mental retardation. The thought was too much to bear.

I had always wondered how a parent learns to love a child who suffers from such things. Occasionally, I would see a small child who was mentally retarded playing in the park. It was a heart-wrenching affair—to watch the parents doing their best to create even the slightest bit of normalcy or happiness for their child. And I had always been awed by the tremendous love they showed their child in spite of it all—in spite of the embarrassment they might feel; in spite of the guilt they might feel; and in spite of the obvious burden it placed upon their own lives.

Could I really do that? Could I really rise to the occasion? Of course, it was easy to say I would. But words are cheap. To love a child whom you never really got to know, whom you never really had the chance to bond with…I could only pray that God would give me the strength to be that sort of man—a good man—and, indeed, a true man of power. I had no doubt my wife could do it. She seemed to have an unnaturally close connection to Carter, as he did to her. It was the way things had been between myself and Chandler, from the time she was old enough to be self-aware. Even now, in fact, when Chandler was inconsolable, it was always Daddy to the rescue.

And Carter, at less than two months old, was already responding to Nadine in that very miraculous way. It was as if her very presence calmed him, and soothed him, and made him feel that everything was just as it should be. One day I would be that close with my son; yes, if God would give me the chance, I most certainly would be.

By the time I made it through the front door, the Duchess already had Carter in her arms, swaddled in a blue blanket. Rocco Night had pulled the Range Rover to the front, ready to rush us to the hospital. As we headed out to the car I put the back of my hand to Carter’s tiny forehead and was completely taken aback. He was literally burning up with fever. He was still breathing, albeit barely. There was no movement; he was stiff as a board.

On the way to the hospital the Duchess and I sat in the back of the Range Rover, and Suzanne sat in the front passenger seat. Rocco was an ex-NYPD detective, so red lights and speed limits were lost on him. And given the circumstances it was appropriate. I dialed Dr. Green, in Florida, but he wasn’t home. Then I called my parents and told them to meet us at North Shore Hospital, in Manhasset, which was five minutes closer than Long Island Jewish. The rest of the ride was spent in silence; there were still no tears.

We ran into the emergency room, the Duchess leading the charge, with Carter cradled in her arms. Carter’s pediatrician had already called the hospital, so they were waiting for us. We ran past a waiting room full of expressionless people, and in less than a minute Carter was on an examining table, being wiped down with a liquid that smelled like rubbing alcohol.

A young-looking doctor with bushy eyebrows said to us, “It looks like spinal meningitis. We need your authorization to give him a spinal tap. It’s a very low-risk procedure, but there is always the chance of an infection or—”

“Just give him the fucking spinal tap!” snapped the Duchess.

The doctor nodded, seeming not the least bit insulted over my wife’s use of language. She was entitled.

And then we waited. Whether it was ten minutes or two hours, it was impossible to say. Somewhere along the way his fever broke, dropping to 102. Then he started crying uncontrollably. It was a high-pitched, ungodly shriek, impossible to describe. I wondered if it was the sound an infant makes as he’s being robbed of his very faculties, as if instinctively he was crying out in anguish, aware of the terrible fate that had befallen him.

The Duchess and I were sitting in light-blue plastic chairs in the waiting room, leaning against each other, hanging on by a thread. We were accompanied by my parents and Suzanne. Sir Max was pacing back and forth, smoking cigarettes in spite of the no-smoking sign posted on the wall; I pitied the fool who would ask him to put it out. My mother was sitting beside me, in tears. I had never seen her look so terrible. Suzanne was sitting beside her daughter, no longer talking about conspiracies. It was one thing for a baby to have a hole in his heart; it could be patched. But it was quite another for a child to grow up deaf, dumb, and blind.

Just then the doctor emerged through a pair of automatic double doors. He was wearing green hospital scrubs and a neutral expression. The Duchess and I popped up out of our chairs and ran over to him. He said, “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Belfort; the spinal tap came back positive. Your son has meningitis. It—”

I cut off the doctor: “Is it viral or bacterial?” I grabbed my wife’s hand and squeezed it, praying for viral.

The doctor took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s bacterial,” he said sadly. “I’m very sorry. We were all praying it would be viral, but the test is conclusive. We checked the results three times and there’s no mistake.” The doctor took another deep breath and then plowed on: “We’ve been able to get his fever down to a little over a hundred, so it looks like he’s gonna make it. But with bacterial meningitis there’s significant damage to the central nervous system. It’s too soon to say exactly how much and where, but it usually involves a loss of sight and hearing and”—he paused, as if he were searching for the right words—“some loss of mental function. I’m very sorry. Once he’s out of the acute stages we’ll need to call in some specialists to assess how much damage was actually done. Right now, though, all we can do is pump him with high doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics to kill the bacteria. At this point, we’re not even sure what bacteria it is; it seems to be a rare organism, not typically found in meningitis. Our head of infectious disease has already been contacted, and he’s on his way to the hospital right now.”

In a state of absolute disbelief, I asked, “How did he contract it?”

“There’s no telling,” replied the young doctor. “But he’s being moved to the isolation ward, on the fifth floor. He’ll be quarantined until we get to the bottom of this. Other than you and your wife, no one can see him.”

I looked at the Duchess. Her mouth was hanging open. She seemed to be frozen solid, staring off into the distance. And then she fainted.

Up in the fifth-floor isolation unit, it was sheer bedlam. Carter was flailing his arms wildly, kicking and screeching, and the Duchess was pacing back and forth, crying hysterically. Tears were running down her face and her skin was an ashen gray.

One of the doctors said to her, “We’re trying to get an IV in your son, but he won’t remain still. At this age it can be very difficult to find a vein, so I think we’re just going to stick the needle through his skull. It’s the only way.” His tone was rather nonchalant, entirely unsympathetic.

The Duchess was right on him. “You motherfucker! Do you know who my husband is, you bastard? You go back there right now and get an IV in his arm or I’ll fucking kill you myself before my husband has the chance to pay someone to do it!”

The doctor froze in horror, mouth agape. He was no match for the sheer ferocity of the Duchess of Bay Ridge. “Well, what the fuck are you waiting for? Go!”

The doctor nodded and ran back over to Carter’s hospital crib, lifting up his tiny arm to search for another vein.

Just then my cell phone rang. “Hello,” I said tonelessly.

“Jordan! It’s Barth Green. I just got all your messages. I’m so sorry for you and Nadine. Are they sure it’s bacterial meningitis?”

“Yes,” I replied, “they’re sure. They’re trying to get an IV in him, to pump him with antibiotics, but he’s going crazy right now. He’s kicking and screaming and flailing his arms—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Barth Green, cutting me off. “Did you just say he’s flailing his arms?”

“Yes, he’s going absolutely crazy, even as we speak. He’s been inconsolable ever since his fever broke. It sounds like he’s possessed by an evil—”

“Well, you can relax, Jordan, because your son doesn’t have meningitis, viral or bacterial. If he did, his fever would still be a hundred and six, and he’d be as stiff as a board. He probably has a bad cold. Infants have a tendency to spike abnormally high fevers. He’ll be fine in the morning.”

I was bowled over. How could Barth Green be so irresponsible as to create false hope like that? He hadn’t even seen Carter, and the spinal tap was conclusive; they’d checked the results three times. I took a deep breath and said, “Listen, Barth, I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but the spinal tap showed that he has some sort of rare org—”

Cutting me off again: “I really don’t give a shit what the test showed. In fact, I’m willing to bet it was a contaminant in the sample. That’s the problem with these emergency rooms: They’re good for broken bones and an occasional gunshot wound, but that’s about it. And this, well, this is absolutely egregious for them to have worried you like this.”

I could hear him sigh over the phone. “Listen, Jordan, you know what I deal with each day with spinal paralysis, so I’ve been forced to become an expert on giving bad news to people. But this is complete horseshit! Your son has a cold.”

I was taken aback. I had never heard Barth Green utter so much as a single curse. Could he possibly be right? Was it plausible that from his living room in Florida he could make a more accurate diagnosis than a team of doctors who were standing at my son’s bedside using the world’s most advanced medical equipment?

Just then Barth said in a sharp tone: “Put Nadine on the phone!”

I walked over and handed the phone to the Duchess. “Here, it’s Barth. He wants to speak to you. He’s says Carter’s fine and all the doctors are crazy.”

She took the phone, and I walked over to the crib and stared down at Carter. They’d finally been able to get an IV going in his right arm, and he had calmed down somewhat—only whimpering now and shifting uncomfortably in his crib. He really was handsome, I thought, and those eyelashes…Even now they stood out regally.

A minute later the Duchess walked over to the crib and leaned over and put the back of her hand to Carter’s forehead. Sounding very confused, she said, “He seems cool now. But how could all the doctors be wrong? And how could the spinal tap be wrong?”

I put my arm around the Duchess and held her close to me. “Why don’t we take turns sleeping here? This way one of us will always be with Channy.”

“No,” she replied, “I’m not leaving this hospital without my son. I don’t care if I have to stay here a month. I’m not leaving him, not ever.”

And for three straight days my wife slept by Carter’s bedside, never leaving the room once. On that third afternoon, as we sat in the backseat of the limousine on our way back to Old Brookville, with Carter James Belfort between us and the words It was a contaminant in the sample ringing pleasantly in both our ears, I found myself in awe of Dr. Barth Green.

First I’d seen him shake Elliot Lavigne out of a coma; now, eighteen months later, he’d done this. It made me feel much more comfortable that he’d be the one standing over me next week with a scalpel in his hand—cutting into my very spine. Then I would have my life back.

And then I could finally get off drugs.

^{CHAPTER 33} REPRIEVES

(Three Weeks Later)

Just when I actually woke from my back surgery I’m still not sure. It was on October 15, 1995, sometime in the early afternoon. I remember opening my eyes and muttering something like “Uhhhh, fuck! I feel like shit!” Then all of a sudden I started vomiting profusely, and each time I vomited I felt this terrible shooting pain ricocheting through every neural fiber of my body. I was in the recovery room in the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, and I was hooked up to a drip that released titrated doses of pure morphine into my bloodstream each time I pushed a button. I remember feeling deeply saddened that I had to go through a seven-hour operation to get this sort of cheap high without breaking the law.

The Duchess was hovering over me, and she said, “You did great, honey! Barth said everything’s gonna be fine!” I nodded and drifted off into a sublime state of morphine-induced narcosis.

Then I was home. It was perhaps a week later, although the days seemed to be melting into one another. Alan Chemical-tob was helpful—dropping off five hundred Quaaludes my first day home from the hospital. They were all gone by Thanksgiving. It was a feat of great manhood, and I was rather proud of it—to average eighteen Ludes a day, when a single Lude could knock out a two-hundred-pound Navy SEAL for up to eight hours.

The Cobbler came to visit and told me that he’d worked things out with the Drizzler, who had agreed to leave quietly with only a small fraction of his stock options. Then the Drizzler came over and told me that one day he would find the Cobbler in a dark alley and strangle him with his own ponytail. Danny visited, too, and told me that he was just about to cut a deal with the states, so there were definitely Twenty Years of Blue Skies ahead. Then Wigwam came over and told me that Danny had lost touch with reality—that there was no deal with the states—and that, he, Wigwam, was out hunting for a new brokerage firm, where he could set up shop just as soon as Stratton imploded.

As Stratton continued its downward spiral, Biltmore and Monroe Parker continued to thrive. By Christmas, they had completely cut ties with Stratton, although they continued to pay me a royalty of $1 million on each new issue. Meanwhile, the Chef stopped by every few weeks—giving me regular updates on the Patricia Mellor debacle, which was still in the process of winding down. Patricia’s heirs, Tiffany and Julie, were now dealing with the Inland Revenue Service, Britain’s equivalent of the IRS. There were some faint rumblings that the FBI was looking into the matter, but no subpoenas had been issued. The Chef assured me that everything would end up okay. He had been in touch with the Master Forger, who had been questioned by both the Swiss and United States governments, and he’d stuck to our cover story like glue. In consequence, Agent Coleman had hit a dead end.

And then there was the family: Carter had finally shaken off his rocky start and was thriving beautifully. He was absolutely gorgeous, with a terrific head of blond peach fuzz, perfectly even features, big blue eyes, and the longest eyelashes this side of anywhere. Chandler, the baby genius, was two and a half now, and she had fallen deeply in love with her brother. She liked to pretend she was the mommy—feeding him his bottle and supervising Gwynne and Erica as they changed his diaper. Chandler had been my best company, as I shuttled myself between the royal bedchamber and the basement’s wraparound couch, doing nothing but watching television and consuming massive quantities of Quaaludes. In consequence, Chandler had become a Jedi Master at understanding slurred speech, which would stand her in good stead, I figured, if she happened to end up working with stroke victims. Either way, she spent the greater part of her day asking me when I would be well enough to start carrying her around again. I told her it would be soon, although I strongly doubted that I would ever make a full recovery.

The Duchess had been wonderful too—in the beginning. But as Thanksgiving turned into Christmas and Christmas turned into New Year’s, she began to lose patience. I was wearing a full body cast and it was driving me up the wall, so I figured as her husband it was my obligation to drive her up the wall too. But the body cast was the least of my problems—the real nightmare was the pain, which was worse than before. In fact, not only was I still plagued with the original pain, there was a new pain now, which ran deeper, into the very marrow of my spine. Any sudden movement sent waves of fire washing through my very spinal canal. Dr. Green had told me that the pain would subside, but it seemed to be growing worse.

By early January I had sunk to new levels of hopelessness—and the Duchess put her foot down. She told me that I had to slow down with the drugs and at least try to resume some semblance of being a functioning human being. I responded with a complaint about how the New York winter was wreaking havoc on my thirty-three-year-old body. My bones, after all, had become very creaky in my old age. She recommended we spend the winter in Florida, but I told her Florida was for old people, and in spite of feeling old, I was still young at heart.

So the Duchess took matters into her own hands, and next thing I knew I was living in Beverly Hills, atop a great mountain that overlooked the city of Los Angeles. Of course, the menagerie had to come, too, to continue Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional—and for the bargain price of $25,000 a month I rented the mansion of Peter Morton, of Hard Rock Café fame, and settled in for the winter. The aspiring everything quickly reached into her bag of former aspirations, pulling out the one marked aspiring interior decorator, and by the time we moved in there was $1 million worth of brand-new furniture in the house, all arranged just so. The only problem was that the house was so enormous, perhaps 30,000 square feet, that I was considering buying one of those motorized scooters to get from one side of the house to the other.

On a separate note, I quickly realized that Los Angeles was merely a pseudonym for Hollywood, so I took a few million dollars and started making movies. It took about three weeks to realize that everyone in Hollywood (including me) was slightly batty, and one of their favorite things to do was: lunch. My partners in the movie business were a small family of bigoted South African Jews, who had been former investment-banking clients of Stratton. They were an interesting lot, with bodies like penguins and noses like needles.

In the third week of May my body cast came off. Fabulous! I thought. My pain was still excruciating, but it was time to start physical therapy. Maybe that would help. But during my second week of therapy I felt something pop, and a week later I was back in New York, walking with a cane. I spent a week in different hospitals, taking tests, and every last one of them came back negative. According to Barth I was suffering from a dysfunction of my body’s pain-management system; there was nothing mechanically wrong with my back, nothing that could be operated on.

Fair enough, I thought. No choice but to crawl up to the royal bedchamber and die. A Lude overdose would be the best way to go, I figured, or at least the most appropriate since they had always been my drug of choice. But there were other options too. My daily drug regimen included 90 milligrams of morphine, for pain; 40 milligrams of oxycodone, for good measure; a dozen Soma, to relax my muscles; 8 milligrams of Xanax, for anxiety; 20 milligrams of Klonopin, because it sounded strong; 30 milligrams of Ambien, for insomnia; twenty Quaaludes, because I liked Quaaludes; a gram or two of coke, for balancing purposes; 20 milligrams of Prozac, to ward off depression; 10 milligrams of Paxil, to ward off panic attacks; 8 milligrams of Zofran, for nausea; 200 milligrams of Fiorinal, for migraines; 80 milligrams of Valium, to relax my nerves; two heaping tablespoons of Senokot, to reduce constipation; 20 milligrams of Salagen, for dry mouth; and a pint of Macallan single-malt scotch, to wash it all down.

A month later, on the morning of June 20, I was lying in the royal bedchamber, in a semivegetative state, when Janet’s voice came over the intercom. “Barth Green is on line one,” said the voice.

“Take a message,” I muttered. “I’m in a meeting.”

“Very funny,” said the obnoxious voice. “He said he needs to speak to you now. Either you pick up the phone or I’m coming in there and picking it up for you. And put down the coke vial.”

I was taken aback. How had she known that? I looked around the room for a pinhole camera, but I didn’t see one. Were the Duchess and Janet surveilling me? Of all the intrusions! I let out a weary sigh and put down my coke vial and picked up the phone. “Hewoah,” I muttered, sounding like Elmer Fudd after a tough night out on the town.

A sympathetic tone: “Hi, Jordan, it’s Barth Green. How ya holding up?”

“Never better,” I croaked. “How about you?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” said the good doctor. “Listen, we haven’t spoken in a few weeks, but I’ve been speaking to Nadine every day and she’s very worried about you. She says you haven’t left the room in a week.”

“No, no,” I said. “I’m fine, Barth. I’m just catching my second wind.”

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Barth said, “How are you, Jordan? How are you really?”

I let out another great sigh. “The truth is, Barth, that I give up. I’m fucking done. I can’t take the pain anymore; this is no way to live. I know it’s not your fault, so don’t think I hold it against you or anything. I know you tried your best. I guess it’s just the hand I was dealt, or maybe it’s payback. Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

Barth came right back with: “Maybe you’re willing to give up, but I’m not. I won’t give up until you’re healed. And you will be healed. Now, I want you to get your ass out of bed right now, and go into your children’s rooms and take a good hard look at them. Maybe you’re not willing to fight for yourself anymore, but how about fighting for them? In case you haven’t noticed, your children are growing up without a father. When’s the last time you played with them?”

I tried fighting back the tears, but it was impossible. “I can’t take it anymore,” I said, snuffling. “The pain is overwhelming. It cuts into my bones. It’s impossible to live this way. I miss Chandler so much, and I hardly even know Carter. But I’m in constant pain. The only time it doesn’t hurt is the first two minutes I wake up. Then the pain comes roaring back, and it consumes me. I’ve tried everything, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“There’s a reason I called this morning,” said Barth. “There’s a new medication I want you to try. It’s not a narcotic, and it has no side effects to speak of. Some people are having amazing results with it—people like you, with nerve damage.” He paused, and I could hear him take a deep breath. “Listen to me, Jordan: There’s nothing structurally wrong with your back. Your fusion is fine. The problem is you have a damaged nerve, and it’s misfiring—or firing for no reason at all, to be more accurate. You see, in a healthy person, pain serves as a warning signal, to let the body know there’s something wrong. But sometimes the system gets short-circuited, usually after a severe trauma. And then even after the injury is healed, the nerves keep firing. I suspect that’s what’s happening with you.”

“What kind of medication is this one?” I asked skeptically.

“It’s an epilepsy drug, to treat seizures, but it works for chronic pain too. I’ll be honest with you, Jordan: It’s still somewhat of a long-shot. It’s not approved by the FDA for pain management, and all the evidence is anecdotal. You’ll be one of the first people in New York taking it for pain. I already called it in to your pharmacy. You should have it in an hour.”

“What’s it called?”

“Lamictal,” he replied. “And like I said, it has no side effects, so you won’t even know you’re on it. I want you to take two pills before you go to sleep tonight, and then we’ll see what we see.”

The following morning I woke up a little after 8:30 a.m., and, as usual, I was alone in bed. The Duchess was already at the stables, probably sneezing like a wild banshee. By noon, she would be back home, still sneezing. Then she would go downstairs to her maternity showroom and design some more clothes. One day, I figured, she might even try to sell them.

So here I was, staring up at the fabulously expensive white silk canopy, waiting for my pain to start. It’d been six years now of intractable agony at the very paws of that mangy mutt Rocky. But it wasn’t shooting down my left leg, and there was no burning sensation in the lower half of my body. I swung my feet off the side of the bed and stood up straight, stretching my arms to the sky. I still felt nothing. I did a few side bends—still nothing. It wasn’t that I felt less pain; I felt no pain whatsoever. It was as if someone had flipped off a switch and literally shut my pain off. It was gone.

So I just stood there in my boxer shorts for what seemed like a very long time. Then I closed my eyes and bit down on my lower lip and started to cry. I went over to the side of the bed, rested my forehead on the edge of the mattress, and continued to cry. I had given up six years of my life to this pain, the last three of which had been so severe that it’d literally sucked the life out of me. I had become a drug addict. I had become depressed. And I had done things while I was high that were unconscionable. Without the drugs I would have never let Stratton get so out of control.

How much had my drug addiction fueled my life on the dark side? As a sober man, would I have ever slept with all those prostitutes? Would I have ever smuggled all that money to Switzerland? Would I have ever allowed Stratton’s sales practices to spiral so far out of control? Admittedly, it was easy to blame everything on drugs, but, of course, I was still responsible for my own actions. My only consolation was that I was living a more honest life now—building Steve Madden Shoes.

Just then the door swung open, and it was Chandler. She said, “Good morning, Daddy! I came to kiss away your boo-boo again.” She leaned over and kissed my lower back, once on each side, and then she planted one kiss directly on my spine, just over my scar.

I turned around, tears still in my eyes, and took a moment to regard my daughter. She wasn’t a baby anymore. While I’d been lost in my pain she’d given up her diaper. Her face was more chiseled now, and in spite of being less than three, she no longer spoke like a baby. I smiled at her and said, “Guess what, thumbkin? You kissed away Daddy’s boo-boo! It’s all gone now.”

That got her attention. “It is?” she said, in a wondrous tone.

“Yeah, baby, it is.” I grabbed her under her arms and stood up straight, lifting her over my head. “You see, baby? Daddy’s pain is all gone now. Isn’t that great?”

Very excited: “Will you play with me outside today?”

“You bet I will!” And I swung her over my head in a great circle. “From now on I’ll play with you every day! But first I gotta go find Mommy and tell her the good news.”

In a knowing tone: “She’s riding Leapyear, Daddy.”

“Well, that’s where I’m going, then, but first let’s go see Carter and give him a big kiss, okay?” She nodded eagerly and off we went.

When the Duchess saw me, she fell off her horse. Literally.

The horse had gone one way and she had gone the other, and now she was lying on the ground, sneezing and wheezing. I told her of my miraculous recovery, and we kissed—sharing a wonderful, carefree moment together. Then I said something that would turn out to be very ironic, which was: “I think we should take a vacation on the yacht; it’ll be so relaxing.”

^{CHAPTER 34} TRAVELING BADLY

Ahhh, the yacht Nadine! In spite of despising the fucking boat and wishing it would sink, there was still something very sexy about tooling around the blue waters of the Mediterranean aboard a 170-foot motor yacht. In fact, all eight of us—the Duchess and I, and six of our closest friends—were in for quite a treat aboard this floating palace of mine.

Of course, one could never embark on such an inspired voyage without being properly armed, so the night before we departed I recruited one of my closest friends, Rob Lorusso, to go on a last-minute drug collection with me. Rob was the perfect man for the job; not only was he coming along on the trip but he and I also had a history with this sort of stuff—once chasing around a Federal Express truck for three hours during a raging blizzard, in a desperate search for a lost Quaalude delivery.

I had known Rob for almost fifteen years and absolutely adored him. He was my age and owned a small mom-and-pop mortgage company that did mortgages for the Strattonites. Like me, he loved his drugs, and he also had a world-class sense of humor. He wasn’t particularly handsome—about five-nine, slightly over-weight, with a fat Italian nose and a very weak chin—but, nevertheless, women loved him. He was that rare breed of man who could sit at a table with a bevy of beauties he’d never met before and fart and burp and belch and snort, and they would all say: “Oh, Rob, you’re so funny! We love you so much, Rob! Please fart on us some more!”

His fatal flaw, though, was that he was the cheapest man alive. In fact, he was so cheap that it had cost him his first marriage to a girl named Lisa, who was a dark-haired beauty with a lot of teeth. After two years of marriage, she finally got fed up with him highlighting her portion of the phone bill, and she decided to have an affair with a local playboy-type. Rob caught her in the very act, and they were divorced shortly thereafter.

From there Rob started dating heavily, but each girl had some sort of deficiency—one had more arm hair than a gorilla; another liked to be wrapped in Saran Wrap during sex, while pretending she was a corpse; another refused to have any sex but anal sex; and still another (my personal favorite) liked to put Budweiser in her Cheerios. His latest girlfriend, Shelly, would be coming along on the yacht. She was rather cute, although she looked a bit like a hush puppy. Whatever the case, she had this odd habit of walking around with a Bible and quoting obscure passages. I gave her and Rob a month.

Meanwhile, as Rob and I spent our final hours gathering essentials, the Duchess crawled around our driveway, gathering pebbles. It was her first time leaving the children, and for some inexplicable reason it put her in the mood to do arts and crafts. So she made our kids a wish-box—a very expensive women’s shoe box (in this case, the former home to a pair of $1,000 Manolo Blahniks) filled with tiny pebbles and then covered with a layer of tinfoil. On top of the tinfoil, the artful Duchess had glued two maps—one of the Italian Riviera and one of the French Riviera—as well as a dozen or so glossy pictures she’d cut out from travel magazines.

Just before we left for the airport, we went into Chandler and Carter’s playroom to say good-bye. Carter was almost a year old now and he worshipped his older sister, although not nearly as much as he worshipped his mother, who could bring him to tears if she took a shower and didn’t dry her hair before leaving the bathroom. Yes, Baby Carter liked his mother’s hair blond, and when it was damp it was much too dark for him. Even the slightest glimpse of a damp-headed Duchess would cause him to point his finger at her hair and scream at the top of his tiny lungs: “Noooooooooooooooo! Noooooooooooooooo!”

I often wondered how Carter was going to react when he found out his mother’s hair was only dyed blond, but I figured he’d work that out in therapy when he was older. Either way, at this particular moment he was in fine spirits, altogether beaming, in fact. He was staring at Chandler, who was holding court for one hundred Barbie dolls, which she’d arranged in a perfect circle around her.

The artful Duchess and I sat down on the carpet and presented our two perfect children with their perfect wish-box. “Anytime you miss Mommy and Daddy,” explained the Duchess, “all you have to do is shake this wish-box and we’ll know you’re thinking of us.” Then, to my own surprise, the artful Duchess pulled out a second wish-box, which was identical to the first, and she added, “And Mommy and Daddy will have our own wish-box too! So every time we miss you we’re gonna shake our own wish-box, and then you’ll know that we’re thinking of you too, okay?”

Chandler narrowed her eyes and took a moment to consider. “But how can I know for sure?” she asked skeptically, not buying into the wish-box program as easily as the Duchess might’ve hoped.

I smiled warmly at my daughter. “It’s easy, thumbkin. We’ll be thinking of you night and day, so anytime you think we’re thinking of you we are thinking of you! Think of it like that!”

There was silence now. I looked at the Duchess, who was staring at me with her head cocked to one side and a look on her face that said, “What the fuck did you just say?” Then I looked at Chandler, and she had her head cocked at the same angle as her mother. The girls were double-teaming me! But Carter seemed entirely unconcerned with the wish-box. He had a wry smile on his face, and he was making a cooing sound. He seemed to be taking my side in all this.

We kissed the kids good-bye, told them we loved them more than life itself, and headed for the airport. In ten days we’d see their smiling faces again.

The problems started the moment we landed in Rome.

The eight of us—the Duchess and I, Rob and Shelly, Bonnie and Ross Portnoy (childhood friends of mine), and Ophelia and Dave Ceradini (childhood friends of the Duchess)—were standing at the baggage claim at Leonardo da Vinci Airport, when an incredulous Duchess said, “I can’t believe it! George forgot to check my bags in at Kennedy. I have no clothes now!” The last few words came out as a pout.

I smiled and said, “Relax, sweetie. We’ll be like that couple who lost their bags in the American Express commercial, except we’ll spend ten times as much as they did, and we’ll be ten times higher while we’re spending it!”

Just then, Ophelia and Dave walked over to comfort the doleful Duchess. Ophelia was a dark-eyed Spanish beauty, an ugly duckling that had become a gorgeous swan. The good news was that since she’d grown up ugly as sin, she’d had no choice but to develop a great personality.

Dave was entirely average-looking, a chain-smoker who drank eight thousand cups of coffee a day. He was on the quiet side, although he could be counted on to laugh at my and Rob’s off-color jokes. Dave and Ophelia liked things to be boring; they weren’t action junkies like Rob and me.

Now Bonnie and Ross walked over to join the fun. Bonnie’s face was a mask of Valium and BuSpar, both of which she’d taken to prepare herself for the flight. Growing up, Bonnie was that nubile blonde who every kid in the neighborhood (including me) wanted to bang. But Bonnie wasn’t interested in me. Bonnie liked her boys bad (and old too). When she was sixteen, she was sleeping with a thirty-two-year-old pot smuggler, who had already served a jail term. Ten years later, when she was twenty-six, she married Ross, after he’d just gotten out of jail for dealing cocaine. In truth, Ross wasn’t really a coke dealer—just a hapless fool who’d been trying to help a friend. Still, he now qualified to bang the luscious Bonnie, who, alas, wasn’t quite as luscious as she used to be.

Anyway, Ross was a pretty good yacht guest. He was a casual drug user, an average scuba diver, a decent fisherman, and was quick to run errands if the need arose. He was short and dark, with curly black hair and a thick black mustache. Ross had a sharp tongue, although only toward Bonnie, whom he was constantly reminding of her status as a moron. Yet, above all things, Ross prided himself on being a man’s man, or at least an outdoorsman, who could brave the elements.

The Duchess still looked glum, so I said, “Come on, Nae! We’ll drop Ludes and go shopping! It’ll be like the old days. Drop and shop! Drop and shop!” I kept repeating those last three words as if they were the chorus of a song.

“I wanna speak to you in private,” said a serious Duchess, pulling me away from our guests.

“What?” I said innocently, although not feeling all too innocent. Rob and I had gotten slightly out of control on the plane, and the Duchess’s patience was wearing thin.

“I’m not happy with all the drugs you’re doing. Your back is better now, so I don’t get it.” She shook her head, as if she was disappointed in me. “I always cut you slack because of your back, but now… well, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right, honey.”

She was being rather nice about it—very calm, in fact, and altogether reasonable. So I figured I owed her a nice fat lie. “Once this trip is over, Nae, I promise I’m gonna stop. I swear to God; this is it.” I held my hand up like a Boy Scout taking an oath.

There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. “All right,” she said skeptically, “but I’m holding you to it.”

“Good, because I want you to. Now let’s go shopping!”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out three Ludes. I cracked one in half and gave it to the Duchess. “Here,” I said, “half for you, and two and a half for me.”

The Duchess took her meager dose and headed for the water fountain. I followed dutifully. On the way, though, I reached back into my pocket and pulled out two more Ludes. After all, what’s worth doing… is worth doing right.

Three hours later we were sitting in the back of a limousine, heading down a steep hill that led to Porto di Civitavecchia. The Duchess had a brand-new wardrobe, and I was so post-Luded I could barely keep my eyes open. There were two things I desperately needed: movement and a nap. I was in that rare phase of a Quaalude high called the movement phase, where you can’t stand to be in the same spot for more than a second. It’s the drug-induced equivalent of having ants in your pants.

Dave Ceradini noticed first. “Why are there whitecaps in the harbor?” He pointed his finger out the window, and all eight of us looked.

Indeed, the grayish water looked awfully rough. There were tiny whirlpools swirling this way and that.

Ophelia said to me, “Dave and I don’t like rough water. We both get seasick.”

“Me too,” said Bonnie. “Can we wait until the water calms down?”

Ross answered for me: “You’re such an imbecile, Bonnie. The boat’s a hundred seventy feet long; it can handle a bit of chop. Besides, seasickness is a state of mind.”

I needed to calm everyone’s fears. “We have seasickness patches on board,” I said confidently, “so if you get seasick, you should put one on as soon as we get on the boat.”

When we reached the bottom of the hill, I noticed that we’d all been wrong. There were no whitecaps; there were waves… Christ! I’d never seen anything like it! Inside the harbor were four-foot waves, and they seemed to be crossing over one another, in no particular direction. It was as if the wind were blowing from all four corners of the earth simultaneously.

The limo made a right turn, and there it was: the yacht Nadine, rising up majestically, above all the other yachts. God—how I hated the thing! Why the fuck had I bought it? I turned to my guests and said, “Is she gorgeous or what?”

Everyone nodded. Then Ophelia said, “Why are there waves in the harbor?”

The Duchess said, “Don’t worry, O. If it’s too rough we’ll wait it out.”

Not a fucking prayer! I thought. Movement… movement… I needed movement.

The limo stopped at the end of the dock, and Captain Marc was waiting to greet us. Next to him was John, the first mate. They both wore their Nadine outfits—white collared polo shirts, blue boating shorts, and gray canvas boating moccasins. Every article of clothing bore the Nadine logo, designed by Dave Ceradini for the bargain price of $8,000.

The Duchess gave Captain Marc a great hug. “Why is the harbor so rough?” she asked.

“There’s a storm that popped out of nowhere,” said the captain. “The seas are eight to ten feet. We should”—should—“wait ’til it dies down a bit before we head to Sardinia.”

“Fuck that!” I sputtered. “I gotta move right this fucking second, Marc.”

The Duchess was quick to rain on my parade: “We’re not going anywhere unless Captain Marc says it’s safe.”

I smiled at the safety-conscious Duchess and said, “Why don’t you go on board and cut the tags off your new clothes? We’re at sea now, honey, and I’m a god at sea!”

The Duchess rolled her eyes. “You’re a fucking idiot, and you don’t know the first thing about the sea.” She turned to the group. “Come on, girls, the sea god has spoken.” With that, all the women laughed at me. Then, in single file, they headed to the gangway and climbed aboard the yacht—following their cherished leader, the Duchess of Bay Ridge.

“I can’t sit in this harbor, Marc. I’m heavily post-Luded. How far is Sardinia?”

“About a hundred miles, but if we leave now it’s gonna take forever to get there. We’d have to go slow. You’ve got eight-foot waves, and the storms are unpredictable in this part of the Med. We’d have to batten down the hatches, tie everything down in the main salon.” He shrugged his square shoulders. “Even then we might sustain some damage to the interior—some broken plates, some vases, maybe a few glasses. We’ll make it, but I strongly advise against it.”

I looked at Rob, who compressed his lips and gave me a single nod, as if to say, “Let’s do it!” Then I said, “Let’s go for it, Marc!” I pumped my fist in the air. “It’ll be a fabulous adventure, one for the record books!”

Captain Marc smiled and started shaking his rectangular head. And we climbed aboard and prepared to shove off.

Fifteen minutes later, I was lying on a very comfortable mattress atop the yacht’s flybridge, while a dark-haired stewardess named Michelle served me a Bloody Mary. Like the rest of the crew, she wore the Nadine uniform.

“Here you go, Mr. Belfort!” said Michelle, smiling. “Can I get you anything else?”

“Yes, Michelle. I have a rare condition that requires me to drink one of these every fifteen minutes. And those are doctor’s orders, Michelle, so please set your egg timer or else I might wind up in the hospital.”

She giggled. “Whatever you say, Mr. Belfort.” She started to walk away.

“Michelle!” I screamed, in a voice loud enough to cut through the wind and the rumble of the twin caterpillar engines.

Michelle turned to me, and I said, “If I fall asleep, don’t wake me up. Just keep bringing up the Bloody Marys every fifteen minutes and line them up next to me. I’ll drink them when I wake up, okay?”

She gave me the thumbs-up sign and then descended a very steep flight of stairs that led to the deck below, where the helicopter was stowed.

I looked at my watch. It was one p.m., Rome time. At this very moment, inside my stomach sac, four Ludes were dissolving. In fifteen minutes I would be tingling away; fifteen minutes after that I’d be fast asleep. How relaxing, I thought, as I downed the Bloody Mary. Then I took a few deep breaths and shut my eyes. How very relaxing!

I woke up to the feeling of raindrops, but the sky was blue. That confused me. I looked to my right, and there were eight Bloody Marys lined up, all filled to the rim. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. There was a ferocious wind howling. Then I felt more raindrops. What the fuck? I opened my eyes. Was the Duchess pouring water on me again? She was nowhere in sight, though. I was alone on the flybridge.

All of a sudden I felt the yacht dipping down in a most unsettling way until it reached a forty-five-degree angle, and then out of nowhere I heard a wild crashing sound. A moment later a thick wall of gray water came rising up over the side of the yacht, curled over the top of the flybridge, poured down—soaking me from head to toe.

What on God’s earth? The flybridge was a good thirty feet above the water and—oh, shit, oh, shit—the yacht was dipping down again. Now I was being thrown on my side, and the Bloody Marys went flying on top of me.

I sat up straight and looked over the side and—holy fucking shit! The waves had to be twenty feet high, and they were thicker than buildings. Then I lost my balance. I was flying off the mattress now onto the teak deck, and the Bloody Mary glasses followed me, shattering into a thousand pieces.

I crawled over to the side, grabbed hold of a chrome railing, and pulled myself up. I looked behind the boat and—Holy shit! The Chandler! We were towing the Chandler, a forty-two foot dive-boat, by two thick dock ropes, and it was disappearing and reappearing in the peaks and troughs of these enormous waves.

I got back on all fours and started crawling over to the stairs. The yacht felt like it was breaking apart. By the time I’d crawled down the stairway to the main deck, I’d been soaked and banged around mercilessly. I stumbled into the main salon. The entire group was sitting on the leopard-print carpet, huddled in a tight circle. They were holding hands and wearing life vests. When the Duchess saw me, she broke from the group and crawled toward me. But then all at once the boat began tipping wildly to port.

“Watch out!” I screamed, watching the Duchess roll across the carpet and smash into a wall. A moment later an antique Chinese vase went flying across the main salon and smashed into a window above her head, shattering into a thousand pieces.

Then the boat righted itself. I dropped to my hands and knees and quickly crawled over to her. “Are you all right, baby?”

She gritted her teeth at me. “You… you fucking sea god! I’m gonna kill you if we make it off this fucking boat! We’re all about to die! What’s going on? Why are the waves so big?” She stared at me with her enormous blue eyes.

“I don’t know,” I said defensively. “I was sleeping.”

The Duchess was incredulous. “You were sleeping? How the fuck could you sleep through this? We’re about to sink! Ophelia and Dave are deathly ill. So are Ross and Bonnie…and Shelly too!”

Just then Rob came crawling over with a great smile on his face. “Is this a fucking rip or what? I always wanted to die at sea.”

The doleful Duchess: “Shut the fuck up, Rob! This is as much your fault as my husband’s. You two are complete idiots.”

“Where are the Ludes?” sputtered Rob. “I refuse to die sober.”

I nodded in agreement. “I have some in my pocket… Here,” and I reached into my shorts pocket, pulled out a handful of Ludes, and handed him four.

“Give me one of those!” snapped the Duchess. “I need to relax.”

I smiled at the Duchess. She was a good egg, my wife! “Here you go, sweetie.” I handed her a Lude.

I looked up and Ross, the brave outdoorsman, was crawling over. He looked terrified. “Oh, Jesus,” he muttered, “I’ve gotta get off this boat. I have a daughter. I…I…I can’t stop vomiting! Please, get me off this boat.”

Rob said to me, “Let’s go up to the bridge and see what’s going on.”

I looked at the Duchess. “You wait here, honey. I’ll be right back.”

“Fuck that! I’m coming with you.”

I nodded. “Okay, let’s go.”

“I’ll stay down here,” said the brave outdoorsman, and he started crawling back to the group with his tail between his legs. I looked at Rob, and we both started laughing. Then the three of us began crawling toward the bridge. On the way, we passed a well-stocked bar. Rob stalled in mid-crawl and said, “I think we should do some shots of tequila.”

I looked at the Duchess. She nodded yes. I said to Rob, “Go get the bottle.” Thirty seconds later Rob came crawling back, holding a bottle of tequila. He unscrewed the top and handed it to the Duchess, who took a giant swig. What a woman! I thought. Then Rob and I took swigs.

Rob screwed the top back on and threw the bottle against a wall. It smashed into a dozen pieces. He smiled. “I always wanted to do something like that.”

The Duchess and I exchanged looks.

A short flight of stairs led from the main deck to the bridge. As we made our way up, two deckhands named Bill came barreling down, literally jumping over us. “What’s going on?” I yelled.

“The diving platform just ripped off,” screamed a Bill. “The main salon is gonna flood if we don’t secure the rear doors.” And they kept running.

The bridge was a beehive of activity. It was a small space, perhaps eight by twelve feet, and it had a very low ceiling. Captain Marc was holding on to the ship’s antique wooden steering wheel with both hands. Every few seconds he would take his right hand off the wheel and work the two throttles, trying to keep the bow pointed in the direction of the oncoming waves. John, the first mate, was standing next to him. He was grasping a metal pole with his left hand to maintain his balance. With his right he held a pair of binoculars to his eyes. Three stewardesses were sitting on a wooden bench, their arms interlocked and tears in their eyes. Through wild bursts of static I heard the radio blaring: Gale warning! This is a gale warning!

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked Captain Marc.

He shook his head gravely. “We’re fucked now! This storm is only getting worse. The waves are twenty feet and building.”

“But the sky’s still blue,” I said innocently. “I don’t get it.”

An angry Duchess said, “Who gives a flying fuck about the color of the sky? Can’t you turn us around, Marc?”

“No way,” he said. “If we try to turn we’re gonna get broadsided and tip over.”

“Can you keep us afloat?” I asked. “Or should you call Mayday?”

“We’ll make it,” he replied, “but it’s gonna get ugly. The blue skies are about to disappear. We’re heading into the belly of a Force Eight gale.”

Twenty minutes later I felt the Ludes taking hold. I whispered to Rob, “Give me some blow.” I looked at the Duchess to see if she’d busted me.

Apparently she had. She shook her head and said, “You two are off your fucking rockers, I swear.”

But it was two hours later—when the waves were thirty feet or better—that the shit really hit the fan. Captain Marc said, in the tone of the doomed: “Oh, shit, don’t tell me…” Then an instant later he screamed, “Rogue wave! Hold on!”

Rogue wave? What the fuck was that? I found out a second later when I looked out the window—and everyone on the bridge screamed at once: “Holy shit! Rogue wave!”

It had to be sixty feet high, and it was closing fast.

“Hold on!” screamed Captain Marc. With my right hand, I grabbed the Duchess around her tiny waist and pulled her close to my body. She smelled good, the Duchess, even now.

All at once the boat began dipping at an impossibly steep angle, until it was pointing almost straight down. Captain Marc jammed the throttles to full power, and the boat jerked forward and we started rising up the face of the rogue wave. Suddenly the boat seemed to stop on a dime. Then the wave began curling over the top of the bridge, and it came slamming down with the force of a thousand tons of dynamite… KABOOM!

Everything went black.

It felt like the boat was underwater for forever, but slowly, painfully, we popped back up again—listing heavily to port now at a sixty-degree angle.

“Is everyone okay?” asked Captain Marc.

I looked at the Duchess. She nodded. “We’re fine,” I said. “How about you, Rob?”

“Never better,” he muttered, “but I gotta pee like a fucking racehorse. I’m going downstairs to check on everyone.”

As Rob made his way down the stairs, one of the Bills came barreling up, screaming, “The fore-hatch just blew open! We’re going down by the bow!”

“Well, that kinda sucks,” said the Duchess, shaking her head in resignation. “Talk about your shitty vacations.”

Captain Marc grabbed the radio transmitter and pushed the button. “Mayday,” he said urgently. “This is Captain Marc Elliot, aboard the yacht Nadine. This is a Mayday: We are fifty miles off the coast of Rome and going down by the head. We require immediate assistance. We have nineteen souls on board.” Then he bent over and started reading off some orange-diode numbers from a computer monitor, giving the Italian Coast Guard our exact coordinates.

“Go get the wish-box!” ordered the Duchess. “It’s downstairs, in our stateroom.”

I looked at her as if she were a crazy person. “What are you—”

The Duchess cut me off. “Get the wish-box,” she screamed, “right fucking now!”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, I will, I will. But I’m fucking starving to death.” I looked at Captain Marc. “Can you have the chef whip me up a sandwich?”

Captain Marc started laughing. “You know, you really are one sick bastard!” He shook his square head. “I’ll have the chef make us some sandwiches. It’s gonna be a long night.”

“You’re the best,” I said, heading for the stairs. “Can I also get some fresh fruit?” Then I ran down the stairs.

I found my guests in the main salon, in a state of panic, tied together with a dock rope. But I wasn’t the least bit worried. Soon enough, I knew, the Italian Coast Guard would be here to rescue us; in a few hours from now we’d be safe and sound, and this floating albatross would be off my neck. I asked my guests, “You guys having a fun vacation?”

No one laughed. “Are they coming to rescue us?” asked Ophelia.

I nodded. “Captain Marc just called in a Mayday. Everything’s gonna be fine, guys. I gotta go downstairs. I’ll be right back.” I headed for the stairs—but I was immediately knocked over by another massive wave and went crashing into a wall. I rolled back onto all fours and began crawling to the stairs.

Just then one of the Bills passed me, screaming, “We lost the Chandler! It snapped off!” and he kept running.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs I pulled myself up by a banister. I stumbled into my stateroom through ankle-deep water and there it was: the fucking wish-box, sitting on the bed. I grabbed it, made my way back up to the bridge, and handed it to the Duchess. She closed her eyes and started shaking the pebbles.

I said to Captain Marc, “Maybe I can fly the helicopter off the boat. I could take four people at a time.”

“Forget it,” he said. “With the seas like this it’d be a miracle if you made it up without crashing. And even if you did, it’d be impossible to land again.”

Three hours later, the engines were still running but we were making no forward motion. There were four enormous container ships surrounding us. They had heard the Mayday and were trying to shield us from the oncoming waves. It was almost dark now, and we were still waiting to be rescued. The bow was pointing downward at a steep angle. Sheets of rain pounded against the window, the waves were thirty feet plus, and the winds were fifty knots or better. But we were no longer stumbling. We had our sea legs.

Captain Marc had been on the radio for what seemed like an eternity, talking to the Coast Guard. Finally, he said to me, “Okay, there’s a helicopter hovering overhead; it’s gonna lower down a basket, so get everyone up to the flybridge. We’ll get the female guests off first, then the female crew members, then the male guests. The male crew will go last, and I’ll go after them. And tell everyone, no bags allowed. You can take only what you can carry in your pockets.”

I looked at the Duchess and smiled. “Well, there go all your new clothes!” She shrugged and said happily, “We could always buy more!” Then she grabbed me by the arm and we headed downstairs.

After I explained the program to everyone, I pulled Rob aside and said, “You got the Ludes?”

“No,” he said grimly. “They’re in your stateroom. It’s completely flooded down there, maybe three feet of water—probably more by now.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll tell you, Rob: I got a quarter million in cash down there and I couldn’t give a shit about it. But we gotta get those fucking Quaaludes. We have two hundred, and we can’t leave ’em behind. It would be a travesty.”

“Indeed,” said Rob. “I’ll get them.” Twenty seconds later he was back. “I got shocked,” he muttered. “There must be an electrical short down there; what should I do?”

I didn’t answer. I just looked him straight in the eye and pumped my fist in the air a single time, as if to say, “You can do it, soldier!”

Rob nodded and said, “If I get electrocuted, I want you to give Shelly seven thousand dollars for a breast job. She’s been driving me crazy about it since the day I met her!”

“Consider it done,” I said righteously.

Three minutes later Rob was back with the Ludes. “God, that fucking hurt! I think I got third-degree burns on my feet!” Then he smiled and said, “But who’s better than me, right?”

I smiled knowingly. “No one, Lorusso. You rule.”

Five minutes later we were all up on the helicopter deck, and I was watching in horror as the basket swung back and forth a hundred feet in either direction. We were up there for a good thirty minutes—watching and waiting with sinking spirits—and then the sun dipped below the horizon.

Just then John came on deck, looking panic-stricken. “Everyone needs to come back downstairs,” he ordered. “The helicopter ran out of fuel and had to go back. We’re gonna have to abandon ship; we’re about to sink.”

I looked at him, astonished.

“Those are captain’s orders,” he added. “The life raft is inflated back by the stern, where the dive platform used to be. Let’s go!” He motioned with his hand.

A rubber raft? I thought. In fifty-foot waves? Get the fuck out of here! It seemed like sheer lunacy. But it was captain’s orders, so I followed dutifully, as did everyone else. We made our way to the stern, and the Bills were holding either end of a bright-orange rubber raft. The moment they placed it in the ocean it washed away.

“Okay, then!” I said with an ironic smile. “I think the rubber-raft idea is a definite loser.” I turned to the Duchess and extended my hand toward her. “Come on; let’s go talk to Captain Marc.”

I explained to Captain Marc what had happened with the raft. “God damn it!” he sputtered. “I told those kids not to put the raft in the water without tying it up first…. Shit!” He took a deep breath and regained his composure. “Okay,” he said, “I want you two to listen to me: We’re down to only one engine. If it goes, I won’t be able to steer the boat anymore, and we’re gonna get broadsided. I want you to stay up here. If the boat tips over, jump over the side and swim as far away as possible. There’s gonna be a strong down current as the boat goes under, and it will try to suck you down with it. So just keep kicking for the surface. The water’s warm enough to survive for as long as you have to. There’s an Italian naval destroyer about fifty miles from here and it’s on its way. They’re gonna try another helicopter rescue with their Special Forces people. It’s too rough for the Coast Guard.”

I nodded and said to Captain Marc, “Let me go downstairs and tell everyone.”

“No,” he ordered, “you two are staying here. We could go down any minute and I want you together.” He turned to John. “Go downstairs and explain everything to the guests.”

Two hours later the boat was barely afloat when a crackling came over the radio. Another helicopter was overhead, this one from the Italian Special Forces.

“All right,” said Captain Marc with an insane smile on his face, “here’s the deal: They’re gonna lower down one of their commandos on a winch, but first we gotta push the helicopter over the side to make room for him.”

“You’re shitting me!” I said, smiling.

“Oh, my God!” exclaimed the Duchess, putting her hand to her mouth.

“No,” replied Captain Marc, “I shit you not. Let me go get the video camera; this one needs to be saved for posterity.”

John stayed at the controls while Captain Marc and I headed up to the flight deck with both Bills and Rob. Once there, Captain Marc handed the video camera to one of the Bills and quickly undid the helicopter’s restraints. Then he pulled me in front of the helicopter and put his arm around my shoulder. “Okay,” he said, smiling, “I want you to say a few words to the studio audience.”

I looked into the video camera and said, “Hey! We’re pushing our helicopter into the Mediterranean. Isn’t this fucking great?”

Captain Marc added, “Yeah! It’s a first time in yachting history! Leave it to the owner of the yacht Nadine!”

“Yeah,” I added, “and if we should all die, I want everyone to know that it was my idea to make this ill-conceived crossing. I forced Captain Marc into it, so he should still be given a proper burial!”

That ended our broadcast. Captain Marc said, “Okay—wait until we get hit by a wave and the yacht starts tipping to the right; then we’ll all do a heave-ho at once.” And just as the yacht tipped to the right, we all pushed upward and the helicopter went flying over the side of the deck. We ran to the side and watched it sink below the surface in less than ten seconds.

Two minutes later there were seventeen of us on the flight deck, waiting to be rescued. Captain Marc and John remained on the bridge, trying to keep the yacht afloat. A hundred feet above us, a double-bladed Chinook helicopter was in a stationary hover. It was painted military-green, and it was absolutely enormous. Even from a hundred feet, the thumping of the two main rotors was deafening.

Suddenly a commando jumped out of the helicopter and began descending on a thick metal cord. He was dressed in full Special Forces regalia, wearing a black rubber wet suit with a tight-fitting hood. He had a backpack over his shoulders and what looked like a speargun dangling from one of his legs. He was swinging back and forth in a wild arc, a hundred feet in either direction. When he was thirty feet above the boat, he grabbed his speargun, aimed it, and then harpooned the boat. Ten seconds later the commando was on the deck—smiling broadly and giving us the thumbs-up sign. Apparently he was having a ball.

All eighteen of us were lifted to safety. Yet there was a bit of chaos with all this women-and-children-first business, when a panic-stricken Ross (the formerly brave outdoorsman) knocked over Ophelia and the two Bills, made a mad dash for the commando, and took a running jump at him—wrapping his arms and legs around him and refusing to let go until he was off the boat. But that was okay with Rob and me, because we now had fresh material with which to rip Ross to shreds for the rest of his natural life.

Captain Marc, however, would go down with the ship. In fact, the last thing I saw before the helicopter pulled away was the yacht’s stern, as it dipped below the water for the last time, and the crown of Captain Marc’s square head, bobbing up and down amid the waves.

The nice thing about getting rescued by Italians is that the first thing they do is feed you and make you drink red wine; then they make you dance. Yes, we partied like rock stars aboard an Italian naval destroyer with the very Italian Navy. They were a fun-loving bunch, and Rob and I took that as a signal to get Luded out of our minds. Captain Marc was safe, thank God, and had been plucked out of the water by the Coast Guard.

The last thing I remember was the captain of the destroyer and the Duchess carrying me to the infirmary. Before they put the covers over me, the captain explained how the Italian government was making a big deal over the rescue—a public-relations coup, so to speak—so he was authorized to take us anywhere in the Med; the choice was ours. He recommended the Cala di Volpe Hotel in Sardinia, which he said was one of the nicest in the world. I nodded eagerly and gave him the thumbs-up sign, and said, “Zake me zoo Zarzinia!”

I woke up in Sardinia, as the destroyer pulled into Porto Cervo. All eighteen of us stood on the main deck, watching in awe as hundreds of Sardinians waved at us. A dozen news crews, each with a video camera, were anxious to film the idiot Americans who’d been foolish enough to sail out into the middle of a Force 8 gale.

On our way off the destroyer, the Duchess and I thanked our Italian rescuers and exchanged phone numbers with them. We told them that if they were ever in the States, they should look us up. I offered them money—for their bravery and heroism—and every last one of them refused. They were an incredible bunch—first-class heroes, in the truest sense of the word.

As we made our way through the throngs of Sardinians, it occurred to me that we’d lost all our clothes. For the Duchess, it was round two. But that was fine: I was about to receive a very large check from Lloyd’s of London—which had insured the boat and helicopter. After we checked into the hotel, I took everyone shopping, guests and crew alike. All we could find was resort wear—exploding shades of pink and purple and yellow and red and gold and silver. We would be spending ten days in Sardinia looking like human peacocks.

Ten days later, the Ludes were gone and it was time to go home. It was then that I came up with the terrific idea to box up all our clothes and have them shipped back to the States, avoiding Customs. The Duchess agreed.

The next morning, a little before six, I went down to the lobby to pay the hotel bill. It was $700,000. It wasn’t as bad as it seemed, though, because the bill included a $300,000 gold bangle studded with rubies and emeralds. I’d bought it for the Duchess somewhere around the fifth day, after I’d fallen asleep in a chocolate soufflé. It was the least I could do to make amends to my chief enabler.

At the airport, we waited two hours for my private jet. Then a tiny man who worked at the private-jet terminal walked up to me and said, in heavily accented English: “Mr. Belforte, your plane crash. Seagull fly in engine, and plane go down in France. It will not come to get you.”

I was speechless. Did things like this happen to anyone else? I didn’t think so. When I informed the Duchess, she didn’t say a word. She just shook her head and walked away.

I tried to call Janet—to make new flight arrangements—but the phones were impossible to use. I decided that our best bet was to fly to England, where we could understand what the fuck people were saying. Once we got to London, I knew everything would be fine—until we were sitting in the back of a black London taxi and I noticed something odd: The streets were insanely crowded. In fact, the closer we got to Hyde Park, the more crowded it became.

I said to the pasty-faced British cabbie, “Why is it so crowded? I’ve been to London dozens of times and I’ve never seen it like this.”

“Well, governor,” said the cabbie, “we’re having our Woodstock celebration this weekend. There are over half a million people in Hyde Park. Eric Clapton’s performing, the Who, Alanis Morissette, and some others as well. It’s going to be a jolly good show, governor. I hope you have hotel reservations, because there’s scarcely a room anywhere in London.”

Hmmm… there were three things that now astonished me: The first was that this fucking cabbie kept addressing me as “governor” the second was that I happened to show up in London on the first weekend since World War II where there were no hotel rooms available in the entire city; and the third was that we all needed to go shopping for clothes again—which would be the Duchess’s third time in less than two weeks.

Rob said to me, “I can’t believe we gotta go buy clothes again. Are you still paying?”

I smiled and said, “Go fuck yourself, Rob.”

In the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel, the concierge said, “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Belfort, but we’re booked solid for the entire weekend. In fact, I don’t believe there’s a room available anywhere in London. Feel free, though, to bring your party into the bar area. It’s teatime, you know, and it would be my pleasure to offer you complimentary tea and finger sandwiches for all your guests.”

I rolled my neck, trying to maintain my composure. “Could you call some other hotels and see if there’re any rooms available?”

“Of course,” he replied. “It would be my pleasure.”

Three hours later we were still in the bar, drinking tea and munching on crumpets, when the concierge walked in with a great smile and said, “There’s been a cancellation at the Four Seasons. It happens to be the Presidential Suite, which is particularly well-suited to your tastes. The cost is eight—”

I cut him off. “I’ll take it!”

“Very well,” he said. “We have a Rolls-Royce waiting for you outside. From what I hear, the hotel has a very nice spa; perhaps a massage might be in order after all you’ve been through.”

I nodded in agreement, and two hours later I was lying faceup on a massage table, in the Presidential Suite of the Four Seasons Hotel. The balcony looked out over Hyde Park, where the concert was now under way.

My guests were gallivanting around the streets of London, shopping for clothes; Janet was busy at work, arranging flights on the Concorde; and the luscious Duchess was in the shower, competing with Eric Clapton.

I loved my luscious Duchess. Once again she’d proven herself to me, and this time under intense pressure. She was a warrior—standing toe to toe with me, facing down death, keeping a smile on that gorgeous face of hers all the while.

It was for that very reason, in fact, why I was finding it so difficult to maintain my erection right now, as a six-foot-tall Ethiopian masseuse jerked me off. Of course, I knew it was wrong to be getting a hand job from a masseuse while my wife was singing in the shower, twenty feet away. Yet… was there really any difference between getting a hand job and jerking myself off with my own hand?

Hmmm… I held on to that comforting thought for the remainder of my hand job, and the next day I found myself back in Old Brookville, ready to resume Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional.

^{CHAPTER 35} THE STORM BEFORE THE STORM

April 1997

As impossible as it might seem, nine months after the sinking of the yacht, my life had sunk to even deeper levels of insanity. I had found a clever way—an altogether logical way, in fact—to take my self-destructive behavior to a new extreme, namely, by changing my drug of choice from Quaaludes to cocaine. Yes, it was time for a change, I’d figured, with my chief motivating factor being that I was fed up with drooling in public places and falling asleep in inappropriate settings.

So, rather than starting off my day with four Quaaludes and a tall glass of iced coffee, I woke up to a gram of Bolivian marching powder—always careful to split the dose equally, a half gram up each nostril, so as not to deprive either side of my brain of the instantaneous rush. It was the true Breakfast of Champions. Then I’d round out my breakfast with three milligrams of Xanax, to quell the paranoia that was sure to follow. After that—and in spite of my back being completely pain-free now—I would take forty-five milligrams of morphine, simply because cocaine and narcotics were made for each other. Besides, since I still had a bunch of doctors prescribing me morphine, how bad could it be?

Either way, an hour before lunchtime I would take my first dose of Quaaludes—four, to be exact—followed by another gram of coke, to ward off the uncontrollable tiredness that was sure to follow. Of course, I still managed to consume my daily dose of twenty Quaaludes, but at least now I was using them in a healthier way, a more productive way—to balance out the coke.

It was an inspired strategy, and it had worked perfectly, for a time. But like all things in life, there were a few bumps along the way. In this particular instance, the main bump was that I was sleeping only three hours a week, and by mid-April I was in the midst of a cocaine-induced paranoia that was so deep I’d actually taken a few potshots at the milkman with a twelve-gauge shotgun.

With a bit of luck, I figured, the milkman would spread the word that the Wolf of Wall Street was not a man to be trifled with, that he was armed and ready—fully prepared to ward off any intruder foolish enough to come on his property—even if his bodyguards were sleeping on the job.

Whatever the case, it had been in mid-December, four months ago, when Stratton was finally shut down. Ironically, it wasn’t the states who’d lowered the boom on Stratton but the bumbling bozos at the NASD. They had revoked Stratton’s membership—citing stock manipulation and sales-practice violations. In essence, Stratton had been shunned, and from a legal standpoint it was a deathblow. Membership in the NASD was a prerequisite for selling securities across state lines; without it, you might as well be out of business. So, reluctantly, Danny closed down Stratton, and the era of the Strattonite came to a close. It had been an eight-year run. Just how it would be remembered I wasn’t quite sure, although I suspected the press wouldn’t be kind to it.

Biltmore and Monroe Parker were still going strong and still paying me a million dollars per deal, although I considered it a distinct possibility that the owners, other than Alan Lipsky, were plotting against me. Just how and why, I wasn’t quite certain, but such was the nature of plots—especially when the conspirators were your closest friends.

On a separate note, Steve Madden was plotting against me. Our relationship had completely soured. According to Steve, it had to do with me showing up at the office stoned, to which I’d said to him, “Go fuck yourself, you self-righteous bastard! If it weren’t for me you’d still be selling shoes out of the trunk of your car!” True or not, the simple fact was that the stock was trading at thirteen dollars and it was on its way to twenty.

We had eighteen stores now, and our department-store business was booked out two seasons in advance. I could only imagine what he was thinking about me—the man who had taken eighty-five percent of his company and controlled the price of his stock for almost four years. Yet now that Stratton was out of business, I no longer had control over his stock. The price of Steve Madden Shoes was being dictated by the laws of supply and demand—rising and falling with the fortunes of the company itself, not the fortunes of any particular brokerage firm that was recommending it. The Cobbler had to be plotting against me. Yes, it was true: I had shown up at the office a bit stoned, and that was wrong, but, still, that was merely an excuse to force me out of the company and steal my stock options. And what was my recourse if he tried doing that?

Well, I had our secret agreement, but that covered only my original shares, 1.2 million of them; my stock options were in Steve’s name, and I had nothing in writing. Would he try to steal them from me? Or would he try to steal everything—both my stock and my options? Perhaps that bald bastard had deluded himself, thinking I wouldn’t have the balls to expose our secret agreement, that by its very nature it would cause both of us too many problems if I made it public.

He was in for a rude awakening. The chances of him getting away with stealing my stock and options were less than zero—even if it meant both of us going to jail.

As a sober, lucid man, I would’ve still had these thoughts, but in my current mental state they smoldered in my mind in a most venomous way. Whether Steve was planning to fuck me or not was wholly immaterial; he would never get the chance. He was no different than Victor Wang, the Depraved fucking Chinaman. Yes, Victor had tried to fuck me too, and I’d sent him back to Chinatown.

It was now the second week of April, and I hadn’t been to Steve Madden Shoes in over a month. It was Friday afternoon, and I was home in my study, sitting behind my mahogany desk. The Duchess was already in the Hamptons, and the kids were spending the weekend with her mother. I was alone with my thoughts, ready for war.

I dialed Wigwam at his house and said, “I want you to call Madden and tell him that as escrow agent, you’re giving him notice that you plan on liquidating a hundred thousand shares immediately. It comes out to about $1.3 million, give or take a few bucks. Tell him that pursuant to the agreement he has the right to sell his shares too, in ratio with me, which means he can sell seventeen thousand of them. Whether he decides to or not is his fucking decision.”

Wigwam the Weak replied, “To get it done quickly I need his signature. What if he balks?”

I took a deep breath, trying to control my anger. “If he gives you a hard time, tell him that pursuant to the escrow agreement you’re gonna foreclose on the note and sell the stock privately. You tell him that I’ve already agreed to buy it. And you tell that bald motherfucker that that’ll give me a fifteen percent stake in the company, which means I’ll have to file a 13D with the SEC, and then everyone on Wall Street’s gonna know what a fucking cock-sucker he is for trying to fuck me. You tell that motherfucker that I’m gonna make the whole thing public and that every fucking week I’m gonna keep buying more stock in the open market, which means I’m gonna keep filing updated 13Ds. You tell that cocksucker that I’m not gonna stop buying until I own fifty-one percent of his company, and then I’m gonna throw his bony ass right the fuck out of there.” I took another deep breath. My heart was beating out of my chest. “And you tell that motherfucker if he thinks I’m bluffing, then he should climb inside a fucking bunker, because I’m about to unleash a nuclear bomb on his very fucking existence.” I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out a Ziploc bag with a pound of cocaine in it.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” replied Wigwam the Weak. “I just want you to think about it for a second. You’re the smartest guy I know, but you sound a bit irrational right now. As your lawyer I strongly advise you against making this agreement pub—”

I cut my lawyer right the fuck off. “Let me fucking tell you something, Andy: You have no fucking idea how little of a shit I give about the SE fucking C and the NAS fucking D.” I opened the bag and grabbed a playing card off my desk, then dipped deep into the powder, scooping out enough cocaine to give a blue whale a heart attack. I dumped it onto the desktop. Then I bent over and stuck my face in it and started snorting. “And furthermore,” I added, my face now covered in cocaine, “I couldn’t give two shits about that Coleman motherfucker either. He’s been chasing my ass around for four fucking years, and he still ain’t got shit on me.” I shook my head a few times, to try to get hold of the rush that was rapidly overtaking me. “And there ain’t no fucking way I’m getting indicted over that agreement. It would be too anticlimactic for Coleman. He’s a man of honor, and he wants to get me on something real. That would be like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. So fuck Coleman where he breathes!”

“Understood,” said Wigwam, “but I need a favor from you.”

“What?”

“I’m running short of money,” said my shyster lawyer, pausing for effect. “You know, Danny really fucked things up for me by not cockroaching it. I’m still waiting for my brokerage license to come through. Could you help me out in the interim?”

Unbelievable! I thought. My own fucking escrow agent was holding me up for money. That toupeed motherfucker! I should kill him too! “How much you need?”

“I don’t know,” he replied weakly, “maybe a couple hundred thousand?”

“Fine!” I snapped. “I’ll give you a quarter million, now go call fucking Madden right fucking now and call me back and let me know what he said.” I slammed the phone down without saying good-bye. Then I bent over and stuck my face back in the coke.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. “What did the motherfucker say?” I asked.

“You’re not gonna like it,” warned Wigwam. “He denies the existence of the escrow agreement. He says it’s an illegal agreement and he knows you won’t make it public.”

I took a deep breath, trying to maintain control. “So he thinks I’m bluffing, huh?”

“Pretty much,” said Wigwam, “but he said he wants to resolve things amicably. He’s offering you two dollars a share.”

I rolled my neck slowly in a great circle as I did the calculations. At two dollars a share he would be stealing more than $13 million from me, and that was just on the stock; he was also holding a million of my options, which had an exercise price of seven dollars. Today’s market price—thirteen dollars—put them six dollars in the money. So that was another $4.5 million. All told, he was trying to steal $17.5 million from me. Ironically, I wasn’t even that angry about it. After all, I had known it all along, from that very day in my office all those years ago, when I’d explained to Danny that his friend couldn’t be trusted. It was for that very reason, in fact, why I had made Steve sign the escrow agreement and hand over the stock certificate.

So why should I be angry? I’d been forced down a foolish path by the bozos at NASDAQ; I had been given no choice but to divest my stock to Steve, and I had taken all necessary precautions—preparing myself for this very eventuality. I ran the entire history of the relationship through my mind, and I couldn’t find one mistake I’d made. And while there was no denying that showing up at the office stoned hadn’t been good business on my part, it had absolutely nothing to do with what was going on here. He would have tried to fuck me either way; all the drugs had done was bring it to the surface quicker.

“All right,” I said calmly. “I have to head out to the Hamptons now, so we’ll take care of this first thing Monday morning. Don’t even bother calling Steve back. Just get all the paperwork together for the stock purchase. It’s time to go to war.”

Southampton! WASP-Hampton! Yes, that was where my new beach house was. The time had come to grow up, and Westhampton was just a bit too pedestrian for the Duchess’s discerning tastes. Besides, Westhampton was full of Jews, and I was sick and tired of Jews, despite being one. Donna Karan (a higher class of Jew) had a house just to the west; Henry Kravis (also a higher class of Jew) had a house just to the east. And for the bargain price of $5.5 million, I now owned a ten-thousand-square-foot gray and white postmodern contemporary mansion on the fabulous Meadow Lane, the most exclusive road on the entire planet. The front of the house looked out over Shinnecock Bay; the rear of the house looked out over the Atlantic Ocean; and the sunrises and sunsets exploded with a nearly indescribable palette of oranges and reds and yellows and blues. It was truly glorious, a vista worthy of the Wild Wolf.

As I passed through the wrought-iron gates at the front of the property, I couldn’t help but feel proud. Here I was, behind the wheel of a brand-new royal-blue $300,000 Bentley turbo. And, of course, I had enough cocaine in the glove compartment to keep the entire town of Southampton dancing the Watusi from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

I had been to this house only once, a little over a month ago, when there was still no furniture. I’d brought a business associate named David Davidson here. Naming him that had been a cruel joke, although I found myself spending more time watching him blink his right eye than focusing on his name. Yes, he was a blinker, but only a one-sided blinker, which made it that much more disconcerting. Anyway, the Uniblinker owned a brokerage firm named DL Cromwell, which employed a bunch of ex-Strattonites; we were doing business together, making nothing but money. Yet the Uniblinker’s most desirable trait—what I liked most about him—was that he was a coke addict, and on the very night I’d brought him to the house, we had first stopped at Grand Union and bought fifty cans of Reddi Wip. Then we sat on the bleached-wood floor and held the cans upright, pushed the nozzles to the side, and sucked out all the nitrous oxide. It was a helluva buzz, especially when we alternated each hit with two blasts of cocaine, one up either nostril.

It had been a banner evening, but nothing compared to what was in store for tonight. The Duchess had furnished the house—to the tune of $2 million of my not-so-hard-earned money. She was so very excited about it that she’d been spewing her aspiring-decorator bullshit ad nauseam, and all the while she never missed an opportunity to bust my balls for being a coke addict.

And fuck her for that! Who the hell was she to tell me what to do, especially when I’d become a coke addict for her benefit! After all, she had been threatening to leave me if I didn’t stop falling asleep in restaurants. So that was why I’d switched to coke in the first place. And now she was saying things like: “You’re sick. You’ve haven’t slept in a month. You won’t even make love to me anymore! And you only weigh a hundred thirty pounds. All you eat are Froot Loops. And your skin is green!” To have given the Duchess the Life and have her turn on me at the last second! Well, fuck her too! It was easy for her to love me when I was sick. All those nights when I was in chronic pain, she would come in and try to comfort me and tell me that she loved me no matter what. And now it turned out that it was all a clever plot. She could no longer be trusted. Fine. Good. Let her go her own way. I didn’t need her. In fact, I didn’t need anybody.

All these thoughts were roaring through my brain as I walked up the mahogany stairs and opened the front door to my latest mansion. “Hello,” I said, in a very loud voice, stepping through the front door. The entire rear wall was glass, and I was looking at a panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean. At seven p.m. at this time of spring, the sun was just setting behind me, on the bay side, and the water looked an interesting shade of Prince purple. Meanwhile, the house looked gorgeous. Yes, there was no denying that in spite of the Duchess being a world-class pain in the ass—a henpecking killjoy of biblical proportions—she had a flair for decorating. The entryway led to a vast living room. It was a wide-open space with soaring ceilings. There was so much furniture crammed into this place it was fucking mind-boggling. Overstuffed sofas and love seats and club chairs and wing chairs and ottomans were scattered this way and that, each one a separate seating area. All of this fabulous fucking furniture was white and taupe, very beachy, very shabby chic.

Just then came the royal greeting committee. It was Maria, the fat cook, and her husband, Ignacio, a mean-spirited little butler, who at four-foot-eight was a shade taller than his wife. They were from Portugal and prided themselves on providing service in the formal, traditional way. I despised them because Gwynne despised them, and Gwynne was one of the few people who truly understood me—she and my children. Who knew if these two could be trusted? I would have to keep a close eye on them…and, if necessary, neutralize them.

“Good evening, Mr. Belfort,” said Maria and Ignacio in unison. Ignacio bowed formally and Maria curtsied. Then Ignacio added, “How are you this evening, sir?”

“Never better,” I muttered. “Where’s my loving wife?”

“She’s in town, shopping,” replied the cook.

“What a fucking surprise,” I snarled, walking past them. I was carrying a Louis Vuitton travel bag, loaded with dangerous drugs.

“Dinner will be served at eight,” said Ignacio. “Mrs. Belfort asked me to inform you that your guests will be here around seven-thirty, and if you could please be ready by then.”

Oh, fuck her, I thought. “Okay,” I sputtered. “I’ll be in the TV room; please don’t disturb me. I have important business to attend to.” With that, I went into the TV room, flicked on the Rolling Stones, and broke out the drugs. The Duchess had instructed me to be ready by seven-thirty. What the fuck did that mean? That I should be dressed in a fucking tuxedo—or top hat and tails? What was I, a fucking monkey? I was wearing gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, and that was just fucking fine! Who the fuck paid for all this shit? Me—that’s who! And she had the nerve to be giving me orders!

Eight p.m., dinner is served! And who needs it? Give me Froot Loops and skim milk, not this chichi bullshit that Maria and the Duchess hold so dear. The dinner table was the size of a horseshoe pit. Still, the dinner guests weren’t all that bad, with the exception of the Duchess. She was sitting across from me, on the other side of the pit. She was so far away I needed an intercom to converse with her, which was probably a good thing. Admittedly, she was gorgeous. But trophy wives like the Duchess were a dime a dozen, and the good ones wouldn’t turn on me for no good reason.

Sitting to my right were Dave and Laurie Beall, who were up visiting from Florida. Laurie was a good blond egg. She knew her place in the general scheme of things, so she understood me. The only problem was that she was also under the influence of the Duchess, who’d crawled inside her very mind—planting subversive thoughts against me. So Laurie couldn’t be fully trusted.

Her husband, Dave, was another story. He could be trusted—more or less. He was a big country bumpkin—six-two, two hundred fifty pounds of solid muscle. When he was in college he worked as a bouncer. One day someone had mouthed off to him, and Dave punched him in the side of the head and knocked his eye out. Rumor had it that the guy’s eye was hanging by a couple of ligaments. Dave was an ex-Strattonite, who now worked at DL Cromwell. Tonight, I could count on him to repel intruders. In fact, he would do it with relish.

My other two guests were the Schneidermans, Scott and Andrea. Scott was a Bayside boy, although we hadn’t been friends growing up. He was a confirmed homosexual who’d gotten married for inexplicable reasons, although, if I had to guess, it was to have children, of which he now had one, a daughter. He, too, was an ex-Strattonite, although he’d never possessed the killer instinct. He was out of the business now. He was here for only one reason: He was my coke dealer. He had a connection at the airport and was getting me pure cocaine from Colombia. His wife was innocuous—a chubby brunette with only a few words to say, all of which were meaningless.

After four courses and two and a half hours of torturous conversation, it was finally eleven o’clock. I said to Dave and Scott, “Come on, guys, let’s go into the TV room and watch a movie.” I rose from my chair and headed for the TV room, with Dave and Scott in tow. I had no doubt the Duchess wanted to talk to me as little as I wanted to talk to her. And that was fine. Our marriage was basically over; it was only a matter of time now.

What happened next started with an inspired notion I had to divide up my cocaine stash into two separate snorting parties. The first party would commence now and consist of eight grams of powdered cocaine. It would take place here, in the TV room, and last for approximately two hours. Then we would adjourn to the game room upstairs, where we would play pool and darts and get whacked on Dewar’s. Then, at two a.m., we would head back downstairs to the TV room and start the second snorting party, which would consist of a twenty-gram rock of ninety-eight percent pure cocaine. To snort it in one sitting would be a conquest worthy of the Wolf himself.

And follow this plan we did—right down to the very fucking letter, in fact—spending the next two hours snorting thick lines of cocaine through an 18-karat-gold straw, while we watched MTV with no sound and listened to “Sympathy for the Devil” on repeat mode. Then we went upstairs to the game room. When two a.m. rolled around, I said with a great smile, “The time has come to snort the rock, my friends! Follow me.”

We walked back downstairs to the TV room and sat in our previous positions. I reached over for the rock and it was gone. Gone? How the fuck was that possible? I looked at Dave and Scott and said, “Okay, guys: Stop fucking around. Which one of you took the rock?”

They both looked at me, astonished. Dave said, “What are you, kidding me? I didn’t take the rock! I swear on my kid’s eyes!”

Scott added, in a defensive tone, “Don’t look at me! I would never do something like that.” He shook his head gravely. “Fucking around with another man’s coke is a sin against God. Nothing less.”

The three of us got down on our hands and knees and started crawling around on the carpet. Two minutes later we were looking at one another, dumbfounded—and empty-handed. I said skeptically, “Maybe it fell behind the seat cushions.”

Dave and Scott nodded, and we proceeded to remove all the cushions. We found nothing.

“I can’t believe this shit,” I said. “It makes no fucking sense.” Then a wild inspiration came bubbling up into my brain. Perhaps the rock fell inside one of the seat cushions! It seemed improbable, but stranger things had happened, hadn’t they?

Indeed. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and I ran to the kitchen, full speed, and slid a stainless-steel butcher knife out of its wooden holder. Then I ran back to the TV room, armed and ready. The rock was mine!

“What are you doing?” asked Dave, in the tone of the incredulous.

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?” I sputtered, dropping to my knees and plunging the knife into a seat cushion. I began throwing the foam and feathers on the carpet. The sofa had three seat cushions and an equal number of backrests. In less than a minute I’d shredded all of them. “Motherfucker!” I muttered. I switched my focus to the love seat, cutting the cushions open with a vengeance. Still nothing. Now I was getting pissed. “I can’t believe this shit! Where’d the fucking rock go?” I looked at Dave. “Were we in the living room at all?”

He shook his head back and forth nervously. “I don’t remember being in the living room,” he said. “Why don’t we just forget about the rock?”

“Are you fucking crazy or something? I’m gonna find that fucking rock if it’s the last thing I do!” I turned to Scott and narrowed my eyes accusingly. “Don’t bullshit me, Scott. We were in the living room, weren’t we?”

Scott shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember being in the living room.”

“You know what?” I screamed. “You guys are both worthless pieces of shit! You know as well as I do that that fucking rock fell into a seat cushion. It’s gotta be in there somewhere, and I’m gonna fucking prove it to you.” I stood up, kicked the remains of the cushions out of my way, and walked through a littering of foam and feathers into the living room. In my right hand was the butcher knife. My eyes were wide open. My teeth were clenched in rage.

Look at all these fucking sofas! Fuck her if she thinks she can get away with buying all this furniture! I took a deep breath. I was on the edge. I needed to get a grip. But I had come up with a perfect plan—saving the rock until two in the morning. It could’ve been perfect and now all this furniture. Fuck it all! I dropped to my knees and went to work, making my way around the living room, stabbing wildly until every couch and chair was destroyed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dave and Scott staring at me.

And then it hit me—it was inside the carpet! How fucking obvious! I looked down at the taupe carpet. How much did this fucking thing cost? A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? It was easy for her to spend my money. I started slicing up the carpet, like a man possessed.

A minute later, nothing. I sat on my haunches and looked around the living room. It was completely destroyed. Just then I saw a stand-up brass lamp. It looked human. With my heart palpitating out of my chest, I dropped the butcher knife. I picked the lamp up over my head and started swinging it the way the Norse god Thor swung his hammer. Then I released it in the direction of the fireplace, and it went flying into the stone…CRASH! I ran back over to the knife and picked it up.

Just then the Duchess came running out of the master bathroom, wearing a tiny white robe. Her hair was perfect and her legs looked glorious. It was her way of trying to manipulate me, to control me. It had worked in the past, but not this time. I had my guard up now. I was wise to her game.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed, putting her hand to her mouth. “Please, stop! Why are you doing this?”

“Why?” I screamed. “You want to know fucking why? Well, I’ll tell you fucking why! I’m James fucking Bond looking for microfilm! That’s fucking why!”

She looked at me with her mouth agape and her eyes wide open. “You need help,” she said tonelessly. “You’re a sick man.”

Her very words enraged me. “Oh, fuck you, Nadine! Who the fuck are you to tell me I’m sick? What are you gonna do—try to take a swing at me? Well, come over and see what happens!”

All at once a terrible pain in my back! Someone was pushing me to the floor! Now my wrist was being crushed. “Oww, fuck!” I screamed. I looked up and Dave Beall was on top of me. He squeezed my wrist until the butcher knife fell to the ground.

He looked up at Nadine. “Go back inside,” he said calmly. “I’ll take care of him. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

Nadine ran back into the master bedroom and slammed the door. A second later I heard the lock click.

Dave was still on top of me, and I turned my head around to face him and started laughing. “All right,” I said, “you can let me up now. I was only kidding. I wasn’t gonna hurt her. I was just trying to show her who’s boss.”

Clutching my right biceps with his enormous hand, Dave led me over to a seating area on the other side of the house—one of the few I hadn’t destroyed. He placed me in an overstuffed club chair, looked up at Scott, and said, “Go get the vial of Xanax.”

The last thing I remember was Dave handing me a glass of water and a few Xanax.

I woke up and it was nighttime, the following day. I was back in my office in Old Brookville, sitting behind my mahogany desk. Just how I got here I wasn’t quite sure, but I did remember saying, “Thank you, Rocco!” to Rocco Day, for pulling me out of the car after I’d smashed it into the stone pillar at the edge of the estate on my way home from Southampton. Or had it been Rocco Night I’d thanked? Well… who really gave a shit? They were loyal to Bo, and Bo was loyal to me, and the Duchess didn’t say much to either of them—so she hadn’t crawled inside their minds yet. I would be on alert, though.

Where was the Doleful Duchess? I wondered. I hadn’t seen her since the butcher-knife episode. She was home, but she was hiding somewhere in the mansion—hiding from me! Was she in the master bedroom? No matter. The important thing was my children; at least I was a good father. In the end, that’s how I would be remembered: He was a good father, a family man at heart, and a wonderful provider!

I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out my Ziploc bag with nearly a pound of coke in it. I dumped it on my desktop and dropped my head into the pile and snorted with both nostrils simultaneously. Two seconds later I jerked my head up and muttered, “Holy fucking Christ! Oh, my God!” and then I slumped back in my chair and started breathing heavily.

At that moment the TV volume seemed to increase dramatically, and I heard a gruff, accusing voice say: “Do you know what time it is right now? Where’s your family? Is this your idea of fun—sitting in front of a television set at this hour of the morning—alone? Drunk, high, strung out? Look at your watch for a second, if you still have one.”

What the fuck? I looked at my watch: a $22,000 gold Bulgari. Of course I still had one! I focused back on the TV. What a face! Christ! It was a man in his early fifties, enormous head, huge neck, menacingly handsome features, perfectly coiffed gray hair. In that very instant the name Fred Flintstone came bubbling up into my brain.

Fred Flintstone plowed on: “You want to get rid of me right now? How about getting rid of your disease right now! Alcoholism and addiction are killing you. Seafield has the answers. Call us today; we can help.”

Unbelievable! I thought. How very fucking intrusive! I started muttering at the TV. “You motherfucking Fred Flintstone head—I’ll kick your fucking caveman ass from here to Timbuktu!”

Flintstone kept talking. “Remember: There’s no shame in being an alcoholic or an addict; the only shame is doing nothing about it. So call right now and take…”

I looked around the room… there!… a Remington sculpture on a green marble pedestal. It was two feet tall, made of solid brass—a cowboy riding a bucking bronco. I picked it up and ran toward the TV screen. With all the strength I could muster, I winged it at Fred Flintstone and… CRASH!

No more Fred Flintstone.

I addressed the shattered TV: “You motherfucker! I warned you! Coming into my fucking house and telling me I got a fucking problem. Look at you now, motherfucker!”

I walked back to my desk and sat down, then I dropped my bleeding nose into the pile of coke. But rather than snorting it, I simply rested my face in it, using it as a pillow.

I felt a slight twinge of guilt that my children were upstairs, but since I was such a wonderful provider all the doors were solid mahogany. There was no way anyone had heard a thing. Or that was what I’d thought until I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs. A second later came the voice of the Duchess: “Oh, my God! What are you doing?”

I lifted my head, fully aware that my face was completely covered in coke, and not giving a shit. I looked at the Duchess, and she was stark naked—trying to manipulate me with the possibility of sex.

I said, “Fred Flintstone was trying to come through the TV. But don’t worry—I got him. You can go back to sleep now. It’s safe.”

She stared at me with her mouth open. She had arms crossed underneath her breasts, and I couldn’t help but stare at her nipples. What a shame the woman had turned on me. She would be difficult to replace—not impossible, but difficult.

“Your nose is gushing blood,” she said softly.

I shook my head in disgust. “Stop exaggerating, Nadine. It’s barely even bleeding, and it’s only because it’s allergy season.”

She started to cry. “I can’t stay here anymore unless you go to rehab. I love you too much to watch you kill yourself. I’ve always loved you; don’t ever forget that.” And then she left the room, closing the door behind her but not slamming it.

“Fuck you!” I screamed at the door. “I don’t got a fucking problem! I could stop anytime I want!” I took a deep breath and used my T-shirt to wipe the blood off my nose and chin. What did she think, that she could bluff me into rehab? Please! I felt another warm gush under my nose. I lifted the bottom of my T-shirt again and wiped away more blood. Christ! If I only had ether, I could make the cocaine into crack. Then I could just smoke the coke and avoid all these nasal problems. But, wait! There were other ways to make crack, weren’t there? Yes, there were homespun recipes…something having to do with baking soda. There had to be a recipe for making crack on the Internet!

Five minutes later I had my answer. I stumbled to the kitchen, grabbed the ingredients, and dropped them on the granite countertop. I filled a copper pot with water and dumped in the cocaine and baking soda, then turned the burner on high and put a cover on it. I placed a ceramic cookie jar on top of the lid.

I sat down on a stool next to the stove and rested my head on the countertop. I started feeling dizzy, so I shut my eyes and tried to relax. I was drifting…drifting…KABOOM! I nearly jumped out of my own skin as my homespun recipe exploded all over the kitchen. There was crack everywhere—on the ceiling, floor, and walls.

A minute later the Duchess came running in. “Oh, my God! What happened? What was that explosion?” She was out of breath, almost panic-stricken.

“Nothing,” I muttered. “I was baking a cake and fell asleep.”

The last thing I remember her saying was: “I’m going to my mother’s tomorrow morning.”

And the last thing I remember thinking was: The sooner the better.

^{CHAPTER 36} JAILS, INSTITUTIONS, AND DEATH

The next morning—which is to say, a few hours later—I woke up in my office. I felt a warm, altogether pleasant sensation under my nose and on my cheeks. Ahhh, so soothing it was…. The Duchess was still with me… cleaning me… mothering me…

I opened my eyes and… alas, it was Gwynne. She was holding a very expensive white bath towel, which she’d dampened with lukewarm water, and she was wiping off the cocaine and blood that had caked on my face.

I smiled at Gwynne, one of the only people who hadn’t betrayed me. Could she really be trusted, though? I closed my eyes and ran it through my mind…. Yes, she could. No two ways about it. She would see this through with me to the bitter end. In fact, long after the Duchess had abandoned me, Gwynne would still be there—taking care of me and helping me raise the children.

“Are you okay?” asked my favorite Southern belle.

“Yeah,” I croaked. “What are you doing here on Sunday? Don’t you have church?”

Gwynne smiled sadly. “Mrs. Belfort called me and asked me to come over today to keep an eye on the kids. Here, lift your arms up; I brought you a fresh T-shirt.”

“Thanks, Gwynne. I’m kinda hungry. Can you bring me a bowl of Froot Loops, please?”

“They’re raight there,” she said, pointing to the green marble pedestal where the brass cowboy used to reside. “They’re nice and soggy,” she added, “just the way you like ’em!”

Talk about service! How come the Duchess couldn’t be like that? “Where’s Nadine?” I asked.

Gwynne pursed her full lips. “She’s upstairs, packing an overnight bag. She’s going to her mother’s.”

A terrible sinking feeling overtook me. It started in the pit of my stomach and spread to every cell of my body. It was as if my very heart and guts had been ripped out. I felt nauseous, ready to puke. “I’ll be right fucking back,” I sputtered, popping out of my chair and heading for the spiral staircase. I bounded up the stairs with a raging inferno burning inside me.

The master bedroom was just off the stairs. The door was locked. I started banging. “Let me in, Nadine!” No response. “It’s my bedroom too! Let me in!”

Finally, thirty seconds later, the lock clicked open; but the door didn’t follow suit. I opened the door and walked into the bedroom. On the bed was a suitcase filled with clothes, all neatly folded, but no Duchess. The suitcase was chocolate brown with the Louis Vuitton logo plastered all over it. Cost a fucking fortune…of my money!

Just then the Duchess came walking out of her Delaware-size shoe closet, carrying two shoe boxes, one under either arm. She didn’t say a word, nor did she look at me. She just walked over to the bed and placed the shoe boxes next to the suitcase, then turned on her heel and headed back to the closet.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I snapped.

She looked me in the eye with contempt. “I told you: I’m going to my mother’s. I can’t watch you kill yourself anymore. I’m done.”

I felt a surge of steam rising up my brain stem. “I hope you don’t think you’re taking the kids with you. You’re not taking my fucking kids—ever!”

“The kids can stay,” she replied calmly. “I’m going alone.”

That caught me off guard. Why would she be leaving the kids behind?… Unless it was some sort of plot. Of course. She was cagey, the Duchess. “You think I’m stupid or something? The second I fall asleep you’re gonna come back here and steal the kids.”

She looked at me with disdain and said, “I don’t even know how to respond to that.” She started walking back to the closet.

Apparently I wasn’t hurting her enough, so I said, “I don’t know where the fuck you think you’re going with all these clothes. If you leave here, you leave with the shirt on your back, you fucking gold digger.”

That one got her! She spun around and faced me. “Fuck you!” she screamed. “I’ve been the best wife to you. How dare you call me that after all these years! I’ve given you two gorgeous children. Waited on you hand and fucking foot for six fucking years! I’ve been a loyal wife to you—always! Never cheated on you once! And look what I got in return! How many women have you fucked since we’re married? You… philandering piece of shit! Fuck you!”

I took a deep breath. “Say what you want, Nadine, but if you leave here, you leave with nothing.” My tone was calm yet menacing.

“Oh, really? What the fuck you gonna do, light my clothes on fire?”

An excellent idea! And I yanked her suitcase off the bed, stomped over to the limestone fireplace, and threw all her clothes on top of a foot of kindling wood that was already there, waiting to be ignited with the push of a button. I stared down the Duchess; she was standing stock-still, frozen in horror.

Not satisfied with her reaction, I ran to her closet and ripped dozens of sweaters and shirts and dresses and skirts and pants off some very expensive-looking hangers. I ran back to the fireplace and threw them on top of the pile.

I looked at her again. Now she had tears in her eyes. Still not good enough. I wanted to hear her apologize, to beg me to stop, so I gritted my teeth in determination and bounded over to the desk where she kept her jewelry box. I grabbed the box, walked back over to the fireplace, and opened the lid and shook out all the jewelry on top of the pile. I reached over to the wall and placed my right index finger on a small stainless-steel button, and I stared her down. Now tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“Fuck you!” I screamed… and I pushed the button.

An instant later her clothes and jewelry were engulfed in flames. Without saying a word, she calmly walked out of the room, shutting the door behind her ever so gently. I turned back around and stared into the flames. Fuck her! I thought. It served her fucking right, making threats at me. Did she think I would let her walk all over me? I kept staring at the flames until I heard the sound of gravel kicking up in the driveway. I ran over to the window and saw the back of her black Range Rover peeling toward the front gate.

Good! I thought. Just as soon as the word got out that the Duchess and I were history, there would be women lining up at the door—lining up! Then we’d see who’s boss!

Now that the Duchess was out of the picture, it was time to put on a happy face and show the children how wonderful life could be without Mommy. No more time-outs for Chandler; chocolate pudding for Carter whenever he felt like it. I took them out to the swing set in the backyard and we played together—while Gwynne, Rocco Day, Erica, Maria, Ignacio, and a few other members of the menagerie supervised the action.

We played together happily for what seemed like a very long time—an eternity, in fact, during which time we laughed and giggled and carried on and looked up to the blue dome of the sky and smelled the fresh spring flowers. Having kids was the best!

Alas, an eternity turned out to be only three and a half minutes, at which point I lost interest in my two perfect children and said to Gwynne, “You take over, Gwynne. I have some paperwork I need to go over.”

A minute later I was back in my office, with a fresh pyramid of cocaine in front of me. And as a way of paying homage to Chandler’s fascination with lining up all her dolls and holding court, I lined up all my drugs on the desktop and held court too. There were twenty-two of them, mostly in vials but some in plastic Baggies. How many men could take all these drugs and not overdose? None! Only the Wolf could! The Wolf, who’d built up his very resistance through years of careful mixing and balancing, going through the painstaking process of trial and error until he got it just right.

The next morning was war.

At eight a.m. Wigwam was sitting in my living room, pissing me off. In fact, he should’ve known better than to come to my house and try to expound on the U.S. securities laws—sketching only broad, meaningless strokes. Christ, I might’ve been deficient in many areas in life, but one of them wasn’t U.S. securities laws. In fact, even after three months of basically no sleep—and even after the last seventy-two hours of complete insanity, during which time I’d consumed forty-two grams of cocaine, sixty Ludes, thirty Xanax, fifteen Valium, ten Klonopin, 270 milligrams of morphine, ninety milligrams of Ambien, and Paxil and Prozac and Percocet and Pamelor and GHB and God only knew how much alcohol—I still knew more about getting around U.S. securities laws than almost any man on the planet.

Wigwam said, “The main problem is that Steve never signed a stock power, so we can’t just send the stock certificate over to the transfer agent and get it switched to your name.”

In that very instant, as foggy as my mind was, I was still appalled at how much of an amateur my friend was. It was such a simple problem that I felt like spitting nails in his face. I took a deep breath and said, “Let me tell you something, you motherfucker. I love you like a fucking brother, but I’m gonna rip your fucking eyeballs out of your head next time you tell me what I can’t do with this escrow agreement. You come over to my fucking house looking to borrow a quarter million dollars and you’re worried about fucking stock powers? Jesus fucking Christ, Andy! We only need a stock power if we wanna sell the fucking stock, not if we want to buy the fucking stock! Don’t you get it? This is a war of attrition, a war of possession, and once we gain possession of the stock we have the upper hand.”

I softened my tone. “Listen to me: All you need to do is foreclose on the note pursuant to the escrow agreement and then you’ll have a legal obligation to sell the stock to pay the note. Then you turn around and sell the stock to me at four dollars a share, and I write you a check, for $4.8 million, which covers the purchase price of the shares. Then you write a check right back to me for the same $4.8 million, to pay off the note, and that’s that! Don’t you get it? It’s so simple!”

He nodded weakly.

“Listen,” I said calmly, “possession is nine-tenths of the law. I write you a check right now and we officially have control of the stock. Then we file a 13D this afternoon, and we make a public announcement that I intend to keep buying more stock and start a proxy fight. It’ll cause so much turmoil that it’ll force Steve’s hand. And each week I’ll keep buying more stock and we’ll keep filing updated 13Ds. It’ll be in The Wall Street Journal every week—driving Steve crazy!”

Fifteen minutes later Wigwam was leaving my house, $250,000 richer and holding a check for $4.8 million. By this afternoon it would hit the Dow Jones newswire that I was attempting a takeover of Steve Madden Shoes. And while I really had no intention of doing so, I had no doubt that it would drive Steve crazy—and leave him little choice but to pay me fair market value for my shares. Insofar as my personal liability, I wasn’t concerned. I had thought it through, and since Steve and I hadn’t actually signed the secret agreement until a year after the underwriting, the issue of Stratton issuing a false prospectus was a moot point. The liability was more Steve’s than my own, because as CEO, he was the one signing off on the SEC filings. I could plead ignorance—saying that I thought the filings were being done correctly. It wasn’t plausible deniability at its best, but it was plausible deniability nonetheless.

Either way, Wigwam was now out of my hair.

I went back upstairs to the royal bathroom and started snorting again. There was a pile of coke on the vanity and a thousand lights ablaze—reflecting off the mirrors and the million-dollar gray marble floor. Meanwhile, I felt terrible inside. Empty. Hollow. I missed the Duchess so much, so terribly, yet there was no way to get her back now. After all, to give in to her would be to admit defeat—to admit that I had a problem and that I needed help.

So I stuck my nose in the pile and snorted with both nostrils at once. Then I swallowed a few more Xanax and a handful of Quaaludes. The key, though, wasn’t the Ludes and Xanax. It was to keep my coke high in the very early stages—within that first wild rush where everything seems to make perfect sense and your problems seem a million miles away. It would require constant snorting—two thick lines every four or five minutes, I figured—but if I could keep myself at that very point for a week or so, then I could wait the Duchess out and watch her crawl back to me. It would require some serious drug-balancing, but the Wolf was up to the task…

…although if I fell asleep she would come for the kids and steal them. Perhaps I should just leave town with them, keep them out of her evil grasp, although Carter was a bit too small to travel with. He was still wearing a diaper and he was still very dependent on the Duchess. Of course, that would change soon, especially when he was ready for his first car and I offered him a Ferrari if he agreed to forget his mother.

So it made more sense just to leave town with Chandler and Gwynne. Chandler was wonderful company, after all, and we could travel around the world together as father and daughter. We would dress in the finest clothes and live a carefree life, while others looked on in admiration. Then, in a few years, I would come back for Carter.

Thirty minutes later I was back in the living room—conducting business with Dave Davidson, the Uniblinker. He was complaining about trading from the short side, that he was losing money as the stock went up. I couldn’t have cared less, though; I just wanted to see the Duchess, to let her know about my plan to travel around the world with Chandler.

Just then I heard the front door open. A few seconds later I saw the Duchess walk past the living room and into the children’s playroom. I was discussing trading strategies with the Uniblinker when she came walking back out, holding Chandler. My words were coming out automatically, as if on tape—and I heard the Duchess’s soft footsteps heading to the basement, to the maternity showroom. She hadn’t even acknowledged my presence, for Chrissake! She was taunting me, disrespecting me, fucking enraging me! I felt my heart beating out of my chest.

“…so you make sure that you’re around for the next deal,” I continued, as my mind double-tracked wildly. “The key is, David, that you—excuse me for a second.” I held up my index finger. “I gotta go downstairs and talk to my wife.”

I stomped down the spiral staircase. The Duchess was sitting at her desk, opening mail. Opening mail? The fucking nerve of her! Chandler was lying on the floor next to her—holding a crayon, drawing in a coloring book. I said to my wife, in a tone laced with venom: “I’m going to Florida.”

She looked up. “So? Why should I care?”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t care if you care or not, but I’m taking Chandler with me.”

She smirked. “I don’t think so.”

My blood pressure hit peak levels. “You don’t think so? Well, go fuck yourself!” And I reached down, grabbed Chandler, and started running toward the stairs. Instantly, the Duchess popped out of her chair and started chasing me, screaming, “I’m gonna fucking kill you! Put her down! Put her down!”

Chandler started wailing and crying hysterically, and I screamed at the Duchess, “Go fuck yourself, Nadine!” I hit the stairs running. The Duchess took a flying leap and grabbed me around the thighs, desperately trying to keep me from going up the stairs.

“Stop!” she screamed. “Please, stop! It’s your daughter! Put her down!” And she kept wriggling her way up my leg, trying to get a grip on my torso. I looked at the Duchess, and at that very instant I wanted her dead. In all the years we’d been married I had never raised a hand to her—until now. I placed the sole of my sneaker firmly on her stomach, and with one mighty thrust I kicked out—and just like that I watched my wife go flying down the stairs and land on her right side with tremendous force.

I paused, astonished, bewildered, as if I had just witnessed a wildly horrific act committed by two insane people, neither of whom I knew. A few seconds later Nadine rolled onto her haunches, holding her side with both hands—wincing in pain—as if she’d broken a rib. But then her face hardened again, and she got down on her hands and knees and tried crawling up the stairs this time, still trying to stop me from taking her daughter.

I turned from her and ran up the stairs, holding Chandler close to my chest and saying, “It’s okay, baby! Daddy loves you and he’s taking you on a little trip! It’s gonna be okay.” When I reached the top of the stairs I broke out into a full run, as Chandler continued to wail uncontrollably. I ignored her. Soon the two of us would be together, alone, and everything would be okay. And as I ran to the garage I knew that one day Chandler would understand all this; she would understand why her mother had to be neutralized. Perhaps when Chandler was much older—after her mother had been taught a lesson—they could reunite and have some sort of relationship. Perhaps.

There were four cars inside the garage. The white two-door convertible Mercedes was closest, so I opened the passenger door and put Chandler into the passenger seat and slammed the door. As I ran around the back of the car, I saw one of the maids, Marissa, looking on in horror. I jumped inside the car and started it.

Then the Duchess was throwing herself against the passenger side of the car, banging on the window and screaming. I immediately hit the power-lock button. Then I saw the garage door starting to close. I looked to the right and saw Marissa’s finger on the button. Fuck it! I thought—and I put the car into drive, stepped on the accelerator, and drove right through the garage door, smashing it to splinters. I kept driving full speed—smashing right into a six-foot-high limestone pillar at the edge of the driveway. I looked over to Chandler. She wasn’t wearing a seat belt, but she was unharmed, thank God. She was screaming, crying hysterically.

All at once, some very disturbing thoughts began rising up my brain stem, starting with: What the fuck was I doing? Where the hell was I going? What was my daughter doing in the front seat of my car without a seat belt on? Nothing made sense. I opened the driver’s side door and stepped outside and just stood there. A second later, one of the bodyguards came running over to the car, grabbed Chandler, and ran into the house with her. That seemed like a good idea. Then the Duchess came over to me and told me that everything would be all right and that I needed to calm down. She told me she still loved me. She put her arms around me and hugged me.

And there we stood. For how long I would never know, but pretty soon I heard the wailing of a siren, and then I saw flashing lights. And then I was in handcuffs, sitting in the back of a police car, craning my neck around and trying to catch a last glimpse of the Duchess before they took me to jail.

I would spend the rest of my day being shuttled around to different jail cells—starting with the cell in the Old Brookville Police Department. Two hours later they handcuffed me once more and drove me to another police department, where I was escorted into another jail cell, although this one was bigger and full of people. I spoke to no one and no one spoke to me. There was lots of yelling and screaming and carrying on, and the place was freezing cold. I made a mental note to dress warm if Agent Coleman ever came knocking on my door with an arrest warrant. Then I heard my name being called, and a few minutes later I was in the backseat of another police car—on my way to the town of Mineola, where the state courthouse was.

I found myself in court, in front of a female judge…Oh, shit! My goose is cooked now! I turned to my dapper lawyer, Joe Fahmegghetti, and I said, “We’re fucked now, Joe! This woman’s gonna give me the death penalty!”

Joe smiled at me and put his arm on my shoulder. “Relax,” he said. “I’ll have you outta here in ten minutes. Just don’t say a word until I tell you to.”

After a few minutes of blah-blah-blahing, Joe bent over and whispered in my ear, “Say not guilty,” so I smiled and said, “Not guilty.”

Ten minutes later I was free—walking out of the courthouse with Joe Fahmegghetti by my side. My limo was waiting outside the courthouse at the curb. George was behind the wheel and Rocco Night was in the front passenger seat. They both climbed out, and I noticed that Rocco was carrying my trusty LV bag. George opened the limousine door without saying a word, while Rocco made his way around the back of the car. He handed me my bag and said, “All your stuff’s in here, Mr. B, plus fifty thousand dollars in cash.”

My lawyer quickly added, “There’s a Learjet waiting for you at Republic Airport. George and Rocco will take you there.”

All at once I was confused. It was the Duchess plotting against me! No two ways about it! “What the fuck are you talking about?” I sputtered. “Where are you taking me?”

“To Florida,” said my dapper attorney. “David Davidson is waiting for you at Republic right now. He’ll fly down with you to keep you company. Dave Beall will be waiting for you in Boca when you land.” My attorney sighed. “Listen, my friend, you need to get away for a few days until we can resolve this with your wife. Or else you’re gonna end up in jail again.”

Rocco added, “I spoke to Bo, and he told me to stay up here and keep an eye on Mrs. B. You can’t go home, Mr. B. She’s got an order of protection against you; you’ll get arrested if you come on the property.”

I took a deep breath and tried to figure out whom I could trust… My attorney, yes… Rocco, yes… Dave Beall, yes… the dirty Duchess—NO! So what was the point of going home, anyway? She hated me and I hated her, and I would probably end up killing her if I saw her, and that would put a serious damper on my travel plans with Chandler and Carter. So, yes, perhaps a few days in the sun might do me some good.

I looked at Rocco and narrowed my eyes. “Is everything in there?” I asked accusingly. “All my medications?”

“I packed everything,” said a weary-looking Rocco. “All the stuff from your drawers and inside your desk, plus the cash Mrs. Belfort gave us. It’s all in there.”

Fair enough, I thought. Fifty thousand dollars should last me a couple of days. And the drugs… well, there ought to be enough of them in there to get Cuba stoned for the rest of April.

^{CHAPTER 37} SICK AND SICKER

The sheer insanity of it! We were cruising along at 39,000 feet and there were so many cocaine molecules floating in the recirculated air that when I got up to go to the bathroom, I noticed that the two pilots were wearing gas masks. Good. They seemed like nice-enough guys, and I would hate to see them fail a drug test on my account.

I was on the run now. I was a fugitive! I needed to keep moving, to maintain. To rest was to die. To allow my head to come down, to allow myself to crash, to allow my thoughts to focus in on what had just happened, that was certain death!

Yet… why had it happened? Why had I kicked the Duchess down the stairs? She was my wife. I loved her more than anything. And why had I thrown my daughter into the passenger seat of my Mercedes and driven through a garage door without even buckling her seat belt? She was my most prized possession on earth. Would she remember that scene on the stairs for the rest of her life? Would she always visualize her mother crawling upward, trying to save her daughter from… from… what?… The coked-out maniac?

Somewhere over North Carolina I had admitted to myself that I was a coked-out maniac. For a brief moment, I had crossed over the line. But now I was back, sane, once more. Or was I?

I needed to keep snorting. And I needed to keep dropping, dropping Ludes and Xanax and lots of Valium. I needed to keep the paranoia at bay. I needed to maintain my high at all costs; to rest was to die… to rest was to die.

Twenty minutes later the seat-belt sign came on, serving as a clear reminder that it was time to stop snorting, time to drop Ludes and Xanax—to ensure that we’d hit the ground in a state of perfect toxic poise.

As my attorney had promised, Dave Beall was waiting on the tarmac with a black Lincoln limousine behind him. Janet at work, I figured, already hooking me up with transportation.

Standing there with his arms crossed, Dave looked bigger than a mountain. “You ready to party?” I said buoyantly. “I need to find my next ex-wife.”

“Let’s go back to my house and relax,” replied the Mountain. “Laurie flew to New York to be with Nadine. We got the whole house to ourselves. You need to get some sleep.”

Sleep? No, no, no! I thought. “I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead, you big fuck. And whose side are you on, anyway? Mine or hers?” I took a swing at him, a full right cross that landed squarely on his right biceps.

He shrugged, apparently not feeling the sting of my blow. “I’m on your side,” he said warmly. “I’m always on your side, but I don’t think there’s a war. You guys are gonna make up. Give her a few days to calm down; that’s all the woman needs.”

I gritted my teeth and shook my head menacingly, as if to say, “Never! Not in a million fucking years!”

Alas, the truth was somewhat different. I wanted my Duchess back; in fact, I wanted her back desperately. But I couldn’t let Dave know that; he might slip, say something to Laurie, who would then say something to the Duchess. Then the Duchess would know that I was miserable without her, and that would give her the upper hand.

“I hope she drops fucking dead,” I muttered. “I mean, after what she did to me, Dave? I wouldn’t take her back if she were the last cunt in the world. Now, let’s go to Solid Gold and get some strippers to give us blow jobs!”

“You’re the boss,” said Dave. “My orders are just to make sure that you don’t kill yourself.”

“Oh, really?” I snapped. “Who the fuck gave you those orders?”

“Everybody,” said my big friend, shaking his head gravely.

“Well, then, fuck everybody!” I sputtered, heading to the limousine. “Fuck every last one of them!”

Solid Gold—what a place! A smorgasbord of young strippers, at least two dozen of them. As we made our way toward the center stage, I got a better look at some of these young beauties, and I came to the sad conclusion that most of them had been beaten over the head with an ugly stick.

I turned to the Mountain and the Uniblinker and said, “There’re too many dogs in this place, but if we look hard enough I bet we can find a diamond in the rough.” I craned my head this way and that. “Let’s walk around a bit.”

Toward the back of the club was a VIP section. An enormous black bouncer stood before a short flight of steps cordoned off by a red velvet rope. I headed straight for him. “How ya doing!” I said, in warm tones.

The bouncer looked down at me as if I were an annoying insect that needed to be squashed. He needed a little attitude adjustment, I reasoned, so I reached down into my right sock, pulled out a stack of $10,000 in hundreds, and peeled off half and handed it to him.

With his attitude now properly adjusted, I said, “Would you bring me the five hottest girls in this place, and then clear out the VIP section for my friends and me?”

He smiled.

Five minutes later we had the entire VIP section to ourselves. There were four reasonably hot strippers standing in front of us in their birthday suits and high heels. They were all decent-looking, but none of them was marriage material. I needed a true beauty, one I could parade around Long Island to show the Duchess once and for all who was boss.

Just then the bouncer opened the velvet rope and a naked teenager made her way up the steps, in a pair of white patent-leather go-to-hell pumps. She sat down next to me on the arm of the club chair, crossed her bare legs with complete insouciance, and then leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. She smelled of a mixture of Angel perfume and a tiny drop of her own musky aroma from dancing. She was gorgeous. She couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. She had a great mane of light-brown hair, emerald-green eyes, a tiny button nose, and a smooth jaw-line. Her body was incredible—about five-five, a pair of silicone C-cups, a gentle curve to her tummy, and legs that rivaled the Duchess’s. She had olive skin, and there wasn’t a single blemish on it.

We exchanged smiles, and her teeth were even and white. In a voice loud enough to cut through the stripper music, I said, “What’s your name?”

She leaned toward me until her lips were almost pressing against my right ear, and she said, “Blaze.”

I recoiled and looked at her with my head cocked to one side. “What kinda fucking name is Blaze? Did your mother know you were gonna be a stripper when you were born?”

She stuck her tongue out at me, so I stuck my tongue back at her. “My real name is Jennifer,” she said. “Blaze is my stage name.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s very nice to make your acquaintance, Blaze.”

“Awwww,” she said, rubbing her cheek against mine. “You’re such a little cutie!”

Little? Why… you… little hooker in stripper’s clothing! I oughta smash you one! I took a deep breath and said, “What do you mean?”

That seemed to confuse her. “I mean you’re… a cutie, and you have beautiful eyes, and you’re young!” She offered me her stripper’s smile.

She had a very sweet voice, Blaze. Would Gwynne approve of her, though? In truth, it was still too early to say if this one would make a suitable mother for the children.

“Do you like Quaaludes?” I asked.

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “I never tried one. What do they make you feel like?”

Hmmm… a novice, I thought. No patience to break her in. “How about coke? Have you tried that?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, I love coke! Do you have any?”

I nodded eagerly. “Yeah, mountains of it!”

“Well, then, follow me,” she said, grabbing my hand. “And don’t call me Blaze anymore, okay? My name is Jennie.”

I smiled at my future wife. “Okay, Jennie. Do you like kids, by the way?” I crossed my fingers.

She smiled from ear to ear. “Yeah, I love kids. I wanna have a whole bunch one day. Why?”

“No particular reason,” I said to my future wife. “I was just wondering.”

Ahhh, Jennie! My very antidote to the backstabbing Duchess! Who even needed to go back to Old Brookville now? I could just move Chandler and Carter down to Florida. Gwynne and Janet would come too. The Duchess would have visitation rights, once a year, under court supervision. That would be fair.

Jennie and I passed away the next four hours in the manager’s office, snorting cocaine, as she gave me private lap dances and world-class blow jobs, in spite of the fact that I hadn’t been able to actually get it up yet. I was now convinced, however, that she would make a suitable mother for my children, so I said to the top of Jennie’s head, “Hold on, Jennie. Stop sucking for a second.”

She craned up her neck and offered me her stripper’s smile. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

I shook my head. “Nothing’s wrong. In fact, everything’s right. I want to introduce you to my mother. Hold on a second.” I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my parents’ house in Bayside, which had had the same phone number for thirty-five years.

A moment later came my mother’s concerned voice, to which I replied, “No, no, don’t listen to her. Everything is fine…. A restraining order? So fucking what? I have two houses; she can keep one and I can keep the other…. The children? They’ll live with me, of course. I mean, who could do a better job raising them than me? Anyway, that’s not why I called, Mom; I called to let you know that I’m asking Nadine for a divorce…. Why? Because she’s a backstabbing bitch, that’s why! Besides, I already met someone else, and she’s really nice.” I looked over at Jennie, who was fairly beaming, and I winked at her. Then I said into the phone, “Listen, Mom, I want you to speak to my future wife. She’s really sweet and beautiful and… Where am I right now? I’m in a strip club down in Miami…. Why?… No, she’s not a stripper, or at least not anymore. She’s putting all that behind her now. I’m gonna spoil her rotten.” I winked at Jennie again. “Her name is Jennie, but you can call her Blaze if you want. She won’t take offense at that; she’s a very easygoing girl. Hold on—here she is.”

I passed the cell phone to Jennie. “My mom’s name is Leah, and she’s very nice. Everyone loves her.”

Jennie shrugged and grabbed the phone. “Hello, Leah? This is Jennie. How are you?… Oh, I’m fine, thanks for asking…. Yes, he’s okay…. Uh-huh, yes, okay, hold on a second.” Jennie puther hand over the mouthpiece and said, “She said she wants to speak to you again.”

Unbelievable! I thought. That was very rude of my mother to blow off my future wife like that! I grabbed the phone and hung up on her. Then I smiled from ear to ear, lay back down on the couch, and pointed to my loins.

Jennie nodded eagerly, leaned over me, and started sucking…and grabbing…and yanking…and pulling…and then sucking some more…. Still, for the life of me I couldn’t seem to get the blood flowing. But my young Jennie was a trooper, a determined little teenager she was, not about to quit without giving it a full college try. Fifteen minutes later she finally found that special little spot, and next thing I knew I was hard as a rock—fucking her mercilessly on a cheap white cloth couch and telling her that I loved her. She told me that she loved me too, at which point we both giggled. It was a happy moment for us as we marveled at how two lost souls could fall so deeply in love so quickly—even under these circumstances.

It was amazing. Yes, in that very instant—just before I came—Jennie was everything to me. Then an instant later I wished she would vaporize into thin air. A terrible sinking feeling washed over me like a hundred-foot tidal wave. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach. I visibly sagged. I was thinking of the Duchess: I missed her.

I needed to speak to her desperately. I needed for her to tell me that she still loved me and that she was still mine. I smiled sadly at Jennie and told her that I needed to speak to Dave for a second and that I’d be right back. I went out into the club, found Dave, and told him that if I didn’t leave this place right this second I might kill myself, which would put him in deep shit, since it was his responsibility to keep me alive until things settled down a bit. So we left, without saying good-bye to Jennie.

Dave and I were sitting in the back of the limo, on our way to his house in Broken Sound, a gated community in Boca Raton. The Uniblinker had fallen in love with a stripper and stayed behind—and I was now considering slitting my wrists. I felt myself crashing; the cocaine was wearing off and I was falling from an emotional cliff. I needed to speak to the Duchess. Only she could help me.

It was two in the morning. I grabbed Dave’s cell phone and dialed my home number. A woman’s voice answered, but it wasn’t the Duchess’s.

“Who’s this?” I snapped.

“It’s Donna.”

Oh, shit! Donna Schlesinger was just the sort of catty bitch who’d eat this shit up. She was a childhood friend of Nadine’s, and she’d been jealous of her since she was old enough to understand the concept. I took a deep breath and said, “Let me speak to my wife, Donna.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”

That enraged me. “Just put her on the fucking phone, Donna.”

“I told you,” snapped Donna, “she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“Donna,” I said calmly, “I’m not fucking around here. I’m warning you right now that if you don’t put her on the phone I’m gonna fly back to New York and stick a fucking knife through your heart. And then, when I’m done with you, I’m going after your husband, just on general principles.” Then I screamed, “Put her on the phone right fucking now!”

“Hold on,” said a very nervous Donna.

I rolled my neck, trying to calm myself down. Then I looked at Dave and said, “You know I didn’t really mean that. I was just trying to make a point.”

He nodded and said, “I hate Donna as much as you do, but I think you ought to let Nadine be for a couple of days. Just back off a bit. I spoke to Laurie, and she said Nadine is pretty shaken up.”

“What else did Laurie say?”

“She said that Nadine won’t take you back unless you go to drug rehab.”

Just then over the cell phone: “Hi, Jordan, it’s Ophelia. Are you okay?”

I took a deep breath. Ophelia was a good girl, but she couldn’t be trusted. She was the Duchess’s oldest friend, and she would want the best for us…but, still…the Duchess had crawled inside her mind…manipulated her…turned her against me. Ophelia could be an enemy. Still, unlike Donna, she wasn’t evil, so I found her voice somewhat calming. “I’m okay, Ophelia. Will you please put Nadine on the phone?”

I heard her sigh. “She won’t come to the phone, Jordan. She won’t speak to you unless you go to rehab.”

“I don’t need rehab,” I said sincerely. “I just need to slow down a bit. Tell her I will.”

“I’ll tell her,” said Ophelia, “but I don’t think it’ll help. Listen, I’m sorry, but I gotta go.” And just like that she hung up the phone on me.

My spirits plunged even lower. I took a deep breath and dropped my head in defeat. “Unbelievable,” I muttered under my breath.

Dave put his arm on my shoulder. “Are you all right, buddy?”

“Yeah,” I lied, “I’m fine. I don’t wanna talk right now. I just need to think.”

Dave nodded, and we spent the remainder of the ride in silence.

Fifteen minutes later I was sitting in Dave’s living room, feeling hopeless and desperate. The insanity seemed even worse now; my spirits had plunged to impossible depths. Dave was sitting next to me on the couch, saying nothing. He was just watching and waiting. In front of me was a pile of cocaine. My pills were on the kitchen counter. I had tried calling the house a dozen times, but Rocco had started to answer the phone. Apparently he’d turned against me too. I would fire him as soon as this was resolved.

I said to Dave, “Call Laurie on her cell phone. It’s the only way I can get through.”

Dave nodded wearily and started punching in Laurie’s number on the cordless phone. Thirty seconds later I had her on the phone, and she was crying. “Listen,” she said, snuffling back tears, “you know how much Dave and I love you, Jordan, but, please, I’m begging you, you gotta go to rehab. You gotta get help. You’re about to die. Don’t you see it? You’re a brilliant man and you’re destroying yourself. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Channy and Carter. Please!”

I took a deep breath and rose from the couch and started walking toward the kitchen. Dave followed a few steps behind. “Does Nadine still love me?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Laurie, “she still loves you, but she won’t be with you anymore unless you go to rehab.”

I took another deep breath. “If she loves me she’ll come to the phone.”

“No,” said Laurie, “if she loves you she won’t come to the phone. You two are in this thing together; you’re both sick with this disease. She might be even sicker than you for allowing it to go on so long. You need to go to rehab, Jordan, and she needs to get help too.”

I couldn’t believe it. Even Laurie had turned on me! I never would’ve thought it—not in a million years. Well, fuck her! And fuck the Duchess! And fuck every last soul on earth! Who gave a fucking shit anymore! I had already peaked, hadn’t I? I was thirty-four and had already lived ten lifetimes. What was the point now? Was there anywhere to go but down? What was better, to die a slow, painful death or to go down in a blaze of glory?

Just then I caught a glimpse of the vial of morphine. There were at least a hundred pills inside, fifteen milligrams each. They were small pills, half the size of a pea, and they were a terrific shade of purple. I’d taken ten today, which was enough to put most men in an irreversible coma; for me, it was nothing.

With great sadness in my voice, I said to Laurie, “Tell Nadine I’m sorry, and to kiss the kids good-bye.” The last thing I heard before I hung up the phone was Laurie screaming: “Jordan, no! Don’t hang—”

In one swift movement I grabbed the vial of morphine, unscrewed the top, and poured out the entire contents into the palm of my hand. There were so many pills that half of them tumbled on the floor. Still, there were at least fifty, rising up in the shape of a pyramid. It looked beautiful; a purple pyramid. I threw them back and started chewing them. Then all hell broke loose.

I saw Dave running toward me, so I darted to the other side of the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, but before I could put my lips to the bottle he was on me—knocking the bottle out of my hand and grabbing me in a bear hug. The phone started to ring. He ignored it and took me down to the floor, then stuck his tremendous fingers in my mouth and tried scooping the pills out. I bit his fingers, but he was so strong he overpowered me. He screamed, “Spit them out! Spit them out!”

“Fuck you!” I yelled. “Let me up or I’ll fucking kill you, you big fuck!”

And the phone kept ringing, and Dave kept screaming, “Spit out the pills! Spit them out!” and I kept chewing and trying to swallow more pills until, finally, he grabbed my cheeks with his right hand and squeezed with tremendous force.

“Oww, fuck!” I spit out the pills. They tasted poisonous… incredibly bitter… and I had already swallowed so many of them it didn’t really matter. It was only a matter of time now.

Holding me down with one hand, he picked up the cordless, dialed 911, and frantically gave the police his address. Then he threw down the phone and tried scooping more pills out of my mouth. I bit him again.

“Get your fucking paws out of my mouth, you big fucking oaf! I’ll never forgive you. You’re with them.”

“Calm down,” he said, picking me up like a bundle of firewood and carrying me over to the couch.

And there I laid, cursing him out for a solid two minutes, until I started to lose interest. I was getting very tired… very warm… very dreamy. It felt rather pleasant, actually. Then the phone rang. Dave picked it up, and it was Laurie. I tried listening to the conversation, but I quickly drifted off. Dave pressed the phone to my ear and said, “Here, buddy, it’s your wife. She wants to speak to you. She wants to tell you that she still loves you.”

“Nae?” I said, in a sleepy voice.

The loving Duchess: “Hey, sweetie, hang in there for me. I still love you. Everything’s gonna be okay. The kids love you, and I love you too. It’s all gonna be okay. Don’t fall asleep on me.”

I started to cry. “I’m sorry, Nae. I didn’t mean to do that to you today. I didn’t know what I was doing. I can’t live with myself…. I’m… sorry.” I sobbed uncontrollably.

“It’s okay,” said my wife. “I still love you. Just hang in there. It’s all gonna be okay.”

“I’ve always loved you, Nae, since the first day I laid eyes on you.”

Then I overdosed.

I woke up to the most horrendous feeling imaginable. I remember screaming, “No! Get that thing out of my mouth, you fucker!” but not being sure exactly why.

I found out a second later. I was tied to an examining table in an emergency room, surrounded by a team of five doctors and nurses. The table was positioned upright, perpendicular to the floor. Not only were my arms and legs tied but there were also two thick vinyl belts affixing me to the table, one across my torso and the other across my thighs. A doctor in front of me, dressed in green hospital scrubs, was holding a long, thick black tube in his hand, the sort you would expect to find on a car radiator.

“Jordan,” he said firmly, “you need to cooperate and stop trying to bite my hand. We have to pump your stomach.”

“I’m fine,” I muttered. “I didn’t even swallow anything. I spit them out. I was only kidding.”

“I understand,” he said patiently, “but I can’t afford to take that chance. We’ve given you Narcan to offset the narcotics, so you’re out of danger now. But listen to me, my friend: Your blood pressure is off the charts and your heartbeat is erratic. What other drugs have you taken besides morphine?”

I took a moment to regard the doctor. He looked Iranian or Persian or something along those lines. Could he be trusted? I was a Jew, after all, which made me his sworn enemy. Or did the Hippocratic oath transcend all that? I looked around the room, and over in the corner I saw a very disturbing sight—two policemen, in uniform, with guns. They were leaning against a wall, observing. Time to clam up, I thought.

“Nothing,” I croaked. “Only morphine, and maybe a bit of Xanax. I have a bad back. I got everything from the doctor.”

The doctor smiled sadly. “I’m here to help you, Jordan, not to bust you.”

I closed my eyes and prepared for the torture. Yes, I knew what was coming. This Persiranian bastard was gonna try to stick that tube down my esophagus, all the way into my stomach sac, where he would vacuum out the contents. Then he would dump a couple of pounds of black charcoal into my stomach to push the drugs through my digestive tract unabsorbed. It was one of the rare moments in my life when I regretted being well read. And the last thought I had before the five doctors and nurses attacked me and forced the tube down my throat was: God, I hate being right all the time!

An hour later my stomach sac was completely empty, except for the dump truck worth of charcoal they’d forced down my throat. I was still tied to the table when they finally removed the black tube. As the last inch of tubing slid up my esophagus, I found myself wondering how female porn stars were able to deep-throat all those enormous penises without gagging. I knew it was a strange thought to have, but, still, it was what had occurred to me.

“How you feeling?” asked the kind doctor.

“I have to go to the bathroom really bad,” I said. “In fact, if you don’t untie me I’m gonna take a dump right in my pants.”

The doctor nodded, and he and the nurses began undoing my restraints. “The bathroom’s in there,” he said. “I’ll come in there in a little while and check on you.”

I wasn’t quite sure what he’d meant by that, until the first salvo of gunpowder came exploding out of my rectum with the force of a water cannon. I resisted the urge to look inside the bowl to see what was coming out of me, but after ten minutes of exploding salvos I gave in to the urge and peeked inside the bowl. It looked like the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—pounds of dark-black volcanic ash exploding from my asshole. If I weighed a hundred thirty pounds this morning, I weighed only a buck twenty now. My very innards were inside some cheap porcelain toilet bowl in Boca Raton, Florida.

An hour later I finally emerged from the bathroom. I was over the hump now, feeling much more normal. Perhaps they’d sucked some of the insanity out of me, I thought. Either way, it was time to resume Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional; it was time to patch things up with the Duchess, curtail my drug intake, and live a more subdued lifestyle. I was thirty-four, after all, and the father of two.

“Thanks,” I said to the kind doctor. “I’m really sorry for biting you. I was just a bit nervous before. You can understand, right?”

He nodded. “No problem,” he said. “I’m just glad we could help.”

“Could you guys call me a cab, please? I gotta get home and get some sleep.”

It was then that I noticed that the two policemen were still in the room and they were heading directly for me. I had the distinct impression they weren’t about to offer me transportation home.

The doctor took two steps back, just as one of the policemen pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Oh, Christ! I thought. Handcuffed again? It would be the Wolf’s fourth time in chains in less than twenty-four hours! And what had I really done? I decided not to pursue that line of thinking. After all, where I was going I would have nothing but time to think about things.

As he slapped the cuffs on me, the policeman said, “Pursuant to the Baker Act, you’re being placed in a locked-down psychiatric unit for seventy-two hours, at which point you’ll be brought before a judge to see if you’re still a danger to yourself or others. Sorry, sir.”

Hmmm… he seemed like a nice-enough fellow, this Florida policeman, and he was only doing his job, after all. Besides, he was taking me to a psychiatric unit, not a jail, and that had to be a good thing, didn’t it?

“I’m a butterfly! I’m a butterfly!” screamed an obese, dark-haired woman in a blue muumuu as she flapped her arms and flew lazy circles around the fourth-floor locked-down psychiatric unit of the Delray Medical Center.

I was sitting on a very uncomfortable couch in the middle of the common area as she floated by. I smiled and nodded at her. There were forty or so patients, mostly dressed in bathrobes and slippers and engaged in various forms of socially unacceptable behavior. At the front of the unit was the nurses’ station, where all the crazies would line up every few hours for their Thorazine or Haldol or some other antipsychotic, to soothe their frazzled nerves.

“I gotta have it. Six point O two times ten to the twenty-third,” muttered a tall, thin teenager with a ferocious case of acne.

Very interesting, I thought. I had been watching this poor kid for over two hours, as he walked around in a remarkably perfect circle, spitting out Avogadro’s number, a mathematical constant used to measure molecular density. At first I was a bit confused as to why he was so obsessed with this number, until one of the orderlies explained that the young fellow was an intractable acidhead with a very high IQ, and he became fixated on Avogadro’s number whenever a dose of acid hit him the wrong way. It was his third stay in the Delray Medical Center in the last twelve months.

I found it ironic that I would be put in a place like this—considering how sane I was—but that was the problem with laws like the Baker Act: They were designed to meet the needs of the masses. Either way, things had been going reasonably well so far. I had convinced a doctor to prescribe me Lamictal, and he, of his own volition, had put me on some sort of short-acting opiate to help with the withdrawals.

What troubled me, though, was that I’d been trying to call at least a dozen people on the unit’s pay phone—friends, family, lawyers, business associates. I’d even tried reaching Alan Chemical-tob, to make sure he’d have a fresh batch of Quaaludes for me when I finally got released from this insane asylum, but I hadn’t been able to get in touch with anyone. Not a soul: not the Duchess, my parents, Lipsky, Dave, Laurie, Gwynne, Janet, Wigwam, Joe Fahmegghetti, Greg O’Connell, the Chef, even Bo, who I could always get in touch with. It was as if I were being frozen out, abandoned by everyone.

In fact, as my first day in this glorious institution came to a close, I found myself hating the Duchess more than ever. She had completely forgotten about me, turned everyone against me, using that single despicable act I’d committed on the stairs to garner sympathy from my friends and business associates. I was certain that she no longer loved me and had uttered those words to me while I was overdosing only out of sympathy—thinking that perhaps I might actually kick the bucket and she might as well send me off to hell with one last bogus “I love you.”

By midnight, the cocaine and Quaaludes were pretty much out of my system, but I still couldn’t sleep. It was then, in the wee hours of the morning, on April 17, 1997, that a nurse with a very kind heart gave me a shot of Dalmane in my right ass cheek. And, finally, fifteen minutes later, I fell asleep without cocaine in my system for the first time in three months.

I woke up eighteen hours later to the sound of my name. I opened my eyes and there was a large black orderly standing over me.

“Mr. Belfort, you have a visitor.”

The Duchess! I thought. She had come to take me out of this place. “Really,” I said, “who is it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know his name.”

My spirits sank. He led me to a room with padded walls. Inside was a gray metal desk and three chairs. It reminded me of the room the Swiss Customs officials questioned me in after I’d groped the stewardess, except for the padded walls. Sitting on one side of the desk was a fortyish man with horn-rimmed glasses. The moment we locked eyes he rose from his chair and greeted me.

“You must be Jordan,” he said, extending his right hand. “I’m Dennis Maynard.”†

Out of instinct I shook his hand, although there was something about him I instantly disliked. He was dressed like me, in jeans and sneakers and a white polo shirt. He was reasonably good-looking, in a washed-out sort of way, about five-nine, average build, with short brown hair parted to the side.

He motioned to a seat across from him. I nodded and sat down. A moment later, another orderly came in the room—this one a large, drunken Irishman, by the looks of him. Both orderlies stood behind me, a couple of feet back, waiting to pounce if I tried pulling a Hannibal Lecter on this guy—biting his nose off, while my pulse remained at seventy-two.

Dennis Maynard said, “I’ve been retained by your wife.”

I shook my head in amazement. “What are you, a fucking divorce lawyer or something? Christ, that cunt works quick! I figured she’d at least have the decency to wait the three days ’til the Baker Act expired before she filed for divorce.”

He smiled. “I’m not a divorce lawyer, Jordan. I’m a drug interventionist, and I’ve been hired by your wife, who still loves you, so you shouldn’t be so quick to call her a cunt.”

I narrowed my eyes at this bastard, trying to make heads or tails of what was going on. I no longer felt paranoid, but I still felt on edge. “So you say you’ve been hired by my wife, who still loves me? Well, if she loves me so much, why won’t she visit me?”

“She’s very scared right now. And very confused. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours with her, and she’s in a very fragile state. She’s not ready to see you.”

I felt my head fill with steam. This motherfucker was making a play for the Duchess. I popped out of my chair and jumped over the desk, screaming, “You cocksucker!” He recoiled, as the two orderlies lunged after me. “I’ll have you stabbed to death, you piece of shit, going after my wife while I’m locked up in here. You’re fucking dead! And your family’s dead too! You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

I took a deep breath as the orderlies pushed me back down into my seat.

“Calm down,” said the Duchess’s future husband. “I’m not after your wife. She’s still in love with you and I’m in love with another woman. What I was trying to say is that I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours with your wife talking about you, and her, and everything that’s happened between you two.”

I felt entirely irrational. I was used to being in control, and I found this lack of control wildly disconcerting. “Did she tell you that I kicked her down the stairs with my daughter in my arms? Did she tell you that I cut open two million dollars’ worth of shabby-chic furniture? Did she tell you about my little baking disaster? I can only imagine what she said.” I shook my head in disgust, not just over my own actions but over the Duchess airing our dirty laundry to a complete stranger.

He nodded and let out a chuckle, trying to defuse my anger. “Yeah, she told me about all those things. Some of them were pretty amusing, actually, especially the part about the furniture. I’d never heard that one before. But most of the things were pretty disturbing, like what happened on the stairs and in the garage. Understand, though, that none of this is your fault—or I should say none of these things makes you a bad person. What you are is a sick person, Jordan; you’re sick with a disease, a disease that’s no different than cancer or diabetes.”

He paused for a second, then shrugged. “But she also told me how wonderful you used to be, before the drugs took hold. She told me how brilliant you were and about all your accomplishments and how you swept her off her feet when you first met. She told me that she never loved anyone the way she loved you. She told me how generous you are to everyone, and how everyone takes advantage of your generosity. And she also told me about your back, and how that exacerbated…”

As my interventionist kept talking, I found myself hanging on the word loved. He had said she loved me—past tense. Did that mean she no longer loved me? Probably so, I thought, because if she still loved me she would have come to visit me. This whole business of her being scared didn’t make sense. I was in a locked-down psychiatric unit—how could I harm her? I was in terrible emotional pain. If she would just visit me—even for a second, for Chrissake!—and hug me and tell me that she still loved me, that would ease my pain. I would do it for her, wouldn’t I? It seemed unusually cruel of her not to visit me after I’d almost committed suicide. It didn’t strike me as the act of a loving wife—estranged or not—no matter what the circumstances.

Obviously, Dennis Maynard was here to try to convince me to go to rehab. And perhaps I would go, if the Duchess would come here and ask me herself. But not like this, not while she was blackmailing me and threatening to leave me unless I did what she wanted. Yet wasn’t rehab what I wanted, or at least what I needed? Did I really want to live out my life as a drug addict? But how could I possibly live without drugs? My entire life was centered on drugs. The very thought of living the next fifty years without Ludes and coke seemed impossible. Yet there was a time, long before all this happened, when I’d lived a sober life. Was it possible to get back to that point, to turn back the clock, so to speak? Or had my brain chemistry been immutably altered—and I was now an addict, doomed to that very life until the day I died?

“…and about your father’s temper,” continued the interventionist, “and how your mother tried to protect you from him but wasn’t always successful. She told me everything.”

I fought the urge to be ironic but quickly failed. “So did little Martha Stewart tell you how perfect she is? I mean, since I’m such damaged goods and everything, did she even get a moment to tell you anything about herself? Because she is perfect, after all. She’ll tell you—not in so many words, of course—but she will tell you. After all, she’s the Duchess of Bay Ridge.”

The last few words gave him a chuckle. “Listen,” he said, “your wife is far from perfect. In fact, she’s sicker than you are. Think about it for a second: Who’s the sicker one—the spouse who’s addicted to drugs or the spouse who sits by and watches the person they love destroy themselves? I would say the latter. The truth is that your wife suffers from her own disease, namely, codependence. By spending all her time looking after you, she ignores her own problems. She’s got as bad a case of codependence as I’ve ever seen.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” I said. “You don’t think I know all this shit? I’ve done my fair share of reading, in case no one’s told you. In spite of the fifty thousand Ludes I’ve consumed, I still remember everything I’ve read since nursery school.”

He nodded. “I haven’t just met with your wife, Jordan; I’ve also met with all your friends and family, everyone who’s important to you. And one thing they’re all unanimous on is that you’re one of the smartest men on the planet. So, that being said, I’m not gonna try to bullshit you. Here’s the deal: There’s a drug rehab in Georgia called Talbot Marsh. It specializes in treating doctors. The place is filled with some very smart people, so you’ll fit in well there. I have the power to sign you out of this hellhole right now. You could be at Talbot Marsh in two hours. There’s a limousine waiting for you downstairs, and your jet is at the airport, all fueled up. Talbot Marsh is a very nice place, and very upscale. I think you’ll like it.”

“What makes you so fucking qualified? Are you a doctor?”

“No,” he said, “I’m just a drug addict like you. No different, except that I’m in recovery and you’re not.”

“How long you sober for?”

“Ten years.”

“Ten fucking years?” I sputtered. “Holy Christ! How the fuck is that even possible? I can’t go a day—an hour—without thinking about drugs! I’m not like you, pal. My mind works differently. Anyway, I don’t need to go to rehab. Maybe I’ll just try AA or something.”

“You’re past that point. In fact, it’s a miracle you’re still alive. You should’ve stopped breathing a long time ago, my friend.” He shrugged. “But one day your luck’s gonna run out. Next time your friend Dave might not be around to call 911, and you’ll end up in a coffin instead of a psychiatric unit.”

In a dead-serious tone, he said, “In AA we say there are three places an alcoholic or an addict ends up—jails, institutions, or dead. Now, in the last two days you’ve been in a jail and an institution. When will you be satisfied, when you’re in a funeral home? When your wife has to sit your two children down and explain how they’re never gonna see their father again?”

I shrugged, knowing he was right but incapable of surrendering. For some inexplicable reason I felt the necessity to resist him, to resist the Duchess—to resist everyone, in fact. If I were to get sober, it would be on my own terms, not on anyone else’s, and certainly not with a gun to my head. “If Nadine comes down here herself, I’ll consider it. Otherwise you can go fuck yourself.”

“She won’t come here,” he said. “Unless you go to rehab she won’t speak to you.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Then you can both go fuck yourselves. I’ll be out of here in two days; then I’ll deal with my addiction on my own terms. And if it means losing my wife, so be it.” I rose out of my chair and motioned to the orderlies.

As I was walking out of the room, Dennis said, “You may be able to find another beautiful wife, but you’ll never find one who loves you as much as she does. Who do you think organized all this? Your wife’s spent the last twenty-four hours in a state of panic, trying to save your life. You’d be a fool to let her go.”

I took a deep breath and said, “A long time ago there was another woman who loved me as much as Nadine did; her name was Denise, and I fucked her over royally. Maybe I’m just getting what I deserve. Who knows anymore? But, either way, I’m not being bullied into rehab, so you’re wasting your time. Don’t come see me again.”

Then I left the room.

The rest of the day was no less torturous. Starting with my parents, one by one my friends and family came into the psychiatric unit and tried to convince me to go to rehab. Everyone except the Duchess. How could the woman be so coldhearted, after I’d tried…what?

I resisted using the word suicide, even in my own thoughts—perhaps because it was too painful, or perhaps out of sheer embarrassment that the love or, for that matter, the obsession with a woman, even my own wife, could drive me to commit such an act. It was not the act of a true man of power, nor was it the act of a man who had any self-respect.

In truth, I had never actually intended to kill myself. Deep down, I knew that I’d be rushed to the hospital and my stomach would be pumped. Dave had been standing over me, ready to intervene. The Duchess wasn’t aware of that, though; from her perspective, I had been so distraught over the possibility of losing her, and so caught up in the despair and desperation of a cocaine-induced paranoia, that I had tried to take my own life. How could she not be moved by that?

True: I had acted like a monster toward her, not just on the stairs but over the very months leading up to that heinous act. Or perhaps years. Since the early years of our marriage, I had exploited our unspoken quid pro quo—that by providing her with the Life, I was entitled to certain liberties. And while there might be a germ of truth to that notion, there was no doubt that I had stepped way over the line.

Yet, in spite of everything, I felt that I still deserved compassion.

Did the Duchess lack compassion? Was there a certain coldness to her, a corner of her heart that was unreachable? In truth, I had always suspected as much. Like myself—like everyone—the Duchess was damaged goods; she was a good wife, but a wife who’d brought her own baggage into the marriage. As a child, her father had all but abandoned her. She had told me the stories of all the times she got dressed up on Saturdays and Sundays—gorgeous even then she was, with flowing blond hair and the face of an angel—and waited for her father to take her to a fancy dinner or on the roller coaster at Coney Island or to Riis Park, the local beach in Brooklyn, where he could proclaim to one and all: “This is my daughter! Look how beautiful she is! I’m so proud she’s mine.” Yet she would wait on the front stoop for him, only to be disappointed when he never showed or even called to humor her with a lame excuse.

Suzanne, of course, had covered for him—telling Nadine that her father loved her but that he was possessed by his own demons that drove him to the life of a wanderer, to a rootless existence. Was I now feeling the brunt of that? Was her very coldness a result of the barriers she’d erected as a child that precluded her from becoming a compassionate woman? Or was I simply grasping at straws? Perhaps this was payback—for all the philandering, the Blue Chips and the NASDAQS, the three-a.m. helicopter landings, and sleep-talking about Venice the Hooker, and the masseuse and the groping of the stewardess…

Or was the payback more subtle? Was it a result of all the laws I’d broken? Of all the stocks I’d manipulated? Of all the money I’d smuggled to Switzerland? For fucking over Kenny Greene, the Blockhead, who had been a loyal partner to me? It was hard to say anymore. The last decade of my life was unspeakably complicated. I had lived the sort of life that people read about only in novels.

Yet, this had been my life. Mine. For better or worse, I, Jordan Belfort, the Wolf of Wall Street, had been a true wild man. I had always looked at myself as being bulletproof—dodging death and incarceration, living my life like a rock star, consuming more drugs than any thousand men have the right to and still living to tell about it.

All these thoughts were roaring through my head, as I closed out my second day in the locked-down psychiatric unit of the Delray Medical Center. And as the drugs continued to make their way out of my cerebrum, my mind grew sharper and sharper. I was on the rebound—ready to face the world with all my faculties; ready to make mincemeat out of that bald bastard Steve Madden; ready to resume my fight with my nemesis, Special Agent Gregory Coleman; and ready to win the Duchess back, no matter what it took.

The next morning, just after pill call, I was summoned back into the rubber room, where I found two doctors waiting for me. One was fat and the other was average-looking, although he had bulging blue eyeballs and an Adam’s apple the size of a grapefruit. A glandular case, I figured.

They introduced themselves as Dr. Brad† and Dr. Mike† and immediately waved the orderlies out of the room. Interesting, I thought, but not nearly as interesting as the first two minutes of the conversation, when I came to the conclusion that these two were better suited as a stand-up comedy act than as drug interventionists. Or was that their method? Yes, these two guys seemed quite all right. In fact, I kind of liked them. The Duchess had flown them in from California, on a private jet, after Dennis Maynard informed her that the two of us hadn’t hit it off too well.

So these were the reinforcements.

“Listen,” said fat Dr. Brad, “I can sign you out of this shitty place right now and in two hours you can be at Talbot Marsh, sipping on a virgin piña colada and staring at a young nurse—who’s now one of the patients because she got caught shooting Demerol through her nurse’s skirt.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Or you could stay here for another day and become better acquainted with butterfly-lady and math-boy. But I gotta tell ya, I think you’d be crazy to stay in this place one second longer than you have to. I mean, it smells like…”

“Shit,” said the Glandular Case. “Why don’t you let us sign you out of here? I mean, I have no doubt that you’re crazy and everything, and you could probably use to be locked away for a couple of years, but not here—not in this shithole! You need to be in a classier loony bin.”

“He’s right,” added fat-Brad. “All kidding aside, there’s a limo downstairs waiting for us, and your jet’s at Boca Aviation. So let us sign you out of this madhouse, and let’s get on the jet and have some fun.”

“I agree,” added the Glandular Case. “The jet’s beautiful. How much did it cost your wife to fly us here from California?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, “but I’m willing to bet she paid top-dollar. If there’s one thing the Duchess hates, it’s a bargain.”

They both laughed, especially fat-Brad, who seemed to find humor in everything. “The Duchess! I love that! She’s a good-looking lady, your wife, and she really loves you.”

“Why do you call her the Duchess?” asked the Glandular Case.

“Well, it’s a long story,” I said, “but I can’t actually take credit for the name, as much as I’d like to. It came from this guy Brian, who owns one of the brokerage firms I do a lot of business with. Anyway, we were on a private jet, flying home from St. Bart’s a bunch of Christmases ago, and we were all really hung over. Brian was sitting across from Nadine in the cabin, and he laid a humongous fart and said, ‘Oh, shit, Nae, I think I just left a few skid marks with that one!’ Nadine started getting pissed at him, telling him how uncouth and disgusting he was, so Brian said, ‘Oh, excuse me; I guess the Duchess of Bay Ridge never laid a fart in her silk panties and left a few skid marks there!’”

“That’s funny,” said fat-Brad. “The Duchess of Bay Ridge. I like that.”

“No, that’s not the funny part. It’s what happened next that was really funny. Brian thought his joke was so hysterical that he was doubled over laughing so he didn’t see the Duchess rolling up the Christmas edition of Town and Country magazine. Just as he was lifting his head up, she popped out of her seat, took the most enormous swat at his head you could possibly imagine, and knocked him unconscious right on the plane. I’m talking out—fucking—cold! Then she sat back down and started reading her magazine again. Brian came to a couple of minutes later, after his wife threw a glass of water in his face. Anyway, ever since then the name stuck.”

“That’s incredible!” said the Glandular Case. “Your wife looks like an angel. I wouldn’t think her the type to do something like that.” Fat-Brad nodded in agreement.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, you have no idea what she’s capable of. She might not look tough, but she’s strong as an ox. You know how many times she’s beaten me up? She’s especially good with water.” I smiled and let out a chuckle. “I mean, don’t get me wrong: I deserved most of the beatings. As much as I love the girl I haven’t exactly been a model husband. But I still think she should’ve visited me. If she did, I’d already be in rehab, but now I don’t wanna do it because I don’t like being held hostage like this.”

“I think she wanted to come,” said fat-Brad, “but Dennis Maynard advised her against it.”

“It figures,” I sputtered. “He’s a real piece a shit, that guy. As soon as all this is resolved I’m gonna have someone pay him a little visit.”

The comedy team refused to engage with me. “Can I make a suggestion to you?” asked the Glandular Case.

I nodded. “Sure, why not? I like you guys. It’s the other prick I hated.”

He smiled and looked around conspiratorially. Then he lowered his voice and said, “Why don’t you let us sign you out of here and take you to Atlanta and then just bolt out of the rehab after you check in? There’re no walls or bars or barbed wire or anything like that. You’ll be staying in a luxury condo with a bunch of wacky doctors.”

“Yeah,” said fat-Brad, “once we drop you in Atlanta, the Baker Act is nullified and you’ll be free to go. Just tell your pilot not to leave the airport. If you don’t like the rehab, just walk away.”

I started laughing. “You two guys are unbelievable! You’re trying to appeal to my larcenous heart, aren’t you?”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to get you to rehab,” fat-Brad said. “You’re a nice guy and you deserve to live, not die at the end of a crack pipe, which is what’s gonna happen if you don’t get sober. Trust me—I speak from experience.”

“You’re a recovering addict too?” I asked.

“We both are,” said the Glandular Case. “I’m sober eleven years. Brad is sober thirteen years.”

“How is that even possible? The truth is I’d like to stop but I just can’t. I wouldn’t make it more than a few days, never mind thirteen years.”

“You can do it,” said fat-Brad. “Not for thirteen years, but I bet you make it through today.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I can make it through today, but that’s about it.”

“And that’s enough,” said the Glandular Case. “Today is all that matters. Who knows what tomorrow brings? Just take it one day at a time and you’ll be fine. That’s how I do it. I didn’t wake up this morning and say, ‘Gee, Mike, it’s important to control your urge to drink for the rest of your life!’ I said, ‘Gee, Mike, just make it for the next twenty-four hours and the rest of your life will take care of itself.’”

Fat-Brad nodded. “He’s right, Jordan. And I know what you’re probably thinking right now—that it’s just a stupid mind-dodge, like pulling the wool over your own eyes.” He shrugged. “And it probably is, but I personally couldn’t give a shit. It works, and that’s all I care about. It gave me my life back, and it’ll give you your life back too.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I liked these guys; I really did. And I truly wanted to get sober. So much that I could taste it. But my compulsion was too strong. All my friends did drugs; all my pastimes included drugs. And my wife… well, the Duchess hadn’t come to see me. With every terrible thing I’d done to her, I knew in my heart that I would never forget how she hadn’t come to see me after I’d tried to commit suicide.

And, of course, there was the Duchess’s side of things. Perhaps she would choose not to forgive me. I couldn’t blame her for that. She had been a good wife to me, and I had paid her back by becoming a drug addict. I had had my reasons, I figured, but that didn’t change things. If she wanted a divorce, then she was justified. I would always take care of her, I would always love her, and I would always make sure she had a good life. After all, she’d given me two gorgeous children, and she was the one who’d organized all this.

I looked fat-Brad straight in the eye and started nodding slowly. “Let’s get the fuck outta this hellhole.”

“Indeed,” he said. “Indeed.”

^{CHAPTER 38} MARTIANS OF THE THIRD REICH

The place seemed normal enough, at first glance.

The Talbot Marsh Recovery Campus sits on a half dozen immaculately landscaped acres in Atlanta, Georgia. It was only a ten-minute limo ride from the private airport, and I’d spent all six hundred seconds plotting my escape. In fact, before I’d deplaned, I gave the pilots strict instructions not to take off under any circumstances. It was me, after all, not the Duchess, I’d explained, who was paying the bill. Besides, there was a little something extra for them if they stayed awhile. They assured me they would.

So as the limo pulled into the driveway, I scoped out the terrain through the eyes of a prisoner. Meanwhile, fat-Brad and Mike the Glandular Case were sitting across from me, and true to their word there wasn’t a cement wall, a metal bar, a gun tower, or a strand of barbed wire anywhere in sight.

The property gleamed brilliantly in the Georgia sunshine, all these purple and yellow flowers and manicured rosebushes and towering oaks and elms. It was a far cry from the urine-infested corridors of the Delray Medical Center. Yet something seemed a bit off. Perhaps the place was too nice? Was there really that much money in drug rehabs?

There was a circular drop-off area in front of the building. As the limo inched toward it, fat-Brad reached into his pocket and pulled out three twenties. “Here,” he said. “I know you don’t have any money on you, so consider this a gift. It’s cab fare back to the airport. I don’t want you to have to hitchhike. You never know what kind of drug-addicted maniac you’ll run into.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked innocently.

“I saw you whispering in the pilot’s ear,” said fat-Brad. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that if someone’s not ready to get sober, there’s nothing I can do to force him. I won’t insult you with the analogy of leading a horse to water and all that crap. But, either way, I figure I owe you the sixty bucks for making me laugh so hard on the way here.” He shook his head. “You really are one twisted bastard.”

He paused, as if searching for the right words. “Anyway, I’d have to say that this has been the world’s most bizarre intervention. Yesterday I was in California, sitting in some boring convention, when I got this frantic call from the soon-to-be-late Dennis Maynard, who tells me about this gorgeous model who has a zillionaire husband on the verge of killing himself. Believe it or not, I actually balked at first, because of the distance, but then the Duchess of Bay Ridge got on the phone and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Next thing I know we’re on a private jet. And then we met you, which was the biggest trip of all.” He shrugged. “All I can say is that I wish you and your wife the best of luck. I hope you guys stay together. It would be a great ending to the story.”

The Glandular Case nodded in agreement. “You’re a good man, Jordan. Don’t ever forget that. Even if you bolt out the front door in ten minutes and go straight to a crack den, it still doesn’t change who you are. This is a fucked-up disease; it’s cunning and baffling. I walked out of three rehabs myself before I finally got it right. My family ended up finding me under a bridge; I was living as a beggar. And the real sick part is that after they finally got me into rehab, I escaped again and went back to the bridge. That’s the way this disease is.”

I let out a great sigh. “I’m not gonna bullshit you. Even when we were flying here today—and I was busy telling you all those hysterical stories and we were all laughing uncontrollably—I was still thinking about drugs. It was burning in the back of my mind like a fucking blast furnace. I’m already thinking about calling my Quaalude dealer as soon as I get out of here. Maybe I can live without the cocaine, but not the Ludes. They’re too much a part of my life now.”

“I know exactly how you feel,” said fat-Brad, nodding. “In fact, I still feel the same way about coke. Not a day goes by when I don’t get the urge to do it. But I’ve managed to stay sober for more than thirteen years. And you know how I do it?”

I smiled. “Yeah, you fat bastard—one day at a time, right?”

“Ah,” said fat-Brad, “now you’re learning! There’s hope for you yet.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “let the healing begin.”

We climbed out of the car and walked down a short concrete path that led to the front entrance. Inside, the place was nothing like I’d imagined. It was gorgeous. It looked like a men’s smoking club, with very plush carpet, rich and reddish, and lots of mahogany and burled walnut and comfortable-looking sofas and love seats and club chairs. There was a large bookcase filled with antique-looking books. Just across from it was an oxblood leather club chair with a very high back. It looked unusually comfortable, so I headed straight for it and plopped myself down.

Ahhhhhh…how long had it been since I’d sat in a comfortable chair without cocaine and Quaaludes bubbling around inside my brain? I no longer had back pain or leg pain or hip pain or any other pain. There was nothing bothering me, no petty annoyances. I took a deep breath and let it out…. It was a nice, sober breath, part of a nice, sober moment. How long had it been for me? Almost nine years since I’d been sober. Nine fucking years of complete insanity! Holy shit—what a way to live.

And I was fucking starving! I desperately needed to eat something. Anything but Froot Loops.

Fat-Brad walked over to me and said, “Ya doing okay?”

“I’m starving,” I said. “I’d pay a hundred grand for a Big Mac right now.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Mike and I need to fill out a few forms. Then we’ll bring you in and get you something to eat.” He smiled and walked off.

I took another deep breath, except this one I held in for a good ten seconds. I was staring into the very heart of the bookcase when I finally let it out…and just like that, in that very instant, the compulsion left me. I was done. No more drugs. I knew it. Enough was enough. I no longer felt the urge. It was gone. Why, I would never know. All I knew was that I would never touch them again. Something had clicked inside my brain. Some sort of switch had been flipped and I just fucking knew it.

I rose from my chair and walked over to the other side of the waiting room, where fat-Brad and Mike the Glandular Case were filling out paperwork. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the sixty bucks. “Here,” I said to fat-Brad, “you can have your sixty back. I’m staying.”

He smiled and nodded his head knowingly. “Good for you, my friend.”

Right before they left, I said to them, “Don’t forget to call the Duchess of Bay Ridge and tell her to get in touch with the pilots. Or else they’ll be waiting there for weeks.”

“Well, here’s to the Duchess of Bay Ridge!” fat-Brad said, making a mock toast.

“To the Duchess of Bay Ridge!” we all said simultaneously.

Then we exchanged hugs—and promises to keep in touch. But I knew we never would. They had done their job, and it was time for them to move on to the next case. And it was time for me to get sober.

It was the next morning when a new type of insanity started: sober insanity. I woke up around nine a.m., feeling positively buoyant. No withdrawal symptoms, no hangover, and no compulsion to do drugs. I wasn’t in the actual rehab yet; that would come tomorrow. I was still in the detox unit. As I made my way to the cafeteria for breakfast, the only thing weighing on my mind was that I still hadn’t been able to get in touch with the Duchess, who seemed to have flown the coop. I had called the house in Old Brookville and spoken to Gwynne, who’d told me that Nadine had dropped out of sight. She had only called in once, to speak to the kids, and she hadn’t even mentioned my name. So I assumed my marriage was over.

After breakfast I was walking back to my room when a beefy-looking guy sporting a ferocious mullet and the look of the intensely paranoid waved me over. We met by the pay phones. “Hi,” I said, extending my head. “I’m Jordan. How’s it going?”

He shook my hand cautiously. “Shhh!” he said, darting his eyes around. “Follow me.”

I nodded and followed him back into the cafeteria, where we sat down at a square lunch table, out of earshot of other human beings. At this time of morning the cafeteria had only a handful of people in it, and most of them were staff, dressed in white lab coats. I had pegged my new friend as a complete loon. He was dressed like me, in jeans and a T-shirt.

“I’m Anthony,” he said, extending his hand for another shake. “Are you the guy who flew in on the private jet yesterday?”

Oh, Christ! I wanted to remain anonymous for once, not stick out like a sore thumb. “Yeah, that was me,” I said, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that quiet. I just want to blend in, okay?”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he muttered, “but good luck trying to keep anything secret in this place.”

That sounded a bit odd, a bit Orwellian, in fact. “Oh, really?” I said. “Why’s that?”

He looked around again. “Because this place is like fucking Auschwitz,” he whispered. Then he winked at me.

At this point, I realized the guy wasn’t completely crazy, perhaps just a bit off. “Why is it like Auschwitz?” I asked, smiling.

He shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Because it’s fucking torture here, like a Nazi death camp. You see the staff over there?” He motioned with his head. “They’re the SS. Once the train drops you off in this place, you never leave. And there’s slave labor too.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I thought it was only a four-week program.”

He compressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head. “Maybe it is for you, but not for the rest of us. I assume you’re not a doctor, right?”

“No, I’m a banker—although I’m pretty much retired now.”

“Really?” he asked. “How are you retired? You look like a kid.”

I smiled. “I’m not a kid. But why’d you ask me if I’m a doctor?”

“Because almost everyone here is either a doctor or a nurse. I’m a chiropractor, myself. There are only a handful of people like you. Everyone else is here because they lost their license to practice medicine. So the staff has us by the balls. Unless they say you’re cured, you don’t get your license back. It’s a fucking nightmare. Some people have been here for over a year, and they’re still trying to get their license back!” He shook his head gravely. “It’s complete fucking insanity. Everyone’s ratting each other out, trying to earn brownie points with the staff. Really fucking sick. You have no idea. The patients walk around like robots, spewing out AA crap, pretending they’re rehabilitated.”

I nodded, fully getting the picture. A wacky arrangement like this, where the staff had that much power, was a recipe for abuse. Thank God I’d be above it. “What are the female patients like? Any hot ones?”

“Just one,” he answered. “A total knockout. A twelve on a scale from one to ten.”

That perked me up! “Oh, yeah, what’s she look like?”

“She’s a little blonde, about five-five, unbelievable body, perfect face, curly hair. She’s really beautiful. A real piece of ass.”

I nodded, making a mental note to keep away from her. She sounded like trouble. “And what’s the story with this guy Doug Talbot? The staff talks about him like he’s a fucking god. What’s he like?”

“What’s he like?” muttered my paranoid friend. “He’s like Adolf fucking Hitler. Or actually more like Dr. Josef Mengele. He’s a big fucking blowhard, and he’s got every last one of us by the balls—with the exception of you and maybe two other people. But you still gotta be careful, because they’ll try to use your family against you. They’ll get inside your wife’s head and tell her that unless you stay for six months you’re gonna relapse and light your kids on fire.”

Later that night, at about seven p.m., I called Old Brookville in search of the missing Duchess, but she was still MIA. I did get a chance to speak to Gwynne, though; I explained to her that I’d met with my therapist today and I’d been subdiagnosed (whatever that meant) as a compulsive spending addict, as well as a sex addict, both of which were basically true and both of which, I thought, were none of their fucking business. Either way, the therapist had informed me that I was being placed on money restriction and masturbation restriction—allowed to possess only enough money to use in the vending machines and allowed to masturbate only once every few days. I had assumed that the latter restriction was enforced on the honor system.

I asked Gwynne if she could see her way clear to stick a couple a thousand dollars inside some rolled-up socks and then ship them UPS. Hopefully, they would get past the gestapo, I told her, but, either way, it was the least she could do, especially after nine years of being one of my chief enablers. I chose not to share my masturbation restriction with Gwynne, although I had a sneaky suspicion it was going to be an even bigger problem than the money restriction. After all, I had been sober only four days now, and I was already getting spontaneous erections every time the wind blew.

On a much sadder note, before I hung up with Gwynne, Channy came to the phone and said, “Are you in Atlant-ica because you pushed Mommy down the stairs?”

I replied, “That’s one reason, thumbkin. Daddy was very sick and he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“If you’re still sick, can I kiss away your boo-boo again?”

“Hopefully,” I said sadly. “Maybe you can kiss away both our boo-boos, Mommy’s and Daddy’s.” I felt my eyes welling up with tears.

“I’ll try,” she said, with the utmost seriousness.

I bit my lip, fighting back outright crying. “I know you will, baby. I know you will.” Then I told her that I loved her and hung up the phone. Before I went to bed that night I got down on my knees and said a prayer—that Channy could kiss away our boo-boos. Then everything would be okay again.

I woke up the next morning ready to meet the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or was it Dr. Josef Mengele? Either way, the entire rehab—patients and staff alike—was getting together this morning in the auditorium for a regularly scheduled group meeting. It was a vast space with no partitions. A hundred twenty bridge chairs had been arranged in a large circle, and at the front of the room was a small platform with a lectern on it, where the speaker of the day would share his tale of drug-addicted woe.

I now sat as just another patient in a large circle of drug-addicted doctors and nurses (or Martians, from the Planet Talbot Mars, as I’d come to think of them). At this particular moment, all eyes were on today’s guest speaker—a sorry-looking woman in her early forties who had a rear end the size of Alaska and a ferocious case of acne, the sort you usually find on mental patients who’d spent the better part of their lives on psychotropic drugs.

“Hi,” she said in a timid voice. “My name is Susan, and I’m…uhhh…an alcoholic and a drug addict.”

All the Martians in the room, including myself, responded dutifully, by saying, “Hi, Susan!” to which she blushed and then bowed her head in defeat—or was it victory? Either way, I had no doubt she was a world-class drizzler.

Now there was silence. Apparently, Susan wasn’t much of a public speaker, or perhaps her brain had been short-circuited from all the drugs she’d consumed. As Susan gathered her thoughts, I took a moment to check out Doug Talbot. He was sitting at the front of the room with five staff members on either side of him. He had short snow-white hair, and he looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. His skin was white and pasty, and he had the sort of square-jawed, grim expression that you would normally associate with a malevolent warden, the sort who looks a death-row inmate in the eye before he flips the switch on the electric chair and says, “I’m only doing this for your own good!”`

Finally, Susan plowed on. “I’ve… been… uhhh… sober… for almost eighteen months now, and I couldn’t have done it without the help and inspiration of… uhhh… Doug Talbot.” And she turned to Doug Talbot and bowed her head, at which point the whole room rose to their feet and started clapping—the whole room except for me. I was too shocked at the collective sight of more than a hundred ass-kissing Martians trying to get their licenses back.

Doug Talbot waved his hand at the Martians and then shook his head dismissively, as if to say, “Oh, please, you’re embarrassing me! I only do this job out of a love of humanity!” But I had no doubt that his happy hit squad of staff members were making careful notes as to who wasn’t clapping loudly enough.

As Susan continued to drizzle, I began craning my head around—looking for the curly-haired blonde with the gorgeous face and the killer body, and I found her sitting just across from me, on the opposite side of the circle. She was gorgeous, all right. She had soft, angelic features—not the chiseled model features of the Duchess, but they were beautiful nonetheless.

Suddenly the Martians jumped to their feet again, and Susan took an embarrassed bow. Then she lumbered over to Doug Talbot, bent over, and gave him a hug. But it wasn’t a warm hug; she kept her body far from his. It was the way Dr. Mengele’s few surviving patients must’ve hugged him, at atrocity reunions and such—a sort of extreme version of the Stockholm syndrome, where hostages come to revere their captors.

Now one of the staff began doing a bit of her own drizzling. When the Martians stood this time, I stood too. Everyone grabbed the hands of the people on either side of them, so I grabbed too.

In unison, we bowed our heads and chanted the AA mantra: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Now everyone began clapping, so I clapped too—except this time I was clapping with sincerity. After all, in spite of being a cynical bastard, there was no denying that AA was an amazing thing, a lifesaver to millions of people.

There was a long rectangular table at the back of the room with a few pots of coffee on it and some cookies and cakes. As I headed over, I heard an unfamiliar voice yelling: “Jordan! Jordan Belfort!”

I turned around and—Holy Christ!—it was Doug Talbot. He was walking toward me, wearing an enormous smile on his pasty face. He was tall, about six-one, although he didn’t look to be in particularly good shape. He wore an expensive-looking blue sport jacket and gray tweed slacks. He was waving me toward him.

At that very instant, I could feel a hundred five sets of eyes pretending not to look at me—no, it was actually a hundred fifteen sets of eyes, because the staff was pretending too.

He extended his hand. “So we finally meet,” he said, nodding his head knowingly. “It’s a pleasure. Welcome to Talbot Marsh. I feel like you and I are kindred spirits. Brad told me all about you. I can’t wait to hear the stories. I got a few of my own—nothing as good as yours, I’m sure.”

I smiled and shook my new friend’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you too,” I replied, fighting back the urge to use an ironic tone.

He put his arm on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said warmly, “let’s go to my office for a while. I’ll drop you off later this afternoon. You’re being moved up the hill to one of the condos. I’ll drive you there.”

And just like that, I knew this rehab was in serious trouble. I had the owner—the unreachable, the one and only Doug Talbot—as my new best buddy, and every patient and staff member knew it as well. The Wolf was ready to bare his fangs—even in rehab.

Doug Talbot turned out to be a decent-enough guy, and we spent a good hour exchanging war stories. In fact, as I was soon to find out, virtually all recovering drug addicts share a morbid desire to play a game of “Can You Top the Insanity of My Addiction.” Obviously, it didn’t take long for Doug to realize that he was seriously outmatched, and by the time I’d gotten to the part where I’d cut open my furniture with a butcher knife he’d heard enough.

So he changed the subject and began explaining how he was in the midst of taking his company public. Then he handed me some documents, to illustrate what a terrific deal he was getting. I studied them dutifully, although I found it difficult to focus. Apparently something had clicked off in my brain insofar as Wall Street was concerned too, and I failed to get that usual rush as I looked through his papers.

Then we climbed into his black Mercedes and he drove me to my condo, which was just down the road from the rehab. It wasn’t actually part of Talbot Marsh, but Doug had a deal worked out with the management company that ran the complex, and about a third of the fifty semiattached units were occupied by Talbot’s patients. Another profit center, I figured.

As I was getting out of his Mercedes, Doug said, “If there’s anything I can do for you, or if any of the staff or the patients aren’t treating you right, just let me know and I’ll take care of it.”

I thanked him, figuring there was a ninety-nine percent chance I would be speaking to him about that very issue before the four weeks were out. Then I headed into the lion’s den.

There were six separate apartments in each town house, and my particular unit was on the second floor. I walked up a short flight of stairs and found the front door to my unit wide open. My two roommates were inside, sitting at a circular dining-room table made of some very cheap-looking bleached wood. They were writing furiously in spiral notebooks.

“Hi, I’m Jordan,” I said. “Nice to meet you guys.”

Before they even introduced themselves, one of them, a tall, blond man in his early forties, said, “What did Doug Talbot want?”

Then the other one, who was actually very good-looking, added, “Yeah, how do you know Doug Talbot?”

I smiled at them and said, “Yeah, well, it’s nice to meet you guys too.” Then I walked past them without saying another word, went into the bedroom, and closed the door. There were three beds inside, one of which was unmade. I threw my suitcase next to it and sat down on the mattress. On the other side of the room was a cheap TV on a cheap wooden stand. I flicked it on and turned on the news.

A minute later my roommates were on me. The blond one said, “Watching TV during the day is frowned upon.”

“It’s feeding your disease,” said the good-looking one. “It’s not considered right thinking.”

Right thinking? Holy Christ! If they only knew how demented my mind was! “Well, I appreciate your concern over my disease,” I snapped, “but I haven’t watched TV in almost a week, so if you don’t mind, why don’t you just keep out of my fucking hair and worry about your own disease? If I want to engage in wrong thinking, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

“What kind of doctor are you, anyway?” asked the blond one accusingly.

“I’m not a doctor, and what’s the story with that phone over there?” I motioned to a tan Trimline phone sitting on a wooden desk. Above it was a small rectangular window in desperate need of a cleaning. “Are we allowed to use it or would that be considered wrong thinking too?”

“No, you can use it,” said the good-looking one, “but it’s for collect calls only.”

I nodded. “What kind of doctor are you?”

“I used to be an ophthalmologist, but I lost my license.”

“And how about you?” I asked the blond one, who was definitely a member of the Hitler youth. “Did you lose your license too?”

He nodded. “I’m a dentist, and I deserved to lose my license.” His tone was entirely robotic. “I’m suffering from a terrible disease and I need to be cured. Thanks to the staff at Talbot Marsh I’ve made great strides in my recovery. Once they tell me I’m cured, I’ll try to get my license back.”

I shook my head as if I’d just heard something that defied logic, then I picked up the phone and started dialing Old Brookville.

The dentist said, “Talking for more than five minutes is frowned upon. It’s not good for your recovery.”

The eye doctor added, “The staff will sanction you for it.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “How the fuck are they gonna find out?”

They both raised their eyebrows and shrugged innocently.

I smiled a dead smile at them. “Well, excuse me, because I got a couple a phone calls to make. I should be off in about an hour.”

The blond one nodded, looking at his watch. Then the two of them headed back into the dining room and plunged back into their recoveries.

A moment later, Gwynne answered the phone. We exchanged warm greetings, then she whispered, “I sent you down a thousand dollars in yer socks. Did ya get it yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe it’ll come tomorrow. More importantly, Gwynne, I don’t want to put you on the spot anymore with Nadine. I know she’s home and that she won’t come to the phone, and that’s okay. Don’t even tell her I called. Just answer the phone each morning and put the kids on for me. I’ll call around eight, okay?”

“Okay,” said Gwynne. “I hope you and Mrs. Belfort patch things up. It’s been very quiet ’round here. And very sad.”

“I hope so too, Gwynne. I really hope so.” We spoke for a few more minutes before I said good-bye.

Later that evening, just before nine, I received my first personal dose of Talbot Marsh insanity. There was a meeting in the living room for all the town house’s residents, where we were supposed to share any resentments that had built up during the day. It was called a ten-step meeting, because it had something to do with the tenth step of Alcoholics Anonymous. But when I picked up the AA book and read the tenth step—which was to continue to take a personal inventory and when you were wrong, to promptly admit it—I couldn’t imagine how this meeting applied to it.

Whatever the case, eight of us were now sitting in a circle. The first doctor, a dweeby-looking bald man in his early forties, said, “My name is Steve, and I’m an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a sex addict. I have forty-two days sober.”

The other six doctors said, “Hi, Steve!” And they said it with such relish that if I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn they’d just met Steve for the first time.

Steve said, “I have only one resentment today, and it’s toward Jordan.”

That woke me up! “Toward me?” I exclaimed. “I haven’t said two words to you, pal. How could you possibly resent me?”

My favorite dentist said, “You’re not allowed to defend yourself, Jordan. That’s not the purpose of this meeting.”

“Well, excuse me,” I muttered. “And just what is the purpose of this crazy meeting, because for the life of me I can’t figure it out.”

They all shook their heads in unison, as if I were dense or something. “The purpose of this meeting,” explained the Nazi dentist, “is that harboring resentments can interfere with your recovery. So each night we get together and air any resentments that may’ve built up during the day.”

I looked at the group, and every last one of them had turned the corners of his mouth down and was nodding sagely.

I shook my head in disgust. “Well, do I at least get to hear why good old Steve resents me?”

They all nodded, and Steve said, “I resent you over your relationship with Doug Talbot. All of us have been here for months—some of us for close to a year—and none of us has ever gotten to speak to him. Yet he drove you home in his Mercedes.”

I started laughing in Steve’s face. “And that’s why you resent me? Because he drove me home in his fucking Mercedes?”

He nodded and dropped his head in defeat. A few seconds later the next person in the circle introduced himself, in the same retarded way, and then he said, “I resent you, too, Jordan, for flying here in a private jet. I don’t even have money for food and you’re flying around in private planes.”

I looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement. I said, “Any other reasons you resent me?”

“Yes,” he said, “I also resent you for your relationship with Doug Talbot.” More nodding.

Then the next doctor introduced himself as an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a food addict, and he said, “I have only one resentment, and it is also toward Jordan.”

“Well, gee willikers,” I muttered, “that’s a fucking surprise! Would you care to humor me as to why?”

He compressed his lips. “For the same reasons they do, and also because you don’t have to follow the rules around here because of your relationship with Doug Talbot.”

I looked around the room and everyone was nodding in agreement.

One by one, all seven of my fellow patients shared their resentments toward me. When it was my turn to speak, I said, “Hi, my name is Jordan, and I’m alcoholic, a Quaalude addict, and a cocaine addict. I’m also addicted to Xanax and Valium and morphine and Klonopin and GHB and marijuana and Percocet and mescaline and just about everything else, including high-priced hookers, medium-priced hookers, and an occasional streetwalker, but only when I feel like punishing myself. Sometimes I take an afternoon massage at one of those Korean joints, and I have a young Korean girl jerk me off with baby oil. I always offer her a couple hundred extra if she’ll stick her tongue up my ass, but it’s sort of hit or miss, because of the language barrier. Anyway, I never wear a condom, just on general principles. I’ve been sober for five whole days now, and I’m walking around with a constant erection. I miss my wife terribly, and if you really want to resent me I’ll show you a picture of her.” I shrugged. “Either way, I resent every last one of you for being total fucking pussies and trying to take your life’s frustrations out on me. If you really want to focus on your own recoveries, stop looking outward and start looking inward, because you’re all complete fucking embarrassments to humanity. And, by the way, you are right about one thing—I am friends with Doug Talbot, so I wish you all good luck when you try ratting me out to the staff tomorrow.” With that, I broke from the circle and said, “Excuse me; I gotta make a few phone calls.”

My favorite dentist said, “We still need to discuss your work detail. Each person in the unit has to clean an area. We have you down for the bathrooms this week.”

“I don’t think so,” I sputtered. “Starting tomorrow there’s gonna be maid service in this joint. You can talk to her about it.” I walked into the bedroom, slammed the door, and dialed Alan Lipsky to tell him about the very insanity of the Talbot Martians. We laughed for a good fifteen minutes and then started talking about old times.

Before I hung up, I asked if he’d heard anything from the Duchess. He said he hadn’t, and I hung up the phone sadder for that fact. It had been almost a week now, and things were looking grim with her. I flicked on the TV and tried shutting my eyes, but, as usual, sleep didn’t come easily. Finally, sometime around midnight, I did fall asleep—with another day of sobriety under my belt and a raging hard-on inside my underwear.

The next morning, eight o’clock sharp, I called Old Brookville. The phone was picked up on the first ring.

“Hello?” said the Duchess softly.

“Nae? Is that you?”

Sympathetically: “Yes, it’s me.”

“How are you?”

“I’m okay. Hanging in there, I guess.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I…I called to say hi to the kids. Are they there?”

“What’s wrong?” she said sadly. “You don’t wanna talk to me?”

“No, of course I want to talk to you! There’s nothing in the world I want more than to talk to you. I just didn’t think you wanted to talk to me.”

Kindly: “No, that’s not true. I do want to talk to you. For better or worse, you’re still my husband. I guess this is the worse part, right?”

I felt tears coming to my eyes, but I fought them down. “I don’t know what to say, Nae. I…I’m so sorry for what happened…. I…I—”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t apologize. I understand what happened, and I forgive you. That’s the easy part, forgiveness. Forgetting’s a different story.” She paused. “But I do forgive you. And I want to go on. I want to try to make this marriage work. I still love you, in spite of everything.”

“I love you too,” I said, through tears. “More than you know, Nae. I…I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it happened. I…I hadn’t slept in months and”—I took a deep breath—“I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s all a blur.”

“It’s my fault as much as yours,” she said kindly. “I watched you killing yourself and just stood there and did nothing. I thought I was helping you, but I was really doing the opposite. I didn’t know.”

“It’s not your fault, Nae, it’s mine. It’s just that it happened so slowly, over so many years, that I didn’t see it coming. Before I knew it I was out of control. I’ve always considered myself a strong person, but the drugs were stronger.”

“The kids miss you. I miss you too. I’ve wanted to speak to you for days now, but Dennis Maynard told me I should wait until you were fully detoxed.”

That rat fuck! I’ll get that bastard! I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. The last thing I needed was to lose my temper with the Duchess on the phone. I needed to prove to her that I was still a rational man, that the drugs hadn’t permanently altered me. “You know,” I said calmly, “it’s a good thing you got those second two doctors to come to the hospital”—I refused to use the words psych unit—“because I despised Dennis Maynard more than you can imagine. I almost didn’t go to rehab because of him. There was something about him that just rubbed me the wrong way. I think he had a thing for you.” I waited for her to call me crazy.

She chuckled. “It’s funny you say that, because Laurie thought the same thing.”

“Really?” I said, with contract murder in my heart. “I thought I was just being paranoid!”

“I don’t know,” said the luscious Duchess. “At first I was too much in shock to pick up on it, but then he asked me to go to the movies, which I thought was a bit out of line.”

“Did you go?” The most appropriate method of death, I figured, would be blood loss through castration.

“No! Of course I didn’t go! It was inappropriate for him to ask. Anyway, he left the next day and that was the last I heard of him.”

“How come you wouldn’t come see me in the hospital, Nae? I missed you so bad. I thought about you all the time.”

There was a long silence, but I waited it out. I needed an answer. I was still struggling as to why this woman, my wife—who obviously loved me—wouldn’t come visit me after a suicide attempt. It made no sense.

After a good ten seconds, she said, “At first I was scared because of what happened on the stairs. It’s hard to explain, but you were like a different person that day, possessed or something. I don’t know. And then Dennis Maynard told me I shouldn’t come see you until you went to rehab. I didn’t know whether he was right or wrong. It wasn’t like I had a road map to follow, and he was supposedly the expert. Anyway, all that matters is that you went to rehab, right?”

I wanted to say no, but this wasn’t the time to start an argument. I had the rest of my life to argue with her. “Yeah, well, I’m here, and that’s the most important thing.”

“How bad are the withdrawals?” she asked, changing the subject.

“I haven’t really had any withdrawals, or at least any I could feel. Believe it or not, the second I got here I lost the urge to do drugs. It’s hard to explain, but I was sitting in the waiting room and all of a sudden the compulsion just left me. Anyway, this place is kind of wacky, to say the least. What’s gonna keep me sober is not Talbot Marsh; it’s me.”

Very nervous now: “But you’re still gonna stay there for the twenty-eight days, right?”

I laughed gently. “Yeah, you can relax, sweetie; I’m staying. I need a break from all the madness. Anyway, the AA part is really good. I read the book and it’s awesome. I’ll go to meetings when I get home, just to make sure I don’t relapse.”

We spent the next half hour talking on the phone, and by the end of the conversation I had my Duchess back. I knew it. I could feel it in my bones. I told her about all my erections and she promised she would help in that department just as soon as I got home. I asked her if she would have some phone sex with me, but she declined. I would keep after her about that, though. Eventually, I figured, she would break down.

Then we exchanged I love yous and promises to write each other every day. Before I hung up I told her that I would call her three times a day.

The next few days passed uneventfully, and before I knew it I had made it a full week without doing drugs.

Each day we were given a few hours of personal time, to go to the gym and such, and I quickly insinuated myself into a small cadre of kiss-ass Martians. One of the doctors—an anesthesiologist who’d had a habit of anesthetizing himself while his patients were on the table under his care—had been at Talbot Marsh for over a year, and he’d had his car shipped down. It was a piece-of-shit gray Toyota hatchback, but it served its purpose.

It was about a ten-minute car ride to the gym, and I was sitting in the right backseat, wearing a pair of gray Adidas shorts and a tank top, when I popped an enormous woody. It was probably the vibrations from the four-cylinder engine, or maybe it was the bumps in the road, but something had sent a couple a pints of blood to my loins. It was a huge, rock-hard erection, the sort that presses against your underwear and needs to be adjusted and then readjusted, lest it drive you insane.

“Check this out,” I said, pulling down the front of my gym shorts and showing the Martians my penis.

They all turned and stared. Yes, I thought, it looked good. Despite my height, God had been very kind to me in that department. “Not too shabby!” I said to my doctor friends, as I grabbed my penis and gave it a few yanks. Then I slapped it against my stomach, which created a rather pleasant thud.

Finally, after the fourth thud, everybody started laughing. It was a rare moment of levity at Talbot Marsh, a moment between guys, a moment between Martians, where the normal societal niceties could be stripped away, where homophobia could be entirely ignored, and men could be just that: men! I had a fine workout that afternoon, and the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

The following day, just after lunch, I was sitting in an astonishingly boring group therapy session. My counselor strolled in, asking to see me.

I couldn’t have been happier—until two minutes later, when we were sitting in her small office and she cocked her head to the side at a very shrewd angle and said, using the tone of the Grand Inquisitor, “So, how are you, Jordan?”

I turned the corners of my mouth down and shrugged. “I’m okay, I guess.”

She smiled warily and asked, “Have you been having any urges lately?”

“No, not at all,” I said. “On a scale of one to ten, I would say my urge to do drugs is a zero. Maybe even less than that.”

“Oh, that’s very good, Jordan. Very, very good.”

What the fuck? I knew I was missing something here. “Um, I’m a bit confused. Did someone tell you that I was thinking about using drugs?”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “It has nothing to do with that. I’m just wondering if you’ve had any other urges lately, anything other than drugs.”

I searched my short-term memory for urges but came up blank, other than the obvious urge to bolt out of this place and go home to the Duchess and fuck her brains out for a month straight. “No, I haven’t had any urges. I mean, I miss my wife and everything and I’d like to go home and be with her, but that’s about it.”

She pursed her lips and nodded her head slowly, then she said, “Have you been having urges to expose yourself in public?”

“What?” I snapped. “What are you talking about? What do you think, I’m a flasher or something?” I shook my head in contempt.

“Well,” she said gravely, “I received three written complaints today, from three separate patients, and they all say you exposed yourself to them—that you pulled down your shorts and masturbated in their presence.”

“That’s a complete load of crap,” I sputtered. “I wasn’t jerking off, for Chrissake. I just yanked on it a few times and slapped it against my stomach so we could all hear the sound. That’s all. What’s the big deal about that? Where I come from, a little bit of nudity between men isn’t anything to write home about.” I shook my head. “I was just fucking around. I’ve had an erection since I got to this place. I guess my dick is finally waking up from all the drugs. But since it seems to bother everyone so much, I’ll keep the snake in its cage for the next few weeks. No big deal.”

She nodded. “Well, you have to understand that you traumatized some of the other patients. Their recoveries are very fragile at this point, and any sudden shock could send them back to using.”

“Did you just say traumatized? Give me a fucking break! Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme? I mean…Jesus! These are grown men we’re talking about! How could they have been traumatized by the sight of my dick, unless, of course, one of them wants to suck on it. You think that might be it?”

She shrugged. “I couldn’t say.”

“Well, I’ll tell you that no one in that car was traumatized. It was a moment between guys, that’s all. The only reason they ratted me out was because they want to prove to the staff that they’re cured or rehabilitated or whatever. Anything it takes to get their fucking licenses back, right?”

She nodded. “Obviously.”

“Oh, so you know that?”

“Yes, of course I know that. And the fact that they all reported you makes me seriously question the status of their own recoveries.” She smiled the smile of no hard feelings. “Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that your behavior was inappropriate.”

“Whatever,” I muttered. “It won’t happen again.”

“Fair enough,” she said, handing me a sheet of paper with some typing on it. “I just need you to sign this behavioral contract. All it says is that you agree not to expose yourself in public again.” She handed me a pen.

“You’re shitting me!”

She shook her head no. I started laughing as I read the contract. It was only a few lines, and it said just what she’d indicated. I shrugged and signed it, then rose from my chair and headed for the door. “Is that it?” I snapped. “Case closed?”

“Yes, case closed.”

As I headed back to my therapy session, I had this strange feeling that it wasn’t. These Talbot Martians were a strange lot.

The next day it was time for another roundtable discussion. Once more, all hundred five Martians and a dozen or so staff members sat in a great circle in the auditorium. Doug Talbot, I noticed, was conspicuously absent.

So I closed my eyes and prepared for the drizzle. After ten or fifteen minutes I was soaking wet and half asleep, when I heard: “…Jordan Belfort, who most of you know.”

I looked up. My therapist had taken over the meeting at some point, and now she was talking about me. Why? I wondered.

“So rather than having a guest speaker today,” continued my therapist, “I think it would be more productive if Jordan shared with the group what happened.” She paused and looked in my direction. “Would you be kind enough to share, Jordan?”

I looked around the room at all the Martians staring at me, including Shirley Temple with her wonderful blond curls. I was still a bit confused as to what my therapist wanted me to say, although I had a sneaky suspicion that it had something to do with me being a sexual deviant.

I leaned forward in my seat, stared at my therapist, and shrugged. “I have no problem talking to the group,” I said, “but what is it that you want me to say? I have lots of stories. Why don’t you pick one?”

With that, all hundred five Martians turned their Martian heads toward my therapist. It looked like the two of us were engaged in a tennis match. “Well,” she said therapeutically, “you’re free to talk about whatever you want in this room. It’s a very safe place. But why don’t you start with what happened in the car the other day, on the way to the gym?”

The Martians turned their heads back to me. Through laughter, I said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

Now the Martians looked back at my therapist…who pursed her lips and shook her head, as if to say, “Nope, I’m dead serious!”

How ironic, I thought. My therapist was giving me center stage. How glorious! The Wolf—back in action! I loved it. The fact that the room was half females made it all the better. The SEC had taken away my ability to stand before the crowd and speak my piece, and now my therapist had been kind enough to restore that power to me. I would put on a show the Martians would never forget!

I nodded and smiled at my therapist. “Is it okay if I stand in the middle of the room and talk? I think better when I’m moving.”

A hundred five Martian heads turned back to my therapist. “Please, feel free.”

I walked to the center of the room and stared into the eyes of Shirley Temple. “Hi, everybody! My name is Jordan, and I’m an alcoholic and a drug addict and a sexual deviant.”

“Hi, Jordan!” came the hearty response, accompanied by a few chuckles. Shirley Temple, however, had turned beet-red. I had been staring right into her enormous blue eyes when I’d referred to myself as a sexual deviant.

I said, “Anyway, I’m really not much for talking in front of crowds, but I’ll try my best. Okay, where should I begin? Oh, my erections—yes, that’s the most appropriate place, I guess. Here’s the root of the problem. I spent the last ten years of my life with my dick in a state of seminarcosis as a result of all the drugs I was doing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t impotent or anything like that, although I will admit that there were about a thousand or so times I couldn’t get it up because of all the coke and Ludes.”

Scattered laughter now. Ah, the Wolf of Wall Street! Let the games begin! I raised my hand for quiet.

“No, seriously, this isn’t a laughing matter. See, for the most part, when I couldn’t get it up, I was with hookers, and that was about three times a week. So I was basically throwing my money out the window—paying upward of a thousand dollars a pop and not being able to even sleep with them. It was all very sad, and very expensive too.

“Anyway, they usually succeeded in the end—at least the good ones did—although it took a bit of coaxing with toys and such.” I turned the corners of my mouth down and shrugged, as if to say, “Sex toys are nothing to be ashamed about!”

There was great laughter now, although without even looking I could tell it was the sound of female Martian laughter. My suspicions were confirmed when I looked around the room and saw all the female Martians staring at me with terrific smiles on their kind Martian faces. Their Martian shoulders bounced up and down with each and every giggle. Meanwhile, the male Martians were shooting daggers at me with their Martian eyes.

I waved my hand dismissively and soldiered on: “No matter, no matter. You see, the irony is that when I was with my wife I never really had that problem. I could always get it up with her—or at least usually—and if you saw her you’d understand why. But when I started snorting a quarter ounce of coke a day, well, I was having trouble with her too.

“Yet now that I haven’t touched a drug in over a week, I think my penis is undergoing some sort of strange metamorphosis, or maybe a reawakening. I’ve been walking around with an erection twenty-three hours a day…or maybe even more.” A huge burst of female Martian laughter. I looked around the room. Oh, yes, I had them! They were mine now! The Wolf, spinning his yarn for the ladies! Center stage!

“Anyway, I thought some of the men here would appreciate my plight. I mean, it seemed only logical that other people would be suffering from this terrible affliction too, right?”

I looked around the room and all of the female Martians were nodding in agreement, while the male Martians were shaking their heads back and forth, staring at me with contempt. I shrugged. “So, anyway, here’s where the problem started. I was sitting in the car with three other male patients—dickless patients, I’m now thinking—and we were driving to the gym, and I think it was the vibrations from the engine or maybe it was the bumps in the road, but, whatever it was, out of nowhere I got this huge erection!”

I looked around the room, carefully avoiding the blazing gazes of the male Martians—relishing instead the adoring looks of all the female Martians. Shirley Temple was licking her lips in anticipation. I winked at her, and I said, “Anyway, it was just a harmless moment between guys, that’s all. Now, I won’t deny that I yanked on the snake a few times”—a burst of female Martian laughter—“and I won’t deny that I slapped it against my stomach once or twice”—more laughter—“but it was all done in jest. It wasn’t like I was yanking on it ferociously, trying to make myself come in the backseat of the car, although I wouldn’t pass judgment on anyone who did. I mean, to each his own, right?” An unidentified female Martian screamed, “Yeah, to each his own!” to which the rest of the female Martians started clapping.

I held up my hand for quiet, wondering how long the staff would let this go on. I suspected they would let it go on indefinitely. After all, for every second I spoke there was some insurance company receiving a bill for each of these hundred five Martians. “So, to sum it up, to tell you what’s really bothering me about this whole affair, is that the three guys who turned me in, whose names will go unmentioned—although if you come up to me afterward I’ll gladly tell you exactly who they are, so you can avoid them—they all laughed and joked about it while we were in the car. No one confronted me or even hinted that they thought what I was doing was in poor taste.”

I shook my head in disgust. “You know, the truth is that I come from a very dysfunctional world—a world of my own construction—where things like nudity and prostitutes and debauchery and all sorts of depraved acts were all considered normal.

“In retrospect, I know it was wrong. And I know it was insane. But that’s now… today… as I stand here a sober man. Yeah, today I know that midget-tossing is wrong and that getting scrummed by four hookers is wrong and that manipulating stocks is wrong and that cheating on my wife is wrong and falling asleep at the dinner table or on the side of the road or crashing into other people’s cars because I fell asleep at the wheel, I know all these things are wrong.

“I’m the first one to admit that I’m the furthest thing from a perfect person. I’m actually insecure and humble, and I embarrass easily.” I paused, changing my tone to dead seriousness. “But I refuse to show it. If I had to choose between embarrassment and death, I’d choose death. So, yeah, I’m a weak, imperfect person. But one thing you’ll never find me doing is passing judgment on other people.”

I shrugged and let out a very obvious sigh. “Yeah, maybe what I did in the car was wrong. Perhaps it was in bad taste and it was offensive. But I challenge any person in this room to make a case that I did it with malice in my heart or to try to fuck up someone else’s recovery. I did it to make light of a terrible situation I’m in. I’ve been a drug addict for almost a decade now, and although I might appear to be somewhat normal, I know I’m not. I’ll be leaving here in a couple of weeks, and I’m scared shitless to go back into the lion’s den, to go back to the people, places, and things that fueled my habit. I have a wife, whom I love, and two children, whom I adore, and if I go back out there and relapse I’ll destroy them forever, especially my children.

“Yet, here, in Talbot Marsh, where I’m supposed to be surrounded by people who understand what I’m going through, I’ve got three assholes trying to undermine my recovery and get me thrown out of this place. And that’s really sad. I’m no different than any one of you, male or female. Yeah, maybe I got a few extra bucks, but I’m scared and worried and insecure about the future, and I spend the better part of my day praying that everything’s gonna wind up okay. That one day I’ll be able to sit my kids down and say, ‘Yes, it’s true I pushed Mommy down the stairs once while I was high on cocaine, but that was twenty years ago, and I’ve been sober ever since.’”

I shook my head again. “So next time any of you consider reporting me to the staff, I would urge you to think twice. You’re only hurting yourself. I’m not getting thrown out of this place so fast, and the staff is a lot smarter than you people think. And that’s all I have to say. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting an erection, so I need to sit down to avoid embarrassment. Thank you.” I waved my hand in the air, as if I were a political candidate on the campaign trail, and the room broke out into thunderous applause. Every last female Martian, every last staff member, and about half the male Martians rose to their feet, giving me a standing ovation.

As I took my seat, I locked eyes with my therapist. She smiled at me, nodded her head, and pumped her fist in the air a single time, as if to say, “Good for you, Jordan.”

The next thirty minutes was open discussion, during which the female Martians defended my actions and said that I was adorable, while some of the males of the species continued their attack against me and said that I was a menace to Martian society.

That evening I sat my roommates down and said, “Listen, I’m sick and tired of all the crap that’s going on around here. I don’t want to hear about how I forget to put the toilet seat down and how I talk too much on the phone or how I breathe too loud. I’m done. So here’s the deal. You guys are both desperate for cash, right?”

They nodded.

“Fine,” I said. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Tomorrow morning you’re gonna call my friend Alan Lipsky, and he’s gonna open accounts for you at his brokerage firm. By tomorrow afternoon you’ll each have made five grand. You can have the money wired wherever you want. But I don’t want to hear another fucking peep out of either of you until I leave this place. That’s less than three weeks from now, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

Of course they both called the next morning, and of course it greatly improved our relationship. Nevertheless, my problems at Talbot Marsh were far from over. But it wasn’t the luscious Shirley Temple who would complicate things. No, my problems came from my desire to see the Duchess. I’d heard through the Martian grapevine that, under rare circumstances, the staff granted furloughs. I called the Duchess and asked her if she would fly down for a long weekend, if I got approval.

“Just tell me where and when,” she’d replied, “and I’ll give you a weekend you’ll never forget.”

It was for that very reason that I now sat in my therapist’s office, trying to get a furlough. It was my third week on planet Talbot Marsh and I hadn’t gotten myself into any new trouble, although it was common knowledge among the Martians that I was attending only twenty-five percent of the group therapy sessions. But no one seemed to care anymore. They realized that Doug Talbot wasn’t going to toss me and that in my own offbeat way I was being a positive influence.

I smiled at my therapist and said, “Listen, I don’t see what the big deal is if I leave on a Friday and come back on a Sunday. I’m gonna be with my wife the whole time. You’ve spoken to her, so you know she’s with the program. It’ll be good for my recovery.”

“I can’t let it happen,” said my therapist, shaking her head. “It would be disruptive to the other patients. Everybody’s up in arms as it is about the alleged special treatment you get around here.” She smiled warmly. “Listen, Jordan, the policy is that patients aren’t eligible for furloughs until they’ve been at the rehab for at least ninety days—and had perfect behavior. No flashing or anything.”

I smiled at my therapist. She was a good egg, this lady, and I had grown close to her over the last few weeks. It had been shrewd of her that day, putting me before the crowd and giving me a chance to defend myself. I would find out only much later that she’d spoken to the Duchess, who had informed her of my ability to sway the masses, for good or ill.

“I understand you have rules,” I said, “but they weren’t designed for someone in my situation. How could I be held to a rule that requires a ninety-day cooling-off period when my entire stay is only twenty-eight days?” I shrugged, not thinking too highly of my own logic until a wonderful inspiration came bubbling up into my sober brain. “I have an idea!” I chirped. “Why don’t you let me stand in front of the group again and make another speech? I’ll try to sell them on the fact that I deserve a furlough, even though it goes against institutional policy.”

Her response was to put her hand to the bridge of her nose and start to rub. Then she laughed softly. “You know, I almost want to say yes, just to hear what line of shit you’re gonna give the patients. In fact, I have no doubt you’d convince them.” She let out a few more chuckles. “It was quite a speech you made two weeks ago, by far the best in Talbot Marsh history. You have an amazing gift, Jordan. I’ve never seen anything like it. Just out of curiosity, though, what would you say to the patients if I gave you the chance?”

I shrugged. “I’m not really sure. You know, it’s not like I ever plan out what I’m gonna say. I used to give two meetings a day to a football field full of people. I did it for almost five years, and I can’t remember a single time that I ever thought about what I was going to say before I actually said it. I usually had a topic or two that needed to be hit on, but that was about the extent of it. Everything else was spur of the moment.

“You know, there’s something that just happens to me when I stand before a crowd. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like all of a sudden everything becomes very clear. My thoughts start rolling off my tongue without even thinking about them. One thought just leads to another and then I get on a roll.

“But to answer your question, I’d probably use reverse psychology on them, explain how letting me go on a furlough is good for their own recovery. That life, as a whole, isn’t fair, and that they should get used to it now in a controlled environment. Then I’d follow it up by making them feel bad for me—telling them what I did to my wife on the stairs and how my family was on the verge of being destroyed because of my drug addiction, and how having this visit now would probably make the difference between my wife and me staying together or not.”

My therapist smiled. “I think you should figure out a way to put your abilities to good use; figure out some way where you get your message across, except this time do it for the greater good, not to corrupt people.”

“Ahhh,” I said, smiling back, “so you’ve been listening to me all these weeks. I wasn’t sure. Anyway, maybe I will one day, but for right now I just wanna get back to my family. I plan on getting out of the brokerage business altogether. I have a few investments to wind down and then I’m done forever. I’m done with the drugs, the hookers, the cheating on my wife, all the crap with the stocks, everything. I’m gonna live out the rest of my life quietly, out of the limelight.”

She started to laugh. “Well, somehow, I don’t think your life’s gonna turn out that way. I don’t think you’re ever gonna live in obscurity. At least not for very long. I don’t mean that in a bad way. What I’m trying to say is that you have a wonderful gift, and I think it’s important for your recovery that you learn to use that gift in a positive way. Just focus on your recovery first—and stay sober—and the rest of your life will take care of itself.”

I dropped my head and stared at the floor and nodded. I knew she was right, and I was scared to death about it. I desperately wanted to remain sober, but I knew the odds were heavily against me. Admittedly, after learning more about AA it no longer seemed like a patent impossibility, just a long shot. The difference between success and failure, it seemed, had a lot to do with getting grounded into AA as soon as you left rehab—finding a sponsor you identified with, someone to offer hope and encouragement when things weren’t going your way.

“How about my furlough?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“I’ll bring it up at tomorrow’s staff meeting. At the end of the day, it’s not up to me, it’s up to Dr. Talbot.” She shrugged. “As your primary therapist I can veto it, but I won’t. I’ll abstain.”

I nodded in understanding. I would talk to Talbot before they had their meeting. “Thank you for everything,” I said. “You’ve only got me for another week or so. I’ll try to stay out of your hair.”

“You’re not in my hair,” she replied. “In fact, you’re my favorite, although I’d never admit it to anyone.”

“And I won’t tell anyone.” I leaned over and hugged her gently.

It was five days later, a Friday, in fact, a little before six p.m., and I was waiting on the tarmac at the private terminal at Atlanta International Airport. I was leaning against the rear bumper of a black stretch Lincoln limousine, staring up into the northern sky through sober eyes. I had my arms folded beneath my chest and an enormous erection in my pants. I was waiting for the Duchess.

I was ten pounds heavier than when I’d arrived, and my skin glowed once more with youth and health. I was thirty-four and I had survived the unspeakable—a drug addiction of biblical proportions, a drug addiction of such insanity that I should have died long ago, of an overdose or a car accident or a helicopter crash or a scuba-diving accident or one of a thousand other ways.

Yet here I stood, still retaining all my faculties. It was a beautiful, clear evening with a tiny, warm breeze. At this time of the day, this close to summer, the sun was still high enough in the sky that I was able to catch sight of the Gulfstream long before its wheels touched the runway. It seemed almost impossible that inside that cabin was my beautiful wife, who I’d put through seven years of drug-addicted hell. I wondered what she was wearing and what she was thinking. Was she as nervous as I was? Was she really as beautiful as I remembered? Would she still smell as glorious? Did she still really love me? Could things ever be the same?

I found out the moment the cabin door opened and the luscious Duchess emerged with her fabulous mane of shimmering blond hair. She looked gorgeous. She took a single step forward, and then, in typical Duchess fashion, she struck a pose, with her head cocked to one side and her arms folded beneath her breasts and one long bare leg slewed out to the side, in a statement of defiance. Then she just stared at me. She had on a tiny pink sundress. It was sleeveless and a good six inches above her knee. Still holding her pose, she compressed those luscious lips of hers and started shaking her little blond head back and forth, as if to say, “I can’t believe this is the man I love!” I took a step forward and threw my palms up in the air and shrugged.

And we just stood there, staring at each other for a good ten seconds, until all at once she gave up her pose and blew me a world-class double kiss. Then she spread her arms out, did a little pirouette to announce her arrival to the city of Atlanta, and came running down the stairs with a great smile on her face. I started running toward her, and we met in the middle of the asphalt tarmac. She threw her arms around my neck and took a tiny jump and wrapped her legs around my waist. Then she kissed me.

And we held that kiss for what seemed like an eternity as we breathed in each other’s scent. I spun around in a 360, still kissing her, until we both started giggling. I pulled my lips away and buried my nose into her cleavage and sniffed at her, like a puppy dog. She giggled uncontrollably. She smelled so good it seemed almost impossible.

I pulled my head back a few inches and stared into those vivid blue eyes of hers. I said, in a dead-serious tone: “If I don’t make love to you right this second, I’m gonna come right here on the tarmac.”

The Duchess’s response was to revert to her baby voice: “Aw, my poor little boy!” Little? Unbelievable! “You’re so horny you’re about to burst, aren’t you?”

I nodded eagerly.

The Duchess went on: “And look how young and handsome you look now that you’ve gained a few pounds and your skin’s not green anymore. Too bad I have to teach you a lesson this weekend.” She shrugged. “There’ll be no lovemaking until July Fourth.”

Huh? “What are you talking about?”

In a very knowing tone: “You heard me, love-bug. You’ve been a very bad boy, so now you’re gonna have to pay the price. First you have to prove yourself to me before I let you stick it in again. For now you only get to kiss me.”

I giggled. “Get out of here, you nut!” I grabbed her hand and started pulling her toward the limousine. “I can’t wait until July Fourth! I need you now—right this second! I wanna make love in the back of the limousine.”

“Nope, nope, nope,” she said, shaking her head back and forth in an exaggerated way. “It’s only kisses this weekend. Let’s see how you behave over the next two days, and then maybe on Sunday I’ll think about going further.”

The limo driver was a short, sixtyish, white cracker named Bob. He wore a formal driver’s cap, and he was standing by the rear door, waiting for us. I said, “This is my wife, Bob. She’s a duchess, so treat her accordingly. I bet you don’t get that much royalty down here, now, do you?”

“Oh, no,” said a very serious Bob. “Not much of it at all.”

I compressed my lips and nodded gravely. “I thought as much. Anyway, don’t be intimidated by her. She’s actually very down to earth, right, honey?”

“Yeah, very down to earth. Now shut the fuck up and get in the goddamn limo,” spat the Duchess.

Bob froze in horror, obviously taken aback at how someone with as royal a bloodline as the Duchess of Bay Ridge could use such language.

I said to Bob, “Don’t mind her; she just doesn’t want to seem too uppity. She’s saves her stuffy side for when she’s back in England, with the other royals.” I winked. “Anyway, all kidding aside, Bob, being married to her makes me a duke, so what I’m thinking is that since you’re gonna be our driver for the whole weekend, you might as well just address us as the Duke and the Duchess—just to clear up any confusion.”

Bob bowed formally. “Of course, Duke.”

“Very well,” I replied, pushing the Duchess into the backseat by her fabulous royal bottom. I climbed in behind her. Bob slammed the door and then headed to the plane to collect the Duchess’s royal baggage.

I immediately yanked up her dress and saw that she wasn’t wearing any panties. I pounced. “I love you so much, Nae. So, so much!” I pushed her down on the rear seat, lengthwise, and pressed my erection against her. She moaned deliciously, wriggling her pelvis against mine, giving me the benefit of a little friction. I kissed her and kissed her until after a few minutes she extended her arms and pushed me off.

Through giggles: “Stop, you silly boy! Bob’s coming back. You’ll have to wait until we get back to the hotel.” She looked down and saw my erection through my jeans. “Aw, my poor little baby”—little? Why always little?—“is ready to burst!” She pursed her lips. “Here, let me rub it for you.” She reached down with the palm of her hand and started rubbing the outline of my erection.

I responded by hitting the divider button on the overhead console. As the partition slid shut, I muttered, “I can’t wait for the hotel! I’m making love to you right here, Bob or no Bob!”

“Fine!” said a frisky Duchess. “But it’s only a sympathy fuck, so it doesn’t count. I’m still not making love to you until you prove to me that you’ve become a good boy. Understood?”

I nodded, giving her puppy-dog eyes, and we started ripping off each other’s clothes. By the time Bob made it back to the limo, I was already deep inside the Duchess, and the two of us were moaning wildly. I put a forefinger to my lips and said, “Shhhhhh!”

She nodded, and I reached up and pressed the intercom button. “Bob, my good man, are you there?”

“Yes, Duke.”

“Splendid. The Duchess and I have some very urgent business to discuss, so please don’t disturb us until we get to the Hyatt.”

I winked at the Duchess and motioned to the intercom button with my eyebrows. “Off or on?” I whispered.

The Duchess looked up, and started chewing on the inside of her mouth. Then she shrugged. “You might as well leave it on.”

That’s my girl! I raised my voice and said, “Enjoy the royal show, Bob!” And with that, the sober Duke of Bayside, Queens, began making love to his wife, the luscious Duchess of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, as if there were no tomorrow.

^{CHAPTER 39} SIX WAYS TO KILL AN INTERVENTIONIST

My dog needs an operation… my car broke down… my boss is an asshole… my wife’s a bigger asshole… traffic jams drive me crazy… life’s not fair… and so forth and so on…

Yes, indeed, it was drizzling something awful in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in Southampton, Long Island. I’d been home for a week now, and as part of my recovery I’d committed to doing a Ninety-in-Ninety, which is to say: I had set a goal to attend ninety AA meetings in ninety days. And with a very nervous Duchess watching me like a hawk, I had no choice but to do it.

I quickly realized it was going to be a very long ninety days.

The moment I stepped into my first meeting, someone asked me if I’d like to be the guest speaker, to which I’d replied, “Speak in front of the group? Sure, why not!” What could be better than that? I figured.

The problems started quickly. I was offered a seat behind a rectangular table at the front of the room. The meeting’s chairperson, a kind-looking man in his early fifties, sat down beside me and made a few brief announcements. Then he motioned for me to begin.

I nodded and said, in a loud, forthright voice, “Hi, my name is Jordan, and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.”

The room of thirty or so ex-drunks responded in unison: “Hi, Jordan; welcome.”

I smiled and nodded. With great confidence, I said, “I’ve been sober for thirty-seven days now and—”

I was immediately cut off. “Excuse me,” said an ex-drunk with gray hair and spidery veins on his nose. “You need to be sober ninety days to speak at this meeting.”

Why, the insolence of the old bastard! I was absolutely devastated. I felt like I’d gotten on the school bus without remembering to put my clothes on. I just sat there, in this terribly uncomfortable wooden chair, staring at the old drunk and waiting for someone to drag me off with a hook.

“No, no. Let’s not be too tough,” said the chairperson. “Since he’s already up here, why don’t we just let him speak? It’ll be a breath of fresh air to hear a newcomer.”

Impudent mumbles came bubbling up from the crowd, along with a series of insolent shrugs and contemptuous head-shakes. They looked angry. And vicious. The chairperson put his arm on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes, as if to say, “It’s okay. You can go on.”

I nodded my head nervously. “Okay,” I said to the angry ex-drunks. “I’ve been sober for thirty-seven days now and—”

I was cut off again, except this time by thunderous applause. Ahhh, how wonderful! The Wolf was receiving his first ovation, and he hadn’t even gotten going yet! Wait ’til they hear my story! I’ll bring the house down!

Slowly, the applause died down, and with renewed confidence I plowed on: “Thanks, everybody. I really appreciate the vote of confidence. My drug of choice was Quaaludes, but I did a lot of cocaine too. In fact—”

I was cut off again. “Excuse me,” said my nemesis with the spider veins, “this is an AA meeting, not an NA meeting. You can’t talk about drugs here, only alcohol.”

I looked around the room, and all heads were nodding in agreement. Oh, shit! That seemed like a dated policy. This was the nineties now. Why would someone choose to be an alcoholic yet shun drugs? It made no sense.

I was about to jump out of my chair and run for the hills, when I heard a powerful female voice yell, “How dare you, Bill! How dare you try to drive away this young boy who’s fighting for his life! You’re despicable! We’re all addicts here. Now, why don’t you just shut up and mind your own business and let the boy speak?”

The boy? Had I just been called a boy? I was almost thirty-five now, for Chrissake! I looked over at the voice, and it was coming from a very old lady wearing granny glasses. She winked at me. So I winked back.

The old drunk sputtered at Grandma, “Rules are rules, you old hag!”

I shook my head in disbelief. Why did the insanity follow me wherever I went? I hadn’t done anything wrong here, had I? I just wanted to stay sober. Yet, once again, I was at the center of an uproar. “Whatever,” I said to the chairperson. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

At the end of the day, they let me speak, although I left the meeting wanting to wring the old bastard’s neck. From there, things continued to spiral downward when I went to an NA—Narcotics Anonymous—meeting. There were only four other people in the room; three of them were visibly stoned, and the fourth had even fewer days sober than me.

I wanted to say something to the Duchess, to tell her that this whole AA thing wasn’t for me, but I knew she’d be devastated. Our relationship was growing stronger by the day. There was no more fighting or cursing or hitting or stabbing or slapping or water-throwing—nothing. We were just two normal individuals, living a normal life with Chandler and Carter and twenty-two in domestic help. We had decided to stay out in Southampton for the summer. Better to keep me isolated from the madness, we figured, at least until my sobriety took hold. The Duchess had issued warnings to all my old friends: They were no longer welcome in our house unless they were sober. Alan Chemical-tob received a personal warning from Bo, and I never heard from him again.

And my business? Well, without Quaaludes and cocaine, I no longer had the stomach for it, or at least not yet. As a sober man, problems like Steve Madden Shoes seemed easy to deal with. I’d had my lawyers file a lawsuit, while I was still in rehab, and the escrow agreement was now public. So far, I hadn’t gotten myself arrested over it, and I suspected I never would. After all, on the face of it, the agreement wasn’t illegal; it was more an issue of Steve having not disclosed it to the public—which made it his liability more than mine. Besides, Agent Coleman had faded off into the sunset long ago, hopefully never to be heard from again. Eventually, I would have to settle with the Cobbler. I had already resigned myself to that fact, and I no longer gave a shit. Even in my most depraved emotional state—just before I’d entered rehab—it wasn’t the money that had been driving me crazy but the idea of the Cobbler trying to snatch my stock and keep it for himself. And that was no longer a possibility. As part of a settlement he would be forced to sell my stock to pay me off, and that would be that. I would let my lawyers deal with it.

I had been home for a little over a week when I came home one evening from an AA meeting and found the Duchess sitting in the TV room—the very room where I had lost my twenty-gram rock six weeks ago, which the Duchess had now admitted to having flushed down the toilet.

With a great smile on my face, I said, “Hey, sweetie! What’s—”

The Duchess looked up, and I froze in horror. She was visibly shaken. Tears streamed down her face, and her nose was running. With a sinking heart, I said, “Jesus, baby! What’s wrong? What happened?” I hugged her gently.

Her body was trembling in my arms when she pointed to the TV screen and said through tears, “It’s Scott Schneiderman. He killed a police officer a few hours ago. He was trying to rob his father for coke money and he shot a policeman.” She broke down hysterically.

I felt tears streaming down my cheeks as I said, “Jesus, Nae, he was here just a month ago. I…I don’t…” I searched for something to say but quickly realized that no words could describe the magnitude of this tragedy.

So I said nothing.

A week later, on a Friday evening, the seven-thirty meeting at Our Lady of Poland Church had just begun. It was Memorial Day weekend, and I was expecting the usual sixty minutes of torture. Then, to my shock, the opening words from the meeting’s chairperson came in the form of a directive—stating that there would be no drug-drizzling allowed, not under his watch. He was creating a Drizzle-Free Zone, he explained, because the purpose of AA was to create hope and faith, not to complain about the length of the checkout line at Grand Union. Then he held up an egg timer for public inspection, and he said, “There’s nothing that you can’t say in less than two and a half minutes that I have any interest in hearing. So keep it short and sweet.” He nodded once.

I was sitting toward the back, next to a middle-aged woman who looked reasonably well kept, for an ex-drunk. She had reddish hair and a ruddy complexion. I leaned over to her and whispered, “Who is that guy?”

“That’s George. He’s sort of the unofficial leader here.”

“Really?” I said. “Of this meeting?”

“No, no,” she whispered, in a tone implying that I was seriously out of the loop, “not just here, all over the Hamptons.” She looked around conspiratorially, as if she were about to pass on a piece of top-secret information. Then, sotto voce, she said, “He owns Seafield, the drug rehab. You’ve never seen him on TV?”

I shook my head no. “I don’t watch much TV, although he does look somewhat familiar. He—ohmygod!” I was speechless. It was Fred Flintstone, the man with the enormous head who’d popped on my TV screen at three in the morning, inspiring me to throw my Remington sculpture at his face!

After the meeting ended, I waited until the crowd died down and then went up to George and said, “Hi, my name is Jordan. I just wanted you to know that I really enjoyed the meeting. It was terrific.”

He extended his hand, which was the size of a catcher’s mitt. I shook it dutifully, praying he wouldn’t rip my arm out of its socket.

“Thanks,” he said. “Are you a newcomer?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m forty-three days sober.”

“Congratulations. That’s no small accomplishment. You should be proud.” He paused and cocked his head to the side, taking a good hard look at me. “You know, you look familiar. What’d you say your name was again?”

Here we go! Those bastards in the press—there was no escaping them! Fred Flintstone had seen my picture in the paper, and now he was going to judge me. It was time for a strategic subject change. “My name’s Jordan, and I gotta tell you a funny story, George: I was in my house up the Island, in Old Brookville, and it was three in the morning…” and I proceeded to tell him how I threw my Remington sculpture at his face, to which he smiled and replied, “You and a thousand other people. Sony should pay me a dollar for every TV they sold to a drug addict who smashed their TV after my commercial.” He let out a chuckle, then added skeptically, “You live in Old Brookville? That’s a helluva nice neighborhood. You live with your parents?”

“No,” I said, smiling. “I’m married with children, but that commercial was too—”

He cut me off. “You out here for Memorial Day?”

Jesus! This wasn’t going according to plan. He had me on the defensive. “No, I have a house out here.”

Sounding surprised: “Oh, really, where?”

I took a deep breath and said, “Meadow Lane.”

He pulled his head back a few inches and narrowed his eyes. “You live on Meadow Lane? Really?”

I nodded slowly.

Fred Flintstone smirked. Apparently, the picture was growing clearer. He smiled and said, “And what did you say your last name was?”

“I didn’t. But it’s Belfort. Ring a bell?”

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling. “A couple a hundred million of them. You’re that kid who started… uh… what’s it called… Strathman something or other.”

“Stratton Oakmont,” I said tonelessly.

“Yeah! That’s it. Stratton Oakmont! Holy Christ! You look like a fucking teenager! How could you have caused so much commotion?”

I shrugged. “The power of drugs, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, well, you bastards took me for a hundred large in some crazy fucking stock. I can’t even remember the name of it.”

Oh, shit! This was bad. George might take a swing at me with those catcher’s mitts of his! I would offer to pay him back right now. I would run home and get the money out of my safe. “I haven’t been involved with Stratton for a long time, but I’d still be more than happy to—”

He cut me off again. “Listen, I’m really enjoying this conversation, but I gotta get home. I’m expecting a call.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hold you up. I’ll come back next week; maybe we can talk then.”

“Why, you going someplace now?”

“No, why?”

He smiled. “I was going to invite you over for a cup of coffee. I live just down the block from you.”

With raised eyebrows, I said, “You’re not mad about the hundred grand?”

“Nah, what’s a hundred grand between two drunks, right? Besides, I needed the tax deduction.” He smiled and put his arm on my shoulder, and we headed for the door. He said, “I was expecting to find you in the rooms one of these days. I’ve heard some pretty wild stories about you. I’m just glad you made it here before it was too late.”

I nodded in agreement. Then George added, “Anyway, I’m only inviting you over to my house under one condition.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I wanna know the truth about whether you sank your yacht for the insurance money.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

I smiled and said, “Come on, I’ll tell you on the way!”

And just like that I walked out of the Friday night meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with my new sponsor: George B.

George lived on South Main Street, one of the premier streets in the estate section of Southampton. It was one notch down from Meadow Lane, insofar as price was concerned, although the cheapest home on South Main would still set you back $3 million. We were sitting across from each other, on either side of a very expensive bleached-oak table, inside his French country kitchen.

I was in the middle of explaining to George how I planned to kill my interventionist Dennis Maynard, just as soon as my Ninety-in-Ninety had been completed. I had decided that George was the appropriate person to speak to about such an affair after he told me a quick story about a process server who came on his property to serve a bogus summons on him. When George refused to answer the door, the process server started nailing the summons to his hand-polished mahogany door. George went to the door and waited until the process server had the hammer in an upstroke, then he swung open the door, punched the process server’s lights out, and slammed the door shut. It had all happened so fast that the process server couldn’t describe George to the police, so no charges were filed.

“…and it’s fucking despicable,” I was saying, “that this bastard calls himself a professional. Forget the fact that he told my wife not to come visit me while I was rotting away in the loony bin! I mean, that alone is grounds to have his legs broken. But to invite her to the movies to try to coax her into bed, well, that’s grounds for death!” I shook my head in rage and let out a deep breath, happy to finally get things off my chest.

And George actually agreed with me! Yes, in his opinion my drug interventionist did deserve to die. So we spent the next few minutes debating the best ways to kill him—starting with my idea of cutting off his dick with a pair of hydraulic bolt cutters. But George didn’t think that would be painful enough, because the interventionist would go into shock before his dick hit the carpet and bleed out in a matter of seconds. So we moved on to fire—burning him to death. George liked that because it was very painful, but it worried him because of the possibility of collateral damage, since we would be burning his house down as part of the plan. Next came carbon monoxide poisoning, which we both agreed was far too painless, so we debated the pros and cons of poisoning his food, which, in the end, seemed a bit too nineteenth century. A simple botched-burglary attempt came to mind, one that turned into murder (to avoid witnesses). But then we thought about paying a crack addict five dollars to run up to the interventionist and stab him right in the gut with a rusty knife. This way, George explained, he would bleed out nice and slow, especially if the stab wound was just over his liver, which would make it that much more painful.

Then I heard the door swing open and a female voice yell, “George, whose Mercedes is that?” It was a kind, sweet voice, which happened to have a ferocious Brooklyn accent attached to it, so the words came out like: “Gawge, whoze Mihcedees is that?”

A moment later, one of the cutest ladies on the planet walked in the kitchen. As big as he was, she was tiny—maybe five feet, a hundred pounds. She had strawberry-blond hair, honey-brown eyes, tiny features, and perfect Irish Spring skin, smattered with a fair number of freckles. She looked to be in her late forties or early fifties, but very well preserved.

George said, “Annette, say hello to Jordan. Jordan, say hello to Annette.”

I went to shake her hand, but she moved right past it and gave me a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. She smelled clean and fresh and of some very expensive perfume, which I couldn’t quite place. Annette smiled and held me out in front of her by my shoulders, at arm’s length, as if she were inspecting me. “Well, I’ll give you one thing,” she said matter-of-factly, “you’re not the typical stray George brings home.”

We all broke up over that one, and then Annette excused herself and went about her usual business, which was making George’s life as comfortable as possible. In no time flat, there was a fresh pot of coffee on the table, as well as cakes and pastries and donuts and a bowl of freshly cut fruit. Then she offered to cook me a full-blown dinner, because she thought I looked too thin, to which I said, “You should’ve seen me forty-three days ago!”

And as we sipped our coffee, I kept going on about my interventionist. Annette was quick to jump on the bandwagon. “He sounds like a real bastard”—bahstid—“if you ask me,” said the tiny Brooklyn firecracker. “I think you got every right in the world to wanna chop his cojones off. Don’t you, Gwibbie?”

Gwibbie? That was an interesting nickname for George! I kinda liked it, although it didn’t really suit him. Perhaps Sasquatch, I thought…or maybe Goliath or Zeus.

Gwibbie nodded and said, “I think the guy deserves to die a slow, painful death, so I want to think about it overnight. We can plan it out tomorrow.”

I looked at Gwibbie and nodded in agreement. “Definitely!” I said. “This guy deserves a fiery death.”

Annette said to George, “And what are you gonna tell him tomorrow, Gwib?”

Gwib said, “Tomorrow I’m gonna tell him that I want to think about it overnight and then we can plan it out the next day.” He smiled wryly.

I smiled and shook my head. “You guys are too much! I knew you were fucking around with me.”

Annette said, “I wasn’t! I think he does deserve to have his cojones chopped off!” Now her voice took on a very knowing tone. “George does interventions all the time, and I’ve never heard of the wife being left out of it, right, Gwib?”

Gwib shrugged his enormous shoulders. “I don’t like passing judgment on other people’s methods, but it sounds like there was a certain warmth missing from your intervention. I’ve done hundreds of them, and the one thing I always make sure of is that the person being intervened on understands how much he’s loved and how everyone will be there for him if he does the right thing and gets sober. I would never keep a wife away from her husband. Ever.” He shrugged his great shoulders once more. “But all’s well that ends well, right? You’re alive and sober, which is a wonderful miracle, although I question whether or not you’re really sober.”

“What do you mean? Of course I’m sober! I have forty-three days today, and in a few hours I’ll have forty-four. I haven’t touched anything. I swear.”

“Ahhh,” said George, “you have forty-three days without drinking and drugging, but that doesn’t mean you’re actually sober. There’s a difference, right, Annette?”

Annette nodded. “Tell him about Kenton Rhodes,† George.”

“The department-store guy?” I asked.

They both nodded, and George said, “Yeah, but actually it’s his idiot son, the heir to the throne. He has a house in Southampton, not far from you.”

With that, Annette plunged into the story. “Yeah, you see, I used to own a store just up the street from here, over on Windmill Lane; it was called the Stanley Blacker Boutique. Anyway, we sold all this terrific Western wear, Tony Lama boo—”

George, apparently, had no patience for drizzling even from his own wife, and he cut her right off. “Jesus Christ, Annette, what the hell does that have to do with the story? No one cares what you sold in your goddamn store or who my tenants were nineteen years ago.” He looked at me and rolled his eyes.

George took a deep breath, puffing himself up to the size of an industrial refrigerator, and then slowly let it out. “So Annette owned this store up by Windmill Lane, and she used to park her little Mercedes out in front. One day she’s inside the store waiting on a customer, and she sees through the window this other Mercedes pulling in behind her car and hitting her rear bumper. Then, a few seconds later, a man gets out with his girlfriend, and without even leaving a note he goes walking into town.”

At this point, Annette looked at me and raised her eyebrows, and she whispered, “It was Kenton Rhodes who hit me!”

George shot her a look and said, “Right, it was Kenton Rhodes. Anyway, Annette comes out of the store and sees that not only did he hit the back of her car but he also parked illegally, in a fire zone, so she calls the cops and they come and give him a ticket. Then, an hour later, he comes walking out of some restaurant, drunk as a skunk; he’s goes back to his car and looks at the parking ticket and smiles, and then he rips it up and throws it in the street.”

Annette couldn’t resist the temptation to chime in again: “Yeah, and this bahstid had this smug look on his face, so I ran outside and said, ‘Let me tell you something, buddy—not only did you hit my car and make a dent but you got the nerve to park in a fire zone and then just rip the ticket up and throw it on the floor and litter.”

George nodded gravely. “And I happened to be walking by as all this is happening, and I see Annette pointing her finger at this smug bastard and screaming at him, and then I hear him call her a bitch, or something along those lines. So I walk up to Annette and say, ‘Get in the damn store, Annette, right now!’ and Annette runs inside the store, knowing what’s coming next. Meanwhile, Kenton Rhodes is mouthing off to me something fierce, as he climbs inside his Mercedes. He slams the door shut and starts the car and hits the power-window button, and the thick tempered glass starts sliding up. Then he puts on this enormous pair of Porsche sunglasses—you know, the big ones that make you look like an insect—and he smiles at me and gives me the middle finger.”

I started laughing and shaking my head. “So what did you do?”

George rolled his fire hydrant of a neck. “What did I do? I wound up with all my might and I hit the driver’s side window so hard that it smashed into a thousand pieces. My hand landed directly on Kenton Rhodes’s left temple and knocked him unconscious, and his head fell right in his girlfriend’s lap, with those obnoxious Porsche sunglasses still on his face—except now they were all cockeyed.”

Through laughter, I said, “You get arrested?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly. See, now his girlfriend was screaming at the top of her lungs: ‘OhmyGod! OhmyGod! You killed him! You’re a maniac!’ And she jumps out of the car and runs over to the police station to get a cop. A few minutes later, Kenton Rhodes is just coming to, and his girlfriend is running back with a cop, who happens to be my good friend Pete Orlando. So she runs over to the driver’s side and helps Kenton Rhodes out of the car and brushes all the glass off him, and then the two of them start barking away at Pete Orlando, demanding that he arrest me.

“Annette comes running out, screaming, ‘He ripped up a ticket, Pete, and he threw it on the floor! He’s a goddamn litterbug and he parked in a fire zone!’ to which Pete walks around the back of the car and starts shaking his head gravely. Then he turns to Kenton Rhodes and says, ‘You’re parked in a fire zone; move your car right now or I’m having it towed.’ So Kenton Rhodes starts muttering under his breath, cursing out Pete Orlando as he gets in his car and slams the door shut. Then he turns on the ignition and puts the car in gear and starts backing up a few feet, at which point Pete holds up his hand and yells, ‘Stop! Get out of the car, sir!’ So Kenton Rhodes stops the car and gets out and says, ‘What now?’ and Pete says, ‘I smell alcohol on your breath; you’re gonna have to take a sobriety test.’ And now Kenton Rhodes starts muttering at Pete: ‘You don’t know who the fuck I am!’ and all the rest of that crap—and he was still muttering curses a minute later when Pete Orlando arrested him for drunk driving and slapped the cuffs on him.”

The three of us cackled for what had to be at least a minute; it was my first sober belly laugh in almost ten years. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard. The story had a message, of course—that back then George was newly sober, which is to say he wasn’t really sober at all. He might’ve stopped drinking, but he was still acting like a drunk.

Finally, George regained his composure and said, “Anyway, you’re a smart guy, so I think you got the point.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that wanting to kill my interventionist is not the act of a sober man.”

“Exactly,” he said. “It’s okay to think about it, to talk about it, to even make jokes about it. But to actually act on it—that’s the point where the question of sobriety raises itself.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve been sober for more than twenty years now, and I still go to meetings every day—not just so I won’t drink alcohol but because, for me, sobriety means a lot more than not getting drunk. When I go to meetings and I see newcomers like you, it reminds me of how close I am to the edge and how easy it would be to slip off. It serves as a daily reminder not to pick up a drink. And when I see the old-timers there, people with thirty-plus years—even more sobriety than myself—it reminds me of how wonderful this program is and how many lives it’s saved.”

I nodded in understanding and said, “I wasn’t really gonna kill my interventionist, anyway. I just needed to hear myself talk about it a bit, to vent.” I shrugged and shook my head. “I guess when you look back at it now, you must be shocked that you actually did something like that to Kenton Rhodes. With twenty years sober, now you’d just turn the other cheek at an asshole like that, right?”

George gave me a look of pure incredulity. “You fucking kidding me? It wouldn’t matter if I had a hundred years sober. I’d still knock that bastard out just the same!” And we broke down hysterically once more, and we kept laughing and laughing, all the way through that wonderful summer of 1997, my first summer of sobriety.

In fact, I kept right on laughing—as did the Duchess—as we grew closer to George and Annette, and our old friends, one by one, faded into the woodwork. In fact, by the time I was celebrating my first year of sobriety, I had lost touch with almost everyone. The Bealls were still around, as were some of Nadine’s old friends, but people like Elliot Lavigne and Danny Porush and Rob Lorusso and Todd and Carolyn Garret could no longer be in my life.

Of course, people like Wigwam, and Bonnie and Ross, and some of my other childhood friends still showed up for an occasional dinner party and whatnot—but things would never be the same. The gravy train had officially stopped running, and the drugs, which had been the glue, were no longer there to hold us together. The Wolf of Wall Street had died that night in Boca Raton, Florida, overdosing in the kitchen of Dave and Laurie Beall. And what little of the Wolf still remained was extinguished when I met George B., who set me on a path of true sobriety.

Exempt from that, of course, was Alan Lipsky, my oldest and dearest friend, who’d been there long before any of this happened, long before I’d ever had that wild notion of bringing my own version of Wall Street out to Long Island—creating chaos and insanity among an entire generation of Long Islanders. It was sometime in the fall of 1997 when Alan came to me, saying that he couldn’t take it anymore, that he was sick and tired of losing his clients’ money and that he’d rather do nothing than keep Monroe Parker open. I couldn’t have agreed more, and Monroe Parker closed shortly thereafter. A few months later Biltmore followed suit, and the era of the Strattonite finally came to a close.

It was around the same time when I finally settled my lawsuit with Steve Madden. I ended up settling for a little over $5 million, a far cry from what the stock was actually worth. Nevertheless, as part of the settlement Steve was forced to sell my stock to a mutual fund, so neither of us got the full benefit. I would always look at Steve Madden as the one that got away, although, all in all, I still made over $20 million on the deal—no paltry sum, even by my outrageous standards.

Meanwhile, the Duchess and I had settled into a quieter, more modest lifestyle, slowly reducing the menagerie to a more reasonable level, which is to say, twelve in help. The first to go were Maria and Ignacio. Next came the Roccos, whom I’d always liked but no longer considered necessary. After all, without cocaine and Quaaludes fueling my paranoia, it seemed somewhat ridiculous to have a private security force working in a crimeless neighborhood. Bo had taken the dismissal in stride, telling me that he was just happy I’d made it through this whole thing alive. And while he never actually said it, I was pretty sure he felt guilty about things, although I don’t think he was aware of how desperate my drug addiction had become. After all, the Duchess and I had done a pretty good job of hiding it, hadn’t we? Or perhaps everyone knew exactly what was going on but figured as long as the goose kept laying his golden eggs, who cared if he killed himself?

Of course, Gwynne and Janet stayed on, and the subject of them being my chief enablers (outside the Duchess) was never brought up. Sometimes it’s easier to let sleeping dogs lie. Janet was an expert at burying the past, and Gwynne being a Southerner—well, to bury the past was the Southern way. Whatever the case, I loved both of them, and I knew they both loved me. The simple fact is that drug addiction is a fucked-up disease, and the lines of good judgment become very murky in the trenches, especially when you’re living Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional.

And speaking of chief enablers, there was, of course, the luscious Duchess of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I guess she turned out all right in the end, didn’t she? She was the only one who’d stood up to me, the only one who had cared enough to put her foot down and say, “Enough is enough!”

But as the first anniversary of my sobriety came and went, I began to notice changes in her. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of that gorgeous face when she wasn’t aware I was looking, and I would see a faraway look in her eye, a sort of shell-shocked look, peppered with a hint of sadness. I often wondered what she was thinking at those moments, how many unspoken grudges she still held against me, not just for that despicable moment on the stairs but for everything—for all the cheating and philandering and falling asleep in restaurants and wild emotional swings that went hand in hand with my addiction. I asked George about that—what he thought she might be thinking and if there was anything I could do about it.

With a hint of sadness in his voice, he told me that this whole affair hadn’t played itself out yet, that it was inconceivable that Nadine and I could’ve gone through what we had and then just sweep things under the rug. In fact, in all the years he’d been sober he’d never heard of anything like this; the Duchess and I had broken new ground in terms of dysfunctional relationships. He likened Nadine to Mount Vesuvius—a dormant volcano that one day was sure to explode. Just when and with how much ferocity he wasn’t quite sure, but he recommended that the two of us go into therapy, which we didn’t. Instead, we buried the past and moved on.

Sometimes I would find the Duchess crying—sitting alone in her maternity showroom with tears streaming down her cheeks. When I’d ask her what was wrong, she would tell me that she couldn’t understand why all this had to happen. Why had I turned away from her and lost myself in drugs? Why had I treated her so badly during those years? And why was I such a good husband now? In a way, it only made it worse, she’d said, and with each act of kindness I now showed her, she felt that much more resentful that it couldn’t have been that way all those years. But then we would make love, and all would be well again, until the next time I found her crying.

Nonetheless, we still had our children, Chandler and Carter, and we found solace in them. Carter had just celebrated his third birthday. He was more gorgeous than ever now, with his platinum-blond hair and world-class eyelashes. He was a child of God, watched over since that terrible day in North Shore Hospital when they’d told us that he would grow up without his faculties. How ironic it was that since that day he hadn’t had so much as a runny nose. The hole in his heart was almost closed now, and it had never given him a day’s problems.

And what of Chandler? What of my little thumbkin, the former baby genius, who had kissed away her daddy’s boo-boo? Well, as always, she was still a daddy’s girl. Somewhere along the way she had earned the nickname “the CIA,” because she spent a good part of her day listening to everyone’s conversations and gathering intelligence. She had just turned five, and she was wise beyond her years. She was quite a little salesperson, using the subtle power of suggestion to exert her very will over me, which, admittedly, wasn’t all that difficult.

Sometimes I would look at her while she was asleep—wondering what she would remember about all this, about all the chaos and insanity that had surrounded her first four years, those all-important formative years. The Duchess and I had always tried to shield her from things, but children are notoriously keen observers. Every so often, in fact, something would trigger Channy and she would bring up what had happened on the stairs that day—and then she would tell me how happy she was that I had gone to Atlant-ica so Mommy and Daddy could be happy again. I found myself crying inwardly at those moments, but she’d change the subject just as quickly, to something entirely innocuous, as if the memory hadn’t touched her viscerally. One day I would have some explaining to do, and not just about what had happened on the stairs that day but about everything. But there was time for that—lots of time—and at this point it seemed prudent to allow her to enjoy the blissful ignorance of childhood, at least for a while longer.

At this particular moment, Channy and I were standing in the kitchen in Old Brookville, and she was pulling on my jeans and saying, “I want to go to Blockbuster to get the new Rugrats video! You promised!”

In truth, I hadn’t promised anything, but that made me respect her even more. After all, my five-year-old daughter was assuming the sale on me—making her case from a position of strength, not weakness. It was 7:30 p.m. “Okay,” I said, “let’s go right now, before Mommy gets home. Come on, thumbkin!” I extended my arms toward her and she jumped into them, wrapped her tiny arms around my neck, and giggled deliciously.

“Let’s go, Daddy! Hurry up!”

I smiled at my perfect daughter and took a deep, sober breath, relishing her very scent, which was glorious. Chandler was beautiful, inside and out, and I had no doubt that she would grow strong, one day making her mark on this world. She just had that look about her, a certain sparkle in her eye that I’d noticed the very moment she was born.

We decided to take my little Mercedes, which was her favorite, and we put the top down so we could enjoy the beautiful summer evening. It was a few days before Labor Day, and the weather was gorgeous. It was one of those clear, windless nights, and I could smell the first hints of fall. Unlike that fateful day sixteen months ago, I seat-belted my precious daughter into the front passenger seat and made it out of the driveway without smashing into anything.

As we passed through the stone pillars at the edge of the estate, I noticed a car parked outside my property. It was a gray four-door sedan, maybe an Oldsmobile. As I drove past it, a middle-aged white man with a narrow skull and short gray hair parted to the side stuck his head out the driver’s side window and said, “Excuse me, is this Cryder Lane?”

I hit the brake. Cryder Lane? I thought. What was he talking about? There was no Cryder Lane in Old Brookville or, for that matter, anywhere in Locust Valley. I looked over at Channy and felt a twinge of panic. In that very instant I wished I still had the Roccos watching over me. There was something odd and disturbing about this encounter.

I shook my head and said, “No, this is Pin Oak Court. I don’t know any Cryder Lane.” At that moment I noticed there were three other people sitting in the car, and my heart immediately took off at a gallop…Fuck—they were here to kidnap Channy!… I reached over, placed my arm across Chandler’s chest, and looked her in the eyes and said, “Hold on, sweetie!”

As I stepped on the accelerator, the rear door of the Oldsmobile swung open and a woman popped out. She smiled, then waved at me and said, “It’s okay, Jordan. We’re not here to hurt you. Please don’t pull away.” She smiled again.

I put my foot back on the brake. “What do you want?” I asked curtly.

“We’re from the FBI,” she said. She pulled a black leather billfold from her pocket and flipped it open. I looked…and, sure enough, those three ugly letters were staring me in the face: F-B-I. They were big block letters, in light blue, and there was some official-looking writing above and below them. A moment later the man with the narrow skull flashed his credentials too.

I smiled and said ironically, “I guess you guys aren’t here to borrow a cup of sugar, right?”

They both shook their heads no. Just then the other two agents emerged from the passenger side of the Oldsmobile and flashed their credentials as well. The kind-looking woman offered me a sad smile and said, “I think you should turn around and bring your daughter back inside the house. We need to talk to you.”

“No problem,” I said. “And thanks, by the way. I appreciate what you’re doing.”

The woman nodded, accepting my gratitude for having the decency to not make a scene in front of my daughter. I asked, “Where’s Agent Coleman? I’m dying to meet the guy after all these years.”

The woman smiled again. “I’m sure the feeling is mutual. He’ll be along shortly.”

I nodded in resignation. It was time to break the bad news to Chandler: There would be no Rugrats this evening. In fact, I had a sneaky suspicion there would be some other changes around the house, none of which she would be too fond of—starting with the temporary absence of Daddy.

I looked at Channy and said, “We can’t go to Blockbuster, sweetie. I have to talk to these people for a while.”

She narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. Then she started screaming: “No! You promised me! You’re breaking your word! I want to go to Blockbuster! You promised me!”

As I drove back to the house she kept screaming—and then she continued to scream as we made our way into the kitchen and I passed her to Gwynne. I said to Gwynne, “Call Nadine on her cell phone; tell her the FBI is here and I’m getting arrested.”

Gwynne nodded without speaking and took Chandler upstairs. The moment Chandler was out of sight, the kind female FBI agent said, “You’re under arrest for securities fraud, money laundering, and…”

Blah, blah, blah, I thought, as she slapped the cuffs on me and recited my crimes against man and God and everyone else. Her words blew right past me, though, like a gust of wind. They were entirely meaningless to me, or at least not worth listening to. After all, I knew what I’d done and I knew that I deserved whatever was coming to me. Besides, there would be ample time to go over the arrest warrant with my lawyer.

Within minutes, there were no less than twenty FBI agents in my house—dressed in full regalia with guns, bulletproof vests, extra ammo, and whatnot. It was somewhat ironic, I thought, that they would dress this way, as if they were serving some sort of high-risk warrant.

A few minutes later, Special Agent Gregory Coleman finally reared his head. And I was shocked. He looked like a kid, no older than me. He was about my height and he had short brown hair, very dark eyes, even features, and an entirely average build.

When he saw me, he smiled. Then he extended his right hand and we shook, although it was a trifle awkward, what with my hands being cuffed and everything. He said, in a tone of respect, “I gotta tell you, you were one wily adversary. I must’ve knocked on a hundred doors and not a single person would cooperate against you.” He shook his head, still awestruck at the loyalty the Strattonites had for me. Then he added, “I thought you’d like to know that.”

I shrugged and said, “Yeah, well, the gravy train has a way of doing that to people, you know?”

He turned the corners of his mouth down and nodded. “Definitely so.”

Just then the Duchess came running in. She had tears in her eyes, yet she still looked gorgeous. Even at my very arrest, I couldn’t help but take a peek at her legs, especially since I wasn’t sure when I’d see them again.

As they led me away in handcuffs, the Duchess gave me a tiny peck on the cheek and told me not to worry. I nodded and told her that I loved her and that I always would. And then I was gone, just like that. Going where I hadn’t the slightest idea, but I figured I would end up somewhere in Manhattan and then tomorrow I would be arraigned in front of a federal judge.

In retrospect, I remember feeling somewhat relieved—that the chaos and insanity would finally be behind me. I would do my time and then walk away a sober young man—a father of two and a husband to a kindhearted woman, who stood by me through thick and thin.

Everything would be okay.