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 Quaa
lude 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.
“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 Wolf of Wall Street Page 45