Later, after I went inside my office and closed the door for the last time, I couldn’t help but wonder if they would still be thanking me five years from now.
CHAPTER 25
REAL REALS
How many reruns of Gilligan’s Island can one man watch before he decides to stick a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger?
It was a frigid Wednesday morning, and in spite of it being eleven a.m., I was still lying in bed, watching television. Forced retirement, I thought—it ain’t no f**king picnic.
I’d been watching a considerable amount of TV over the last four weeks—too much, according to the doleful Duchess—and, as of late, I had become obsessed with Gilligan’s Island.
There was a reason for that: While watching Gilligan’s Island reruns, I made the shocking discovery that I was not the only Wolf of Wall Street. Much to my chagrin, there was someone sharing this not-so-honorable distinction with me, and he happened to be a bumbling old WASP who’d been unlucky enough to get himself shipwrecked on Gilligan’s Island. His name was Thurston Howell III, and, alas, he truly was an idiot WASP. In typical WASP fashion he’d married a female of his species, an atrocious pineapple blond named Lovey, who was almost as great an idiot as he but not quite. Lovey felt it necessary to wear wool pantsuits, sequined ball gowns, and a full face of makeup, despite the fact that Gilligan’s Island was somewhere in the South Pacific, at least five hundred miles from the nearest shipping lane where she would ever be seen by anyone. But WASPs are notorious overdressers.
I found myself wondering if it was only by sheer coincidence that the original Wolf of Wall Street was a bumbling moron or if my nickname was meant to be a slight—comparing Jordan Belfort to an old WASP bastard with an IQ of sixty-five and a penchant for bed-wetting. Perhaps, I thought glumly, perhaps.
It was all very sad, and very depressing too. On a brighter note, I had been spending a great deal of time with Chandler, who had just started talking. It was crystal clear now that my early suspicions had been confirmed, and my daughter was a certifiable genius. I found myself resisting the urge to regard my daughter from a physical perspective—knowing full well that I could and would cherish every last molecule of her no matter how she looked. But the fact remained that she was absolutely gorgeous and looking more and more like her mother with each passing day. Likewise, I found myself falling more deeply in love with her as I watched her personality unfold. She was a daddy’s girl, and seldom a day went by when I didn’t spend at least three or four hours with her, teaching her new words.
There were powerful feelings blossoming inside me, feelings I was entirely unfamiliar with. For better or worse, I came to the realization that I had never loved another human being unconditionally—including my wives and my parents. It was only now, since Chandler, that I finally understood the true meaning of the word love. For the first time, I understood why my parents had felt my pain—literally suffering alongside me—especially during my teenage years, when I’d seemed determined to waste my gifts. I finally understood where my mother’s tears had come from, and I now knew that, I, too, would shed those very tears if my daughter were to end up doing what I had done. I felt guilty over all the pain I had caused my parents, knowing that it must have cut to their very cores. It was about unconditional love, wasn’t it? It was the purest love of all, and up until now I had only been on the receiving end of it.
None of this diminished my feelings for the Duchess. Instead, it made me wonder if I could ever get to such a place with her, to that very level of comfort and trust where I could let my guard down and love her unconditionally. Perhaps if we had another child together, I thought. Or perhaps if we grew old together—truly old—and we both passed that point where the physical body dictates so much. Maybe then I would finally trust her.
As the days passed, I found myself looking to Chandler for a sense of peace, for a sense of stability, and for a sense of purpose in my life. The thought of going to jail and being separated from her was something that rested at the base of my skull like a deadweight, which would not be lifted until Agent Coleman had finished his investigation and found nothing. Only then would I rest easy. I was still waiting to hear back from Bo as to what intelligence he’d gathered from Special Agent Barsini, but he was having trouble nailing Barsini down.
And then there was the Duchess. Things had been going remarkably well with her. In fact, now that I had extra time on my hands, I was finding it much easier to hide my mushrooming drug habit from her. I had this wonderful program worked out where I would wake up at five in the morning, two hours before her, and drop my morning Ludes in peace. Then I would go through all four phases of my high—tingle, slur, drool, loss of consciousness—before she’d even wake up. Upon awakening, I would watch a few episodes of Gilligan’s Island or I Dream of Jeannie, then spend an hour or so playing with Chandler. At noon, I would meet Danny for lunch at Tenjin, where we could be seen by all the Strattonites.
After the market closed, Danny and I would meet again, at which point we would drop Ludes together. This would be my second high of the day. I’d usually arrive home around sevenish—after I was well past the drool phase—and have dinner with the Duchess and Chandler. And while I was certain the Duchess knew what I was up to, she seemed to be turning a blind eye to things—thankful, perhaps, that I was at least making an effort not to drool in her presence, which, above all things, enraged her.
Just then, I heard the phone beep. “Are you awake yet?” asked Janet’s obnoxious voice over the intercom.
“It’s eleven o’clock, Janet. Of course I’m awake!”
“Well, you haven’t surfaced yet, so how am I supposed to know?”
Unbelievable! She still showed me no respect, even now that she worked out of my house. It was as if she and the Duchess were constantly ganging up on me, poking fun at me. Oh, they pretended it was all in jest, all out of love, but it was all very raw.
And what grounds did those two women have for making fun of me? Seriously! In spite of the fact that I was barred from the securities industry, I’d still managed to earn $4 million in the month of February; and, this month, although it was only March 3, I’d already made another million. So it wasn’t like I was some worthless sea slug, just lying in bed all day, doing nothing.
And what the f**k did the two of them do all day, huh? Janet spent most of her day doting on Chandler and bullshitting with Gwynne. Nadine spent her days riding those stupid horses of hers, then walking around the house dressed in an English riding ensemble of light-green stretch riding pants, a matching cotton turtleneck, and gleaming black leather riding boots that rose up to her kneecaps, as she sneezed and wheezed and coughed and itched from her intractable horse allergies. The only person in the house who truly understood me was Chandler, and maybe Gwynne, the latter of whom would serve me breakfast in bed and offer me Quaaludes for my back pain.
I said to Janet, “Well, I’m awake, so cool your f**king jets. I’m watching the Financial News Network.”
Janet, the skeptic: “Oh, really? Me too. What’s the guy saying?”
“Fuck off, Janet. What do you want?”
“Alan Chemtob is on the phone; he says it’s important.”
Alan Chemtob, aka Alan Chemical-tob, my trusted Quaalude dealer, was a real pain in the ass. It wasn’t enough just to pay this societal leech fifty dollars a Quaalude and let him be on his way. Oh, no! This particular drug dealer wanted to be liked or loved or whatever the f**k he wanted. I mean, this fat bastard gave new meaning to the phrase your friendly neighborhood drug dealer. Still, he did happen to have the best Ludes in town: a relative statement in the world of Quaalude addiction, with the best Ludes coming from those countries where legitimate drug companies were still allowed to manufacture them.
Yes, it was a sad story. As was the case with most recreational drugs, Quaaludes had once been legal in the United States but were subsequently outlawed after it came to the DEA’s attention that, for every legitimate prescription being written, there were a hundred bogus ones. Now there were only two countries in the world manufacturing Quaaludes: Spain and Germany. And, in both those countries, controls were so strict it was nearly impossible to get any meaningful supply…
…which was why my heart started beating like a rabbit’s when I picked up the phone and Alan Chemical-tob said, “You won’t believe this, Jordan, but I found a retired pharmacist who has twenty real Lemmons that’ve been locked inside his safe for almost fifteen years. I’ve been trying to pry them out of him for five years, but he’d never let them go. Now he’s gotta pay his kid’s college tuition, and he’s willing to sell them for five hundred dollars a pill, so I thought you might be inter—”
“Of course I’m interested!” I resisted the urge to call him a f**king moron for even questioning my interest. After all, there were Quaaludes and there were Quaaludes. Each company’s brand was of a slightly different formulation and, likewise, a slightly different potency. And no one had ever gotten it more right than the geniuses over at Lemmon Pharmaceuticals, which had marketed its Quaaludes under the brand name Lemmon 714. Lemmons, as they were called, were legendary, not only for their strength but for their ability to turn Catholic-school virgins into blow-job queens. In consequence, they had earned the nickname leg openers. “I’ll take ’em all!” I snapped. “In fact, tell the guy if he’ll sell me forty I’ll give him a thousand bucks a pill, and if he’ll sell me a hundred I’ll make it fifteen hundred. That’s a hundred fifty thousand dollars, Alan.” Good God, I thought, the Wolf was a rich man! Real Lemmons! Palladins were considered real Ludes, because they were manufactured by a legitimate drug company in Spain, so if Palladins were Reals, then Lemmons were…Real Reals!
Chemical-tob replied, “He only has twenty.”
“Shit! Are you sure? You’re not glomming any for yourself, are you?”
“Of course not,” replied Chemical-tob. “I consider you a friend, and I would never do that to a friend, right?”
What a f**king loser, I thought. But my response was slightly different: “I couldn’t agree with you more, my friend. When can you be here?”
“The guy won’t be home ’til four. I can be in Old Brookville around five.” Then he added, “But make sure you don’t eat.”
“Oh, please, Chemical-tob! I resent the fact that you’d even suggest that.” With that, I bid him safe passage. Then I hung up the phone and rolled around on my $12,000 white silk comforter like a kid who’d just won a shopping spree at FAO Schwarz.
I went to the bathroom and opened up the medicine cabinet and took out a box labeled Fleet Enema. I ripped it open, then pulled my boxers down to my kneecaps and rammed the bottle’s pointed nozzle up my a**hole with such ferocity that I felt it scrape the top of my sigmoid colon. Three minutes later, the entire contents of my lower digestive tract came pouring out. Deep down I was pretty sure that this wouldn’t increase the intensity of my high, but, nonetheless, it still seemed like a prudent measure. Then I stuck my finger down my throat and vomited up the last of this morning’s breakfast.