I resisted the thought that it was the Quaaludes that had made me fall in the first place. After all, there were so many advantages to using them that I considered myself lucky to be addicted to them. I mean, how many drugs made you feel as wonderful as they did, yet didn’t leave you with a hangover the next day? And a man in my position—a man burdened with so many grave responsibilities—couldn’t afford to be hungover, now could he!
And my wife…well, I guess she’d earned her scene with me, but still; did she really have that much reason to be angry? I mean, when she married me she knew what she was getting into, didn’t she? She had been my mistress, for Chrissake! That spoke volumes, didn’t it? And what had I really done tonight? Nothing so terrible, or at least nothing that she could prove!
And around and around that twisted mind of mine went—rationalizing, justifying, then denying, and then rationalizing some more, until I was able to build up a healthy head of righteous resentment. Yes, I thought, there were certain things that went on between rich men and their wives that dated all the way back to the caveman days, or at least back to the Vanderbilts and Astors. There were liberties, so to speak, certain liberties that men of power were entitled to, that men of power had earned! Of course this wasn’t the sort of thing I could just come out and say to Nadine. She was prone to physical violence and she was bigger than me, or at least the same size, which was just one more reason to resent her.
Just then I heard the electric whir of the golf cart. That would be Rocco Night, or perhaps Rocco Day, depending on when their shifts changed. Either way, some Rocco was coming out to fetch me. It was amazing how everything always seemed to work out. When I fell down, there was always someone to pick me up; when I got caught driving under the influence, there was always some crooked judge or corrupt police officer to make an accommodation; and when I passed out at the dinner table and found myself drowning in the soup du jour, there was always my wife, or, if not her, then some benevolent hooker, who would come to my aid with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
It was as if I was bulletproof or something. How many times had I cheated death? It was impossible to say. But did I really want to die? Was my guilt and remorse eating at me that voraciously—so much, in fact, that I was trying to take my own life? I mean, it was mind-boggling, now that I thought about it! I had risked my life a thousand times yet hadn’t gotten so much as a scratch. I had driven drunk, flown stoned, walked off the edge of a building, scuba dived during a blackout, gambled away millions of dollars at casinos all over the world, and I still didn’t look a day over twenty-one.
I had lots of nicknames: Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Kaiser Soze; they even called me the King. But my favorite was the Wolf of Wall Street, because that was me to a T. I was the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing: I looked like a kid and acted like a kid, but I was no kid. I was thirty-one going on sixty, living dog years—aging seven years for every year. But I was rich and powerful and had a gorgeous wife and a four-month-old baby daughter who was living, breathing perfection.
Like they say, it was all good, and it all seemed to work. Somehow, and I wasn’t sure how, I would end up beneath a $12,000 silk comforter, sleeping inside a royal bedchamber draped with enough white Chinese silk to make silk parachutes for an entire squadron of paratroopers. And my wife…well, she would forgive me. After all, she always had.
And with that thought, I passed out.
CHAPTER 2
THE DUCHESS OF BAY RIDGE
December 13, 1993
The next morning—or, if you want to get technical about it, a few hours later—I was having an awesome dream. It was the sort of dream that every young man hopes and prays for, so I decided to go with it. I’m alone in bed, when Venice the Hooker comes to me. She kneels down at the edge of my sumptuous king-size bed, hovering just out of reach, a perfect little vision. I can see her clearly now…that lusty mane of chestnut brown hair…the fine features of her face…those juicy young jugs…those incredibly loamy loins, glistening with greed and desire.
“Venice,” I say. “Come to me, Venice. Come to me, Venice!”
Venice moves toward me, walking on her knees. Her skin is fair and white and shimmers amid the silk…the silk…there’s silk everywhere. An enormous canopy of white Chinese silk is suspended from above. Billows of white Chinese silk hang down at all four corners of the bed. So much white Chinese silk…I’m drowning in white f**king silk. In this very instant the ludicrous figures come popping into my mind: the silk cost $250 a yard, and there have to be two hundred yards of it. That’s $50,000 of white Chinese silk. So much white f**king silk.
But that’s my wife’s doing, my dear aspiring decorator—or, wait, that was last month’s aspiration, wasn’t it? Isn’t she an aspiring chef now? Or is she an aspiring landscape architect? Or is it a wine connoisseur? Or a clothing designer? Who could keep track of all her f**king aspirations? So tiring it is…so tiring to be married to Martha Stewart in embryo.
Just then I feel a drop of water. I look up. What the hell? Storm clouds? How can there be storm clouds inside the royal bedchamber? Where’s my wife? Holy shit! My wife! My wife! Hurricane Nadine!
SPLASH!
I woke up to the angry yet gorgeous face of my second wife, Nadine. In her right hand was an empty twelve-ounce water glass; in her left hand was her own balled-up fist, punctuated by a seven-carat, yellow canary diamond in a platinum setting. She was less than five feet away, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, like a prizefighter. I made a quick mental note to watch out for the ring.
“Why the f**k did you do that?” I yelled halfheartedly. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and took a moment to study Wife Number Two. God, she was a real piece of ass, my wife! I couldn’t begrudge her that even now. She was wearing a tiny pink chemise that was so short and low cut that it made her look more nak*d than if she were wearing nothing at all. And those legs of hers! Christ, they looked scrumptious. But, still, that was beside the point. I needed to get tough with her and show her who was boss. Through clenched teeth, I said, “I swear to God, Nadine, I’m going to f**king kill—”
“Oh, I’m really f**king scared,” interrupted the blond firecracker. She shook her head in disgust, and her little pink n**ples popped out of her next-to-nothing outfit. I tried not to stare, but it was difficult. “Maybe I should go run and hide,” she quipped. “Or maybe I’ll just stay here and kick your f**king ass!” The last few words she screamed.
Well, maybe she was boss. Either way, she had definitely earned her scene with me; there was no denying that. And the Duchess of Bay Ridge had a vicious temper. Yes, she was a duchess, all right—a Brit by birth, who still carried a British passport. It was a wonderful fact she never failed to remind me of. Yet, it was all very ironic, since she had never actually lived in Britain. In fact, she had moved to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, when she was still a baby, and it was there, in the land of dropped consonants and tortured vowels, where she was raised. Bay Ridge; it’s that tiny corner of the earth where words like f**k and shit and bastard and prick roll off the tongues of young natives with the poetic panache of T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman. And it was there that Nadine Caridi—my lovable English, Irish, Scottish, German, Norwegian, and Italian mutt-of-a-duchess—learned to tie her curses together, as she was learning to tie the laces on her roller skates.
It was sort of a grim joke, I thought, considering that Mark Hanna had warned me about going out with a girl from Bay Ridge all those years ago. His girlfriend, as I recalled, had stabbed him with a pencil while he was sleeping; the Duchess preferred throwing water. So, in a way, I was ahead of the game.
Anyway, when the Duchess got angry it was as if her words were bubbling up from out of the rancid gullet of the Brooklyn sewer system. And no one could make her angrier than me, her loyal and trustworthy husband, the Wolf of Wall Street, who less than five hours ago was in the Presidential Suite of the Helmsley Palace with a candle in his ass.
“So tell me, you little shit,” snapped the Duchess, “who the f**k is Venice, huh?” She paused and took an aggressive step forward, and all at once she struck a pose, with her h*ps cocked in a display of insolence, one long, bare leg slewed out to the side, and her arms folded beneath her br**sts, pushing her n**ples out into plain view. She said, “She’s probably some little hooker, I bet.” She narrowed her big blue eyes accusingly. “You don’t think I know what you’re up to? Why, I oughta smash your f**king face in, you…you little…ugghhhhh!” It was an angry groan, and the moment she’d finished groaning she gave up her pose and began marching across the bedroom—marching on the custom-made beige and taupe $120,000 Edward Fields carpet. And she marched fast as lightning, all the way to the master bathroom, which was a good thirty feet away, where she turned on the faucet, refilled the water glass, turned off the faucet, and came marching back, looking twice as angry. Her teeth were clenched in unadulterated rage, making her square model-girl jaw really stand out. She looked like the Duchess from Hell.
Meanwhile, I was trying to gather my thoughts, but she was moving too fast. I had no time to think. It had to be those f**king Quaaludes! They had made me talk in my sleep again. Oh, shit! What had I said? I ran the possibilities through my mind: the limousine…the hotel…the drugs…Venice the Hooker…Venice with the candle—Oh, God, the f**king candle! I pushed the thought out of my mind.
I looked over at the digital clock on the night table: It was 7:16. Jesus! What time had I gotten home? I shook my head, trying to get out the cobwebs. I ran my fingers through my hair—Christ, I was soaked! She must have dumped the water right over my head. My own wife! And then she called me little—a little shit! Why had she called me that? I wasn’t that little, was I? She could be very cruel, the Duchess.
She was back now, less than five feet away, holding the water glass out in front of her, with her elbow cocked out to the side: her throwing position! And that look on her face: pure poison. Yet, still…such undeniable beauty! Not only her great mane of golden blond hair but those blazing blue eyes, those glorious cheekbones, her tiny nose, that perfectly smooth jaw-line, her chin with its tiny cleft, those creamy young br**sts—a bit worse for the wear after breast-feeding Chandler, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed with $10,000 and a sharp scalpel. And those legs…God almighty, those long bare legs of hers were off the charts! So perfect they were, the way they tapered so nicely at the ankle yet stayed so luscious above the knee. They were definitely her best asset, along with her ass.
It was only three years ago, in fact, when I had first laid eyes on the Duchess. It was a sight I found so alluring that I ended up leaving my kind first wife, Denise—paying her millions up front in one lump sum plus fifty thousand a month in non-tax-deductible maintenance, so she would walk away quietly without demanding a full-blown audit of my affairs.
And look how fast things had deteriorated! And what had I really done? Say a few words in my sleep? What was the crime in that? The Duchess was definitely overreacting here. In fact, at this point, I had every reason to be mad at her too. Perhaps I could maneuver this whole thing into a quick round of make-up sex, which was the best sex of all. I took a deep breath and said with complete and utter innocence, “Why are you so mad at me? I mean, you…you kinda got me confused here.”