Then we exchanged hugs—and promises to keep in touch. But I knew we never would. They had done their job, and it was time for them to move on to the next case. And it was time for me to get sober.
It was the next morning when a new type of insanity started: sober insanity. I woke up around nine a.m., feeling positively buoyant. No withdrawal symptoms, no hangover, and no compulsion to do drugs. I wasn’t in the actual rehab yet; that would come tomorrow. I was still in the detox unit. As I made my way to the cafeteria for breakfast, the only thing weighing on my mind was that I still hadn’t been able to get in touch with the Duchess, who seemed to have flown the coop. I had called the house in Old Brookville and spoken to Gwynne, who’d told me that Nadine had dropped out of sight. She had only called in once, to speak to the kids, and she hadn’t even mentioned my name. So I assumed my marriage was over.
After breakfast I was walking back to my room when a beefy-looking guy sporting a ferocious mullet and the look of the intensely paranoid waved me over. We met by the pay phones. “Hi,” I said, extending my head. “I’m Jordan. How’s it going?”
He shook my hand cautiously. “Shhh!” he said, darting his eyes around. “Follow me.”
I nodded and followed him back into the cafeteria, where we sat down at a square lunch table, out of earshot of other human beings. At this time of morning the cafeteria had only a handful of people in it, and most of them were staff, dressed in white lab coats. I had pegged my new friend as a complete loon. He was dressed like me, in jeans and a T-shirt.
“I’m Anthony,” he said, extending his hand for another shake. “Are you the guy who flew in on the private jet yesterday?”
Oh, Christ! I wanted to remain anonymous for once, not stick out like a sore thumb. “Yeah, that was me,” I said, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that quiet. I just want to blend in, okay?”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” he muttered, “but good luck trying to keep anything secret in this place.”
That sounded a bit odd, a bit Orwellian, in fact. “Oh, really?” I said. “Why’s that?”
He looked around again. “Because this place is like fucking Auschwitz,” he whispered. Then he winked at me.
At this point, I realized the guy wasn’t completely crazy, perhaps just a bit off. “Why is it like Auschwitz?” I asked, smiling.
He shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Because it’s fucking torture here, like a Nazi death camp. You see the staff over there?” He motioned with his head. “They’re the SS. Once the train drops you off in this place, you never leave. And there’s slave labor too.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I thought it was only a four-week program.”
He compressed his lips into a tight line and shook his head. “Maybe it is for you, but not for the rest of us. I assume you’re not a doctor, right?”
“No, I’m a banker—although I’m pretty much retired now.”
“Really?” he asked. “How are you retired? You look like a kid.”
I smiled. “I’m not a kid. But why’d you ask me if I’m a doctor?”
“Because almost everyone here is either a doctor or a nurse. I’m a chiropractor, myself. There are only a handful of people like you. Everyone else is here because they lost their license to practice medicine. So the staff has us by the balls. Unless they say you’re cured, you don’t get your license back. It’s a fucking nightmare. Some people have been here for over a year, and they’re still trying to get their license back!” He shook his head gravely. “It’s complete fucking insanity. Everyone’s ratting each other out, trying to earn brownie points with the staff. Really fucking sick. You have no idea. The patients walk around like robots, spewing out AA crap, pretending they’re rehabilitated.”
I nodded, fully getting the picture. A wacky arrangement like this, where the staff had that much power, was a recipe for abuse. Thank God I’d be above it. “What are the female patients like? Any hot ones?”
“Just one,” he answered. “A total knockout. A twelve on a scale from one to ten.”
That perked me up! “Oh, yeah, what’s she look like?”
“She’s a little blonde, about five-five, unbelievable body, perfect face, curly hair. She’s really beautiful. A real piece of ass.”
I nodded, making a mental note to keep away from her. She sounded like trouble. “And what’s the story with this guy Doug Talbot? The staff talks about him like he’s a fucking god. What’s he like?”
“What’s he like?” muttered my paranoid friend. “He’s like Adolf fucking Hitler. Or actually more like Dr. Josef Mengele. He’s a big fucking blowhard, and he’s got every last one of us by the balls—with the exception of you and maybe two other people. But you still gotta be careful, because they’ll try to use your family against you. They’ll get inside your wife’s head and tell her that unless you stay for six months you’re gonna relapse and light your kids on fire.”
Later that night, at about seven p.m., I called Old Brookville in search of the missing Duchess, but she was still MIA. I did get a chance to speak to Gwynne, though; I explained to her that I’d met with my therapist today and I’d been subdiagnosed (whatever that meant) as a compulsive spending addict, as well as a sex addict, both of which were basically true and both of which, I thought, were none of their fucking business. Either way, the therapist had informed me that I was being placed on money restriction and masturbation restriction—allowed to possess only enough money to use in the vending machines and allowed to masturbate only once every few days. I had assumed that the latter restriction was enforced on the honor system.
I asked Gwynne if she could see her way clear to stick a couple a thousand dollars inside some rolled-up socks and then ship them UPS. Hopefully, they would get past the gestapo, I told her, but, either way, it was the least she could do, especially after nine years of being one of my chief enablers. I chose not to share my masturbation restriction with Gwynne, although I had a sneaky suspicion it was going to be an even bigger problem than the money restriction. After all, I had been sober only four days now, and I was already getting spontaneous erections every time the wind blew.
On a much sadder note, before I hung up with Gwynne, Channy came to the phone and said, “Are you in Atlant-ica because you pushed Mommy down the stairs?”
I replied, “That’s one reason, thumbkin. Daddy was very sick and he didn’t know what he was doing.”
“If you’re still sick, can I kiss away your boo-boo again?”
“Hopefully,” I said sadly. “Maybe you can kiss away both our boo-boos, Mommy’s and Daddy’s.” I felt my eyes welling up with tears.
“I’ll try,” she said, with the utmost seriousness.
I bit my lip, fighting back outright crying. “I know you will, baby. I know you will.” Then I told her that I loved her and hung up the phone. Before I went to bed that night I got down on my knees and said a prayer—that Channy could kiss away our boo-boos. Then everything would be okay again.
I woke up the next morning ready to meet the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or was it Dr. Josef Mengele? Either way, the entire rehab—patients and staff alike—was getting together this morning in the auditorium for a regularly scheduled group meeting. It was a vast space with no partitions. A hundred twenty bridge chairs had been arranged in a large circle, and at the front of the room was a small platform with a lectern on it, where the speaker of the day would share his tale of drug-addicted woe.
I now sat as just another patient in a large circle of drug-addicted doctors and nurses (or Martians, from the Planet Talbot Mars, as I’d come to think of them). At this particular moment, all eyes were on today’s guest speaker—a sorry-looking woman in her early forties who had a rear end the size of Alaska and a ferocious case of acne, the sort you usually find on mental patients who’d spent the better part of their lives on psychotropic drugs.
“Hi,” she said in a timid voice. “My name is Susan, and I’m…uhhh…an alcoholic and a drug addict.�
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All the Martians in the room, including myself, responded dutifully, by saying, “Hi, Susan!” to which she blushed and then bowed her head in defeat—or was it victory? Either way, I had no doubt she was a world-class drizzler.
Now there was silence. Apparently, Susan wasn’t much of a public speaker, or perhaps her brain had been short-circuited from all the drugs she’d consumed. As Susan gathered her thoughts, I took a moment to check out Doug Talbot. He was sitting at the front of the room with five staff members on either side of him. He had short snow-white hair, and he looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. His skin was white and pasty, and he had the sort of square-jawed, grim expression that you would normally associate with a malevolent warden, the sort who looks a death-row inmate in the eye before he flips the switch on the electric chair and says, “I’m only doing this for your own good!”`
Finally, Susan plowed on. “I’ve…been…uhhh…sober…for almost eighteen months now, and I couldn’t have done it without the help and inspiration of…uhhh…Doug Talbot.” And she turned to Doug Talbot and bowed her head, at which point the whole room rose to their feet and started clapping—the whole room except for me. I was too shocked at the collective sight of more than a hundred ass-kissing Martians trying to get their licenses back.
Doug Talbot waved his hand at the Martians and then shook his head dismissively, as if to say, “Oh, please, you’re embarrassing me! I only do this job out of a love of humanity!” But I had no doubt that his happy hit squad of staff members were making careful notes as to who wasn’t clapping loudly enough.
As Susan continued to drizzle, I began craning my head around—looking for the curly-haired blonde with the gorgeous face and the killer body, and I found her sitting just across from me, on the opposite side of the circle. She was gorgeous, all right. She had soft, angelic features—not the chiseled model features of the Duchess, but they were beautiful nonetheless.
Suddenly the Martians jumped to their feet again, and Susan took an embarrassed bow. Then she lumbered over to Doug Talbot, bent over, and gave him a hug. But it wasn’t a warm hug; she kept her body far from his. It was the way Dr. Mengele’s few surviving patients must’ve hugged him, at atrocity reunions and such—a sort of extreme version of the Stockholm syndrome, where hostages come to revere their captors.
Now one of the staff began doing a bit of her own drizzling. When the Martians stood this time, I stood too. Everyone grabbed the hands of the people on either side of them, so I grabbed too.
In unison, we bowed our heads and chanted the AA mantra: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Now everyone began clapping, so I clapped too—except this time I was clapping with sincerity. After all, in spite of being a cynical bastard, there was no denying that AA was an amazing thing, a lifesaver to millions of people.
There was a long rectangular table at the back of the room with a few pots of coffee on it and some cookies and cakes. As I headed over, I heard an unfamiliar voice yelling: “Jordan! Jordan Belfort!”
I turned around and—Holy Christ!—it was Doug Talbot. He was walking toward me, wearing an enormous smile on his pasty face. He was tall, about six-one, although he didn’t look to be in particularly good shape. He wore an expensive-looking blue sport jacket and gray tweed slacks. He was waving me toward him.
At that very instant, I could feel a hundred five sets of eyes pretending not to look at me—no, it was actually a hundred fifteen sets of eyes, because the staff was pretending too.
He extended his hand. “So we finally meet,” he said, nodding his head knowingly. “It’s a pleasure. Welcome to Talbot Marsh. I feel like you and I are kindred spirits. Brad told me all about you. I can’t wait to hear the stories. I got a few of my own—nothing as good as yours, I’m sure.”
I smiled and shook my new friend’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you too,” I replied, fighting back the urge to use an ironic tone.
He put his arm on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said warmly, “let’s go to my office for a while. I’ll drop you off later this afternoon. You’re being moved up the hill to one of the condos. I’ll drive you there.”
And just like that, I knew this rehab was in serious trouble. I had the owner—the unreachable, the one and only Doug Talbot—as my new best buddy, and every patient and staff member knew it as well. The Wolf was ready to bare his fangs—even in rehab.
Doug Talbot turned out to be a decent-enough guy, and we spent a good hour exchanging war stories. In fact, as I was soon to find out, virtually all recovering drug addicts share a morbid desire to play a game of “Can You Top the Insanity of My Addiction.” Obviously, it didn’t take long for Doug to realize that he was seriously outmatched, and by the time I’d gotten to the part where I’d cut open my furniture with a butcher knife he’d heard enough.
So he changed the subject and began explaining how he was in the midst of taking his company public. Then he handed me some documents, to illustrate what a terrific deal he was getting. I studied them dutifully, although I found it difficult to focus. Apparently something had clicked off in my brain insofar as Wall Street was concerned too, and I failed to get that usual rush as I looked through his papers.
Then we climbed into his black Mercedes and he drove me to my condo, which was just down the road from the rehab. It wasn’t actually part of Talbot Marsh, but Doug had a deal worked out with the management company that ran the complex, and about a third of the fifty semiattached units were occupied by Talbot’s patients. Another profit center, I figured.
As I was getting out of his Mercedes, Doug said, “If there’s anything I can do for you, or if any of the staff or the patients aren’t treating you right, just let me know and I’ll take care of it.”
I thanked him, figuring there was a ninety-nine percent chance I would be speaking to him about that very issue before the four weeks were out. Then I headed into the lion’s den.
There were six separate apartments in each town house, and my particular unit was on the second floor. I walked up a short flight of stairs and found the front door to my unit wide open. My two roommates were inside, sitting at a circular dining-room table made of some very cheap-looking bleached wood. They were writing furiously in spiral notebooks.
“Hi, I’m Jordan,” I said. “Nice to meet you guys.”
Before they even introduced themselves, one of them, a tall, blond man in his early forties, said, “What did Doug Talbot want?”
Then the other one, who was actually very good-looking, added, “Yeah, how do you know Doug Talbot?”
I smiled at them and said, “Yeah, well, it’s nice to meet you guys too.” Then I walked past them without saying another word, went into the bedroom, and closed the door. There were three beds inside, one of which was unmade. I threw my suitcase next to it and sat down on the mattress. On the other side of the room was a cheap TV on a cheap wooden stand. I flicked it on and turned on the news.
A minute later my roommates were on me. The blond one said, “Watching TV during the day is frowned upon.”
“It’s feeding your disease,” said the good-looking one. “It’s not considered right thinking.”
Right thinking? Holy Christ! If they only knew how demented my mind was! “Well, I appreciate your concern over my disease,” I snapped, “but I haven’t watched TV in almost a week, so if you don’t mind, why don’t you just keep out of my fucking hair and worry about your own disease? If I want to engage in wrong thinking, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”
“What kind of doctor are you, anyway?” asked the blond one accusingly.
“I’m not a doctor, and what’s the story with that phone over there?” I motioned to a tan Trimline phone sitting on a wooden desk. Above it was a small rectangular window in desperate need of a cleaning. “Are we allowed to use it or would that be considered wrong thinking too?”
“No, you can use it,” said the good-looking one, “but it’s for collect calls only.”
I nodded. “What kind of doctor are you?”
“I used to be an ophthalmologist, but I lost my license.”
“And how about you?” I asked the blond one, who was definitely a member of the Hitler youth. “Did you lose your license too?”
He nodded. “I’m a dentist, and I deserved to lose my license.” His tone was entirely robotic. “I’m suffering from a terrible disease and I need to be cured. Thanks to the staff at Talbot Marsh I’ve made great strides in my recovery. Once they tell me I’m cured, I’ll try to get my license back.”
I shook my head as if I’d just heard something that defied logic, then I picked up the phone and started dialing Old Brookville.
The dentist said, “Talking for more than five minutes is frowned upon. It’s not good for your recovery.”
The eye doctor added, “The staff will sanction you for it.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “How the fuck are they gonna find out?”
They both raised their eyebrows and shrugged innocently.
I smiled a dead smile at them. “Well, excuse me, because I got a couple a phone calls to make. I should be off in about an hour.”
The blond one nodded, looking at his watch. Then the two of them headed back into the dining room and plunged back into their recoveries.
A moment later, Gwynne answered the phone. We exchanged warm greetings, then she whispered, “I sent you down a thousand dollars in yer socks. Did ya get it yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Maybe it’ll come tomorrow. More importantly, Gwynne, I don’t want to put you on the spot anymore with Nadine. I know she’s home and that she won’t come to the phone, and that’s okay. Don’t even tell her I called. Just answer the phone each morning and put the kids on for me. I’ll call around eight, okay?”
“Okay,” said Gwynne. “I hope you and Mrs. Belfort patch things up. It’s been very quiet ’round here. And very sad.”
The Wolf of Wall Street Page 54