I looked at Rocco and narrowed my eyes. “Is everythingin there?” I asked accusingly. “All my medications?”
“I packed everything,” said a weary-looking Rocco. “All the stuff from your drawers and inside your desk, plus the cash Mrs. Belfort gave us. It’s all in there.”
Fair enough, I thought. Fifty thousand dollars should last me a couple of days. And the drugs…well, there ought to be enough of them in there to get Cuba stoned for the rest of April.
CHAPTER 37
SICK AND SICKER
T he sheer insanity of it!We were cruising along at 39,000 feet and there were so many cocaine molecules floating in the recirculated air that when I got up to go to the bathroom, I noticed that the two pilots were wearing gas masks. Good. They seemed like nice-enough guys, and I would hate to see them fail a drug test on my account.
I was on the run now. I was a fugitive! I needed to keep moving, to maintain.To rest was to die. To allow my head to come down, to allow myself to crash, to allow my thoughts to focus in on what had just happened, that was certain death!
Yet…why had it happened? Why had I kicked the Duchess down the stairs? She was my wife. I loved her more than anything. And why had I thrown my daughter into the passenger seat of my Mercedes and driven through a garage door without even buckling her seat belt? She was my most prized possession on earth. Would she remember that scene on the stairs for the rest of her life? Would she always visualize her mother crawling upward, trying to save her daughter from…from…what?…The coked-out maniac?
Somewhere over North Carolina I had admitted to myself that I was a coked-out maniac. For a brief moment, I had crossed over the line. But now I was back, sane, once more. Or was I?
I needed to keep snorting. And I needed to keep dropping, dropping Ludes and Xanax and lots of Valium. I needed to keep the paranoia at bay. I needed to maintain my high at all costs; to rest was to die…to rest was to die.
Twenty minutes later the seat-belt sign came on, serving as a clear reminder that it was time to stop snorting, time to drop Ludes and Xanax—to ensure that we’d hit the ground in a state of perfect toxic poise.
As my attorney had promised, Dave Beall was waiting on the tarmac with a black Lincoln limousine behind him. Janet at work, I figured, already hooking me up with transportation.
Standing there with his arms crossed, Dave looked bigger than a mountain. “You ready to party?” I said buoyantly. “I need to find my next ex-wife.”
“Let’s go back to my house and relax,” replied the Mountain. “Laurie flew to New York to be with Nadine. We got the whole house to ourselves. You need to get some sleep.”
Sleep? No, no, no! I thought. “I’ll get all the sleep I need when I’m dead, you big fuck. And whose side are you on, anyway? Mine or hers?” I took a swing at him, a full right cross that landed squarely on his right biceps.
He shrugged, apparently not feeling the sting of my blow. “I’m on your side,” he said warmly. “I’m always on your side, but I don’t think there’s a war. You guys are gonna make up. Give her a few days to calm down; that’s all the woman needs.”
I gritted my teeth and shook my head menacingly, as if to say, “Never! Not in a million fucking years!”
Alas, the truth was somewhat different. I wanted my Duchess back; in fact, I wanted her back desperately. But I couldn’t let Dave know that; he might slip, say something to Laurie, who would then say something to the Duchess. Then the Duchess would know that I was miserable without her, and that would give her the upper hand.
“I hope she drops fucking dead,” I muttered. “I mean, after what she did to me, Dave? I wouldn’t take her back if she were the last cunt in the world. Now, let’s go to Solid Gold and get some strippers to give us blow jobs!”
“You’re the boss,” said Dave. “My orders are just to make sure that you don’t kill yourself.”
“Oh, really?” I snapped. “Who the fuck gave you those orders?”
“Everybody,” said my big friend, shaking his head gravely.
“Well, then, fuckeverybody!” I sputtered, heading to the limousine. “Fuck every last one of them!”
Solid Gold—what a place! A smorgasbord of young strippers, at least two dozen of them. As we made our way toward the center stage, I got a better look at some of these young beauties, and I came to the sad conclusion that most of them had been beaten over the head with an ugly stick.
I turned to the Mountain and the Uniblinker and said, “There’re too many dogs in this place, but if we look hard enough I bet we can find a diamond in the rough.” I craned my head this way and that. “Let’s walk around a bit.”
Toward the back of the club was a VIP section. An enormous black bouncer stood before a short flight of steps cordoned off by a red velvet rope. I headed straight for him. “How ya doing!” I said, in warm tones.
The bouncer looked down at me as if I were an annoying insect that needed to be squashed. He needed a little attitude adjustment, I reasoned, so I reached down into my right sock, pulled out a stack of $10,000 in hundreds, and peeled off half and handed it to him.
With his attitude now properly adjusted, I said, “Would you bring me the five hottest girls in this place, and then clear out the VIP section for my friends and me?”
He smiled.
Five minutes later we had the entire VIP section to ourselves. There were four reasonably hot strippers standing in front of us in their birthday suits and high heels. They were all decent-looking, but none of them was marriage material. I needed a true beauty, one I could parade around Long Island to show the Duchess once and for all who was boss.
Just then the bouncer opened the velvet rope and a naked teenager made her way up the steps, in a pair of white patent-leather go-to-hell pumps. She sat down next to me on the arm of the club chair, crossed her bare legs with complete insouciance, and then leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. She smelled of a mixture of Angel perfume and a tiny drop of her own musky aroma from dancing. She was gorgeous. She couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. She had a great mane of light-brown hair, emerald-green eyes, a tiny button nose, and a smooth jaw-line. Her body was incredible—about five-five, a pair of silicone C-cups, a gentle curve to her tummy, and legs that rivaled the Duchess’s. She had olive skin, and there wasn’t a single blemish on it.
We exchanged smiles, and her teeth were even and white. In a voice loud enough to cut through the stripper music, I said, “What’s your name?”
She leaned toward me until her lips were almost pressing against my right ear, and she said, “Blaze.”
I recoiled and looked at her with my head cocked to one side. “What kinda fucking name is Blaze? Did your mother know you were gonna be a stripper when you were born?”
She stuck her tongue out at me, so I stuck my tongue back at her. “My real name is Jennifer,” she said. “Blaze is my stage name.”
“Well,” I said, “it’s very nice to make your acquaintance, Blaze.”
“Awwww,” she said, rubbing her cheek against mine. “You’re such a little cutie!”
Little?Why…you… little hooker in stripper’s clothing! I oughta smash you one!I took a deep breath and said, “What do you mean?”
That seemed to confuse her. “I mean you’re…a cutie, and you have beautiful eyes, and you’re young!” She offered me her stripper’s smile.
She had a very sweet voice, Blaze. Would Gwynne approve of her, though? In truth, it was still too early to say if this one would make a suitable mother for the children.