And then there was Mommy, who was dressed to kill or, in my case, to tease. Mommy wore a salmon-pink sleeveless minidress with a plunging neckline. Her cleavage was extraordinary! Her terrific mane of golden blond hair shimmered in the morning sunlight. The dress was hiked up above her hips, and I could see all the way up to the top of her waist. There was something missing from this picture…but what was it? I couldn’t seem to place it, so I dismissed the thought and kept right on staring. Her knees were slightly bent, and I let my eyes run down the full length of her legs. Her shoes matched her dress perfectly, to the very shade and hue. They were Manolo Blahnik, probably cost a thousand bucks, but worth every penny, if you want to know what I was thinking at that particular moment.
So many thoughts were roaring through my head I couldn’t keep track of them. I wanted my wife more than ever…yet my daughter was there too…but she was so little that it didn’t really matter! And what about the Duchess? Had she already forgiven me? I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find the words. I loved my wife…I loved my life…I loved my daughter. I didn’t want to lose them. So I made the decision right there, in that very instant: I was done. Yes! No more hookers! No more midnight helicopter rides! No more drugs—or at least not as much of them.
I was about to speak, to throw myself on the mercy of the court, but I never got the chance. Chandler spoke first. My daughter, the baby genius! She smiled from ear to ear and in a little tiny voice she said, “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da…Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.”
“Good morning, Daddy!” said Mommy, in a little baby’s voice. So sweet! So incredibly sexy! “Aren’t you going to give me a good-morning kiss, Daddy? I really, really want one!”
Whuhh? Could it really be this easy? I crossed my fingers and went for broke. “Do I get to kiss both of you, Mommy and Daughter?” I pursed my lips and gave Mommy my best puppy-dog face. Then I said a prayer to the Almighty.
“Ohhh, no!” said Mommy, bursting Daddy’s bubble. “Daddy doesn’t get to kiss Mommy for a very, very long time. But his daughter’s dying for a kiss. Isn’t that right, Channy?”
Good Lord—she doesn’t fight fair, my wife!
Mommy soldiered on in her baby’s voice: “Here, Channy, now go crawl over to your daddy right now. Now, Daddy, you bend down so Channy can crawl right into your arms. Okay, Daddy?”
I took a step forward—
“That’s far enough,” warned Mommy, raising her right hand in the air. “Now bend down just like Mommy said.”
I did as I was told. After all, who was I to argue with the luscious Duchess?
Mommy put Chandler down on all fours, ever so gently, and gave her a loving shove forward. Chandler started crawling toward me at a snail’s pace, repeating: “Dadadadadadada…Dadadadadadada.”
Ahhhh, such happiness! Such joie de vivre! Was I the luckiest man alive or what? “Come here,” I said to Chandler. “Come to Daddy, sweetie.” I looked up at Mommy, slowly lowering my gaze…and…“Holy shit! Nadine, what the…what the hell is wrong with you! Are you out of—”
“What’s wrong, Dada? I hope you don’t see anything you want, because you can’t have it anymore,” said Mommy, the aspiring cock-teaser, with her glorious legs spread wide open and her skirt hiked up above her hips and her panties nowhere in sight. Her pretty pink vulva was staring me right in the eye and was glistening with desire. All Mommy had was a tiny patch of soft blond peach fuzz, just above her mons pubis, and that was it.
I did the only thing any rational husband could do: I groveled like the dog that I was. “Please, honey, you know how sorry I am about last night. I swear to God I’ll never—”
“Oh, save it until next year,” said Mommy, with a flap of the back of her hand in the air. “Mommy knows how much you like to swear to God about this and that and everything else when you’re about to burst. But don’t waste your time, Daddy, because Mommy’s only getting started with you. From now on it’s going to be nothing but short, short skirts around the house! That’s right, Dada! Nothing but short, short skirts, no underwear, and this…” said the luscious Mommy with great pride, as she put her palms down behind her and locked out her elbows and leaned all the way back. Then, using the very tips of her Manolo Blahnik high heels in a way the shoe designers had never imagined, she turned them into erotic pivots and let those luscious legs of hers swing open and closed and open and closed until on the third pivot she let them fall so wide open that her knees almost hit the glorious pink carpet. She said, “What’s wrong, Dada? You don’t look so well.”
Well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen it before. In fact this wasn’t the first time Mommy had pulled a fast one on me. There were elevators, tennis courts, public parking lots, even the White House. There was no venue completely safe from Mommy. It was just the fucking shock of it all! I felt like a boxer who never saw the punch coming and ended up getting knocked out cold—permanently!
Making matters worse, Chandler had stalled in mid-crawl and decided to take some time to inspect the glorious pink carpet. She was pulling on the fibers as if she’d discovered something truly wonderful, completely oblivious to what was transpiring around her.
I tried to apologize once more, but Mommy’s response to that was to stick her right index finger inside her mouth and start to suck. It was then that I lost the power of speech. She seemed to know she’d just delivered the knockout punch, so she slowly pulled her finger out of her mouth and then poured on the baby voice even more: “Ohhh, poor, poor Dada. He loves to say how wrong he is when he’s ready to come in his own pants, isn’t that right, Dada?”
I stared in disbelief and wondered if any other married couples did things like this.
“Well, Daddy, it’s too late for apologies now.” She pursed her luscious lips and nodded slowly, the way a person does when they feel like they’ve just let you in on some great truth. “And it’s such a shame that Daddy likes to fly around town in his helicopter at all hours of the night after doing God only knows what, because Mommy loves Daddy so, so much and there’s nothing she wants to do more right now than to make love to Daddy all day long! And what Mommy’s really in the mood for is for Daddy to kiss her in his favorite spot, right where he’s looking right now.”
Now Mommy pursed her lips again and pretended to pout. “But, ohhh…poor, poor Daddy! There’s no chance of that happening now, even if Daddy was the very last man on planet Earth. In fact, Mommy has decided to be like the United Nations and institute one of her famous sex embargoes. Daddy doesn’t get to make love to Mommy until New Year’s Eve”—Whuh? Why, the impudence of it!—“and that’s only if he’s a very good boy between now and then. If Daddy makes even one mistake it’s going to be Groundhog’s Day!” What the fuck? Mommy’s lost it!
I was just about to sink to unprecedented levels of groveling when all at once something hit me. Oh, Christ! Should I tell her? Fuck it, the show’s too good!
Mommy in baby voice: “And now that I think of it, Daddy, I think it’s time for Mommy to break out her silk thigh-highs and start wearing them around the house, and we all know how much Daddy loves Mommy’s silk thigh-highs, don’t we, Daddy!”
I nodded eagerly.
Mommy plowed on: “Oh, yes, we do! And Mommy’s so sick and tired of wearing underwear…uhhh! In fact, she’s decided to throw them all away! So take a good look, Dada”—time to stop her? Uhhhn, not yet!—“because you’re going to be seeing an awful lot of it around the house for a while! But, of course, under the rules of the embargo, touching will be strictly prohibited. And there’ll be no jerking off either, Daddy. Until Mommy gives her permission it will be hands at your sides. Is that understood, Daddy?”
With renewed confidence: “But what about you, Mommy? What are you going to do?”
“Oh, Mommy knows how to please herself just fine. Uhhhn…uhhhn…uhhhn,” groaned the fashion model. “In fact, just the thought of it is getting Mommy all excited! Don’t you just hate helicopters, Daddy?”
I went for the j
ugular: “I don’t know, Mommy, I think you’re all talk and no action. Please yourself? I don’t believe you.”
Mommy compressed those luscious lips of hers and slowly shook her head, then she said, “Well, I guess it’s time for Daddy to be taught his first lesson”—ahhh, this was getting good! And Chandler, still inspecting the carpet, no comprehension—“so Mommy wants Daddy to keep his eye on Mommy’s hand and watch very closely or else Groundhog’s Day will become Easter Sunday faster than Daddy can say ‘blue balls!’ Do you understand who’s in charge here, Daddy?”
I played along, getting ready to drop the bomb. “Yes, Mommy, but what are you going to do with your hand?”
“Shhh!” said Mommy, and just like that she stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked and sucked until it glistened with saliva in the morning sunlight, and then, slowly, gracefully, lubriciously headed south…down her plunging neckline…past her cleavage…past her belly button…and all the way down to her—
“Stop right there!” I said, holding up my right hand. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you!”
This shocked Mommy. And infuriated her too! Apparently she had been looking forward to this magic moment as much as I had. But it had gone far enough. It was time to drop the bomb on her. But before I had the chance, Mommy began scolding me: “That’s it! Now you’ve done it! They’ll be no kissing or lovemaking until July Fourth!”
“But, Mommy, what about Rocco and Rocco?”
Mommy froze in horror. “Huh?”
I leaned over and picked Chandler up off the glorious pink carpet, held her close to my chest, and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. Then, with her safely out of harm’s way, I said, “Daddy wants to tell Mommy a story, and if after he’s done Mommy is glad Daddy stopped her before she did what she was about to do, then she has to forgive him for everything he’s done, okay?”
No reaction. “Okay,” I said, “this is the story about a little pink bedroom in Old Brookville, Long Island. Does Mommy want to hear about it?”
Mommy nodded, a look of complete confusion on her perfect little model face.
“Does Mommy promise to keep her legs spread wide, wide open while Daddy tells the story?”
She nodded slowly, dreamily.
“Good, because it’s Daddy’s favorite view in the whole world, and it inspires him to tell the story just right! Okay—now, there was a little pink bedroom on the second floor of a great stone mansion on a perfect piece of property in the very best part of Long Island, and the people who lived there had lots and lots of money. But—and this is very important to the story, Mommy—of all the possessions they had, and of everything they owned, there was one thing that was much more valuable than all the rest combined, and that was their little baby daughter.
“Now, the daddy in the story had lots and lots of people working for him, and most of them were very, very young and barely housebroken, so Mommy and Daddy decided to put up big iron gates around the entire property so all these young people wouldn’t be able to stop by uninvited anymore. But, believe it or not, Mommy, they still tried stopping by!” I paused and studied Mommy’s face, which was slowly losing its color. Then I said, “Anyway, after a while, Mommy and Daddy got so sick and tired of being bothered that they went out and hired two full-time bodyguards. Now, as funny as it may seem, Mommy, they both happened to be named Rocco!” I paused again and studied Mommy’s pretty face. Now she was as pale as a ghost.
I continued: “Anyway, Rocco and Rocco spent their time in a wonderful little guardhouse that was in that very backyard in the story. And since the mommy in the story always liked to do things just right, she went out and researched the very best in surveillance equipment, and she ended up buying the latest and greatest TV cameras that give the clearest and brightest and most detailed picture that money can buy. And the best part, Mommy, is that it’s all in living color! Yeah!”
Mommy’s legs were still spread wide open, in all their glory, when I said, “Anyway, about two months ago Mommy and Daddy were lying in bed on a rainy Sunday morning when she told him about an article she’d read about how some baby nurses and housekeepers mistreated the babies they looked after. This shocked Daddy terribly, so he suggested to Mommy that they have two hidden cameras and a voice-activated microphone installed in that very pink bedroom that I mentioned in the beginning of the story!
“And one of those hidden cameras is right over Daddy’s shoulder”—I pointed to a tiny pinhole high up on the wall—“and as luck would have it, Mommy, it happens to be focused right on the very best part of your glorious anatomy”—and there go the legs, snapped shut, like a bank vault—“and since we love Channy so, so much, this is the room that they monitor on the big thirty-two-inch TV screen in the center of the guardhouse!
“So smile, Mommy! You’re on Candid Camera!”
Mommy didn’t move—for about an eighth of a second. Then, as if someone had just shot ten thousand volts of electricity through the glorious pink carpet, Mommy jumped up and screamed: “Holy shit! Holy fucking shit! Oh, my God! I can’t fucking believe it! Oh-my-fuc-king-God!” She ran to the window and looked out at the guardhouse…then she spun around and ran back, and…BOOM!…down went Mommy, as one of the erotic pivots on her go-to-hell pumps collapsed.
But Mommy was only down for a second. She quickly rolled onto all fours with the speed and dexterity of a world-class wrestler and then popped right back up. To my complete and utter shock, she opened the door, ran out, and slammed it behind her as she left, entirely unconcerned with what the bizarre menagerie of help might think of all the ruckus. And then she was gone.
“Well,” I said to Channy, “the real Martha Stewart would definitely not have approved of a slammed door, now, would she, sweetie!” Then I said a silent prayer to the Almighty, asking him—no begging him, in fact—to never allow Channy to marry a guy like me, much less date one. I wasn’t exactly Husband of the Year material, after all. Then I carried her downstairs and handed her to Marcie, the jabbering Jamaican baby nurse, and made a quick beeline for the guardhouse, not wanting the videotape of Mommy to end up in Hollywood as a pilot for Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional.
CHAPTER 4
WASP HEAVEN
Like a dog in heat, I searched all twenty-four rooms of the mansion for Mommy. In fact, I searched every nook and cranny of all six acres of the estate until, finally, reluctantly, and with great sadness, I called off my search. It was almost nine o’clock, and I had to get to work. Just where my dear aspiring cock-teaser was hiding, I couldn’t figure out. So I gave up trying to get laid.
We pulled away from my Old Brookville estate just after nine a.m. I was sitting in the backseat of my midnight-blue Lincoln limousine, with my white-cracker-hating chauffeur, George Campbell, behind the wheel. In the four years George had worked for me, he’d said only a dozen words. On some mornings I found his self-imposed vow of silence rather annoying, but at this particular moment it was just fine. In fact, after my recent run-in with the luscious Duchess, a little bit of peace and quiet would be sublime.
Still, as part of my morning ritual I would always greet George in overly warm tones and try to get some sort of response out of him. Anything. So I figured I’d take another crack at it, just for shits and giggles.
I said, “Hey, Georgie! How ya doing today?”
George turned his head approximately four and a half degrees to the right, so I could barely see the whites of his blazing white eyeballs, and then he nodded, just once.
Never fails, God damn it! The guy’s a fucking mute!
Actually, that wasn’t true: About six months earlier George had asked me if I could loan him (which, of course, meant give him) $5,000 to get himself a new set of choppers (as he referred to them). This I gladly did, but not until I tortured him for a good fifteen minutes, making him tell me everything—how white they’d be, how many there’d be, how long they’d last, and what was wrong with his teeth right now. By the time George was done, there were beads of sweat run
ning down his charcoal-black forehead, and I was sorry I’d ever asked him in the first place.
Today, as on every day, George wore a navy-blue suit and grim expression, the grimmest expression his inflated $60,000-a-year salary could reasonably allow for. I had no doubt that George hated me or at least resented me, in the same way he hated and resented all white crackers. The only exception to that was my wife, the aspiring people-pleaser, whom George adored.
The limo was one of those superstretch jobs, with a fully stocked bar, a TV and VHS, a fridge, a terrific sound system, and a rear seat that turned into a queen-size bed with the flip of a switch. The bed was an added touch, to ease my back pain, but it had the unintended effect of turning my limousine into a $96,000 brothel on wheels. Go figure. My destination this morning was none other than Lake Success, Long Island, the once quiet middle-class hamlet where Stratton Oakmont was located.
Nowadays, the town was like Tombstone, Arizona—before the Earps came to town. All these quaint little cottage industries had sprung up to service the needs, wants, and desires of the twisted young stockbrokers in my employ. There were brothels, illegal gambling parlors, after-hours clubs, and all that sort of fun stuff. There was even a little prostitution ring turning tricks in the lower level of the parking garage, at two hundred dollars a pop.
In the early years, the local merchants were up in arms over the apparent gracelessness of my merry band of stockbrokers, many of whom seemed to have been raised in the wild. But it wasn’t long before these same merchants realized that the Stratton brokers didn’t check price tags on anything. So the merchants jacked up their prices, and everyone lived in peace, just like in the Wild West.
Now the limo was heading west, down Chicken Valley Road, one of the finest roads in the Gold Coast. I cracked my window to let in a little fresh air. I stared out at the lush fairways of the Brookville Country Club, where I’d made my drug-assisted approach earlier this morning. The country club was remarkably close to my estate—so near, in fact, that I could hit a golf ball from my front lawn to the middle of the seventh fairway with a well-struck seven iron. But, of course, I never bothered applying for membership, what with my status as a lowly Jew, who had the utter gall to invade WASP heaven.
The Wolf of Wall Street Page 5