The Wolf of Wall Street

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.