Yet here I stood, still retaining all my faculties. It was a beautiful, clear evening with a tiny, warm breeze. At this time of the day, this close to summer, the sun was still high enough in the sky that I was able to catch sight of the Gulfstream long before its wheels touched the runway. It seemed almost impossible that inside that cabin was my beautiful wife, who I’d put through seven years of drug-addicted hell. I wondered what she was wearing and what she was thinking. Was she as nervous as I was? Was she really as beautiful as I remembered? Would she still smell as glorious? Did she still really love me? Could things ever be the same?
I found out the moment the cabin door opened and the luscious Duchess emerged with her fabulous mane of shimmering blond hair. She looked gorgeous. She took a single step forward, and then, in typical Duchess fashion, she struck a pose, with her head cocked to one side and her arms folded beneath her breasts and one long bare leg slewed out to the side, in a statement of defiance. Then she just stared at me. She had on a tiny pink sundress. It was sleeveless and a good six inches above her knee. Still holding her pose, she compressed those luscious lips of hers and started shaking her little blond head back and forth, as if to say, “I can’t believe this is the man I love!” I took a step forward and threw my palms up in the air and shrugged.
And we just stood there, staring at each other for a good ten seconds, until all at once she gave up her pose and blew me a world-class double kiss. Then she spread her arms out, did a little pirouette to announce her arrival to the city of Atlanta, and came running down the stairs with a great smile on her face. I started running toward her, and we met in the middle of the asphalt tarmac. She threw her arms around my neck and took a tiny jump and wrapped her legs around my waist. Then she kissed me.
And we held that kiss for what seemed like an eternity as we breathed in each other’s scent. I spun around in a 360, still kissing her, until we both started giggling. I pulled my lips away and buried my nose into her cleavage and sniffed at her, like a puppy dog. She giggled uncontrollably. She smelled so good it seemed almost impossible.
I pulled my head back a few inches and stared into those vivid blue eyes of hers. I said, in a dead-serious tone: “If I don’t make love to you right this second, I’m gonna come right here on the tarmac.”
The Duchess’s response was to revert to her baby voice: “Aw, my poor little boy!” Little? Unbelievable! “You’re so horny you’re about to burst, aren’t you?”
I nodded eagerly.
The Duchess went on: “And look how young and handsome you look now that you’ve gained a few pounds and your skin’s not green anymore. Too bad I have to teach you a lesson this weekend.” She shrugged. “There’ll be no lovemaking until July Fourth.”
Huh? “What are you talking about?”
In a very knowing tone: “You heard me, love-bug. You’ve been a very bad boy, so now you’re gonna have to pay the price. First you have to prove yourself to me before I let you stick it in again. For now you only get to kiss me.”
I giggled. “Get out of here, you nut!” I grabbed her hand and started pulling her toward the limousine. “I can’t wait until July Fourth! I need you now—right this second! I wanna make love in the back of the limousine.”
“Nope, nope, nope,” she said, shaking her head back and forth in an exaggerated way. “It’s only kisses this weekend. Let’s see how you behave over the next two days, and then maybe on Sunday I’ll think about going further.”
The limo driver was a short, sixtyish, white cracker named Bob. He wore a formal driver’s cap, and he was standing by the rear door, waiting for us. I said, “This is my wife, Bob. She’s a duchess, so treat her accordingly. I bet you don’t get that much royalty down here, now, do you?”
“Oh, no,” said a very serious Bob. “Not much of it at all.”
I compressed my lips and nodded gravely. “I thought as much. Anyway, don’t be intimidated by her. She’s actually very down to earth, right, honey?”
“Yeah, very down to earth. Now shut the fuck up and get in the goddamn limo,” spat the Duchess.
Bob froze in horror, obviously taken aback at how someone with as royal a bloodline as the Duchess of Bay Ridge could use such language.
I said to Bob, “Don’t mind her; she just doesn’t want to seem too uppity. She’s saves her stuffy side for when she’s back in England, with the other royals.” I winked. “Anyway, all kidding aside, Bob, being married to her makes me a duke, so what I’m thinking is that since you’re gonna be our driver for the whole weekend, you might as well just address us as the Duke and the Duchess—just to clear up any confusion.”
Bob bowed formally. “Of course, Duke.”
“Very well,” I replied, pushing the Duchess into the backseat by her fabulous royal bottom. I climbed in behind her. Bob slammed the door and then headed to the plane to collect the Duchess’s royal baggage.
I immediately yanked up her dress and saw that she wasn’t wearing any panties. I pounced. “I love you so much, Nae. So, so much!” I pushed her down on the rear seat, lengthwise, and pressed my erection against her. She moaned deliciously, wriggling her pelvis against mine, giving me the benefit of a little friction. I kissed her and kissed her until after a few minutes she extended her arms and pushed me off.
Through giggles: “Stop, you silly boy! Bob’s coming back. You’ll have to wait until we get back to the hotel.” She looked down and saw my erection through my jeans. “Aw, my poor little baby”—little? Why always little?—“is ready to burst!” She pursed her lips. “Here, let me rub it for you.” She reached down with the palm of her hand and started rubbing the outline of my erection.
I responded by hitting the divider button on the overhead console. As the partition slid shut, I muttered, “I can’t wait for the hotel! I’m making love to you right here, Bob or no Bob!”
“Fine!” said a frisky Duchess. “But it’s only a sympathy fuck, so it doesn’t count. I’m still not making love to you until you prove to me that you’ve become a good boy. Understood?”
I nodded, giving her puppy-dog eyes, and we started ripping off each other’s clothes. By the time Bob made it back to the limo, I was already deep inside the Duchess, and the two of us were moaning wildly. I put a forefinger to my lips and said, “Shhhhhh!”
She nodded, and I reached up and pressed the intercom button. “Bob, my good man, are you there?”
“Yes, Duke.”
“Splendid. The Duchess and I have some very urgent business to discuss, so please don’t disturb us until we get to the Hyatt.”
I winked at the Duchess and motioned to the intercom button with my eyebrows. “Off or on?” I whispered.
The Duchess looked up, and started chewing on the inside of her mouth. Then she shrugged. “You might as well leave it on.”
That’s my girl! I raised my voice and said, “Enjoy the royal show, Bob!” And with that, the sober Duke of Bayside, Queens, began making love to his wife, the luscious Duchess of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, as if there were no tomorrow.
CHAPTER 39
SIX WAYS TO KILL AN INTERVENTIONIST
My dog needs an operation…my car broke down…my boss is an asshole…my wife’s a bigger asshole…traffic jams drive me crazy…life’s not fair…and so forth and so on…
Yes, indeed, it was drizzling something awful in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in Southampton, Long Island. I’d been home for a week now, and as part of my recovery I’d committed to doing a Ninety-in-Ninety, which is to say: I had set a goal to attend ninety AA meetings in ninety days. And with a very nervous Duchess watching me like a hawk, I had no choice but to do it.
I quickly realized it was going to be a very long ninety days.
The moment I stepped into my first meeting, someone asked me if I’d like to be the guest speaker, to which I’d replied, “Speak in front of the group? Sure, why not!” What could be better than that? I figured.
The problems started quickly. I was offered a seat behind a rec
tangular table at the front of the room. The meeting’s chairperson, a kind-looking man in his early fifties, sat down beside me and made a few brief announcements. Then he motioned for me to begin.
I nodded and said, in a loud, forthright voice, “Hi, my name is Jordan, and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.”
The room of thirty or so ex-drunks responded in unison: “Hi, Jordan; welcome.”
I smiled and nodded. With great confidence, I said, “I’ve been sober for thirty-seven days now and—”
I was immediately cut off. “Excuse me,” said an ex-drunk with gray hair and spidery veins on his nose. “You need to be sober ninety days to speak at this meeting.”
Why, the insolence of the old bastard! I was absolutely devastated. I felt like I’d gotten on the school bus without remembering to put my clothes on. I just sat there, in this terribly uncomfortable wooden chair, staring at the old drunk and waiting for someone to drag me off with a hook.
“No, no. Let’s not be too tough,” said the chairperson. “Since he’s already up here, why don’t we just let him speak? It’ll be a breath of fresh air to hear a newcomer.”
Impudent mumbles came bubbling up from the crowd, along with a series of insolent shrugs and contemptuous head-shakes. They looked angry. And vicious. The chairperson put his arm on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes, as if to say, “It’s okay. You can go on.”
I nodded my head nervously. “Okay,” I said to the angry ex-drunks. “I’ve been sober for thirty-seven days now and—”
I was cut off again, except this time by thunderous applause. Ahhh, how wonderful! The Wolf was receiving his first ovation, and he hadn’t even gotten going yet! Wait ’til they hear my story! I’ll bring the house down!
Slowly, the applause died down, and with renewed confidence I plowed on: “Thanks, everybody. I really appreciate the vote of confidence. My drug of choice was Quaaludes, but I did a lot of cocaine too. In fact—”
I was cut off again. “Excuse me,” said my nemesis with the spider veins, “this is an AA meeting, not an NA meeting. You can’t talk about drugs here, only alcohol.”
I looked around the room, and all heads were nodding in agreement. Oh, shit! That seemed like a dated policy. This was the nineties now. Why would someone choose to be an alcoholic yet shun drugs? It made no sense.
I was about to jump out of my chair and run for the hills, when I heard a powerful female voice yell, “How dare you, Bill! How dare you try to drive away this young boy who’s fighting for his life! You’re despicable! We’re all addicts here. Now, why don’t you just shut up and mind your own business and let the boy speak?”
The boy? Had I just been called a boy? I was almost thirty-five now, for Chrissake! I looked over at the voice, and it was coming from a very old lady wearing granny glasses. She winked at me. So I winked back.
The old drunk sputtered at Grandma, “Rules are rules, you old hag!”
I shook my head in disbelief. Why did the insanity follow me wherever I went? I hadn’t done anything wrong here, had I? I just wanted to stay sober. Yet, once again, I was at the center of an uproar. “Whatever,” I said to the chairperson. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
At the end of the day, they let me speak, although I left the meeting wanting to wring the old bastard’s neck. From there, things continued to spiral downward when I went to an NA—Narcotics Anonymous—meeting. There were only four other people in the room; three of them were visibly stoned, and the fourth had even fewer days sober than me.
I wanted to say something to the Duchess, to tell her that this whole AA thing wasn’t for me, but I knew she’d be devastated. Our relationship was growing stronger by the day. There was no more fighting or cursing or hitting or stabbing or slapping or water-throwing—nothing. We were just two normal individuals, living a normal life with Chandler and Carter and twenty-two in domestic help. We had decided to stay out in Southampton for the summer. Better to keep me isolated from the madness, we figured, at least until my sobriety took hold. The Duchess had issued warnings to all my old friends: They were no longer welcome in our house unless they were sober. Alan Chemical-tob received a personal warning from Bo, and I never heard from him again.
And my business? Well, without Quaaludes and cocaine, I no longer had the stomach for it, or at least not yet. As a sober man, problems like Steve Madden Shoes seemed easy to deal with. I’d had my lawyers file a lawsuit, while I was still in rehab, and the escrow agreement was now public. So far, I hadn’t gotten myself arrested over it, and I suspected I never would. After all, on the face of it, the agreement wasn’t illegal; it was more an issue of Steve having not disclosed it to the public—which made it his liability more than mine. Besides, Agent Coleman had faded off into the sunset long ago, hopefully never to be heard from again. Eventually, I would have to settle with the Cobbler. I had already resigned myself to that fact, and I no longer gave a shit. Even in my most depraved emotional state—just before I’d entered rehab—it wasn’t the money that had been driving me crazy but the idea of the Cobbler trying to snatch my stock and keep it for himself. And that was no longer a possibility. As part of a settlement he would be forced to sell my stock to pay me off, and that would be that. I would let my lawyers deal with it.
I had been home for a little over a week when I came home one evening from an AA meeting and found the Duchess sitting in the TV room—the very room where I had lost my twenty-gram rock six weeks ago, which the Duchess had now admitted to having flushed down the toilet.
With a great smile on my face, I said, “Hey, sweetie! What’s—”
The Duchess looked up, and I froze in horror. She was visibly shaken. Tears streamed down her face, and her nose was running. With a sinking heart, I said, “Jesus, baby! What’s wrong? What happened?” I hugged her gently.
Her body was trembling in my arms when she pointed to the TV screen and said through tears, “It’s Scott Schneiderman. He killed a police officer a few hours ago. He was trying to rob his father for coke money and he shot a policeman.” She broke down hysterically.
I felt tears streaming down my cheeks as I said, “Jesus, Nae, he was here just a month ago. I…I don’t…” I searched for something to say but quickly realized that no words could describe the magnitude of this tragedy.
So I said nothing.
A week later, on a Friday evening, the seven-thirty meeting at Our Lady of Poland Church had just begun. It was Memorial Day weekend, and I was expecting the usual sixty minutes of torture. Then, to my shock, the opening words from the meeting’s chairperson came in the form of a directive—stating that there would be no drug-drizzling allowed, not under his watch. He was creating a Drizzle-Free Zone, he explained, because the purpose of AA was to create hope and faith, not to complain about the length of the checkout line at Grand Union. Then he held up an egg timer for public inspection, and he said, “There’s nothing that you can’t say in less than two and a half minutes that I have any interest in hearing. So keep it short and sweet.” He nodded once.
I was sitting toward the back, next to a middle-aged woman who looked reasonably well kept, for an ex-drunk. She had reddish hair and a ruddy complexion. I leaned over to her and whispered, “Who is that guy?”
“That’s George. He’s sort of the unofficial leader here.”
“Really?” I said. “Of this meeting?”
“No, no,” she whispered, in a tone implying that I was seriously out of the loop, “not just here, all over the Hamptons.” She looked around conspiratorially, as if she were about to pass on a piece of top-secret information. Then, sotto voce, she said, “He owns Seafield, the drug rehab. You’ve never seen him on TV?”
I shook my head no. “I don’t watch much TV, although he does look somewhat familiar. He—ohmygod!” I was speechless. It was Fred Flintstone, the man with the enormous head who’d popped on my TV screen at three in the morning, inspiring me to throw my Remington sculpture at his face!
After the meeting ended, I w
aited until the crowd died down and then went up to George and said, “Hi, my name is Jordan. I just wanted you to know that I really enjoyed the meeting. It was terrific.”
He extended his hand, which was the size of a catcher’s mitt. I shook it dutifully, praying he wouldn’t rip my arm out of its socket.
“Thanks,” he said. “Are you a newcomer?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m forty-three days sober.”
“Congratulations. That’s no small accomplishment. You should be proud.” He paused and cocked his head to the side, taking a good hard look at me. “You know, you look familiar. What’d you say your name was again?”
Here we go! Those bastards in the press—there was no escaping them! Fred Flintstone had seen my picture in the paper, and now he was going to judge me. It was time for a strategic subject change. “My name’s Jordan, and I gotta tell you a funny story, George: I was in my house up the Island, in Old Brookville, and it was three in the morning…” and I proceeded to tell him how I threw my Remington sculpture at his face, to which he smiled and replied, “You and a thousand other people. Sony should pay me a dollar for every TV they sold to a drug addict who smashed their TV after my commercial.” He let out a chuckle, then added skeptically, “You live in Old Brookville? That’s a helluva nice neighborhood. You live with your parents?”
“No,” I said, smiling. “I’m married with children, but that commercial was too—”
He cut me off. “You out here for Memorial Day?”
Jesus! This wasn’t going according to plan. He had me on the defensive. “No, I have a house out here.”
Sounding surprised: “Oh, really, where?”
I took a deep breath and said, “Meadow Lane.”
He pulled his head back a few inches and narrowed his eyes. “You live on Meadow Lane? Really?”
I nodded slowly.
Fred Flintstone smirked. Apparently, the picture was growing clearer. He smiled and said, “And what did you say your last name was?”
The Wolf of Wall Street Page 57