It was as if I was bulletproofor something. How many times had I cheated death? It was impossible to say. But did I really want to die? Was my guilt and remorse eating at me that voraciously—so much, in fact, that I was trying to take my own life? I mean, it was mind-boggling, now that I thought about it! I had risked my life a thousand times yet hadn’t gotten so much as a scratch. I had driven drunk, flown stoned, walked off the edge of a building, scuba dived during a blackout, gambled away millions of dollars at casinos all over the world, and I still didn’t look a day over twenty-one.
I had lots of nicknames: Gordon Gekko, Don Corleone, Kaiser Soze; they even called me the King. But my favorite was the Wolf of Wall Street, because that was me to a T. I was the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing: I looked like a kid and acted like a kid, but I was no kid. I was thirty-one going on sixty, living dog years—aging seven years for every year. But I was rich and powerful and had a gorgeous wife and a four-month-old baby daughter who was living, breathing perfection.
Like they say, it was all good, and it all seemed to work. Somehow, and I wasn’t sure how, I would end up beneath a $12,000 silk comforter, sleeping inside a royal bedchamber draped with enough white Chinese silk to make silk parachutes for an entire squadron of paratroopers. And my wife…well, she would forgive me. After all, she always had.
And with that thought, I passed out.
CHAPTER 2
THE DUCHESS OF BAY RIDGE
December 13, 1993
The next morning—or, if you want to get technical about it, a few hours later—I was having an awesome dream. It was the sort of dream that every young man hopes and prays for, so I decided to go with it. I’m alone in bed, when Venice the Hooker comes to me. She kneels down at the edge of my sumptuous king-size bed, hovering just out of reach, a perfect little vision. I can see her clearly now…that lusty mane of chestnut brown hair…the fine features of her face…those juicy young jugs…those incredibly loamy loins, glistening with greed and desire.
“Venice,” I say. “Come to me, Venice. Come to me, Venice!”
Venice moves toward me, walking on her knees. Her skin is fair and white and shimmers amid the silk…the silk…there’s silk everywhere. An enormous canopy of white Chinese silk is suspended from above. Billows of white Chinese silk hang down at all four corners of the bed. So much white Chinese silk…I’m drowning in white fucking silk. In this very instant the ludicrous figures come popping into my mind: the silk cost $250 a yard, and there have to be two hundred yards of it. That’s $50,000 of white Chinese silk. So much white fucking silk.
But that’s my wife’s doing, my dear aspiring decorator—or, wait, that was last month’s aspiration, wasn’t it? Isn’t she an aspiring chef now? Or is she an aspiring landscape architect? Or is it a wine connoisseur? Or a clothing designer? Who could keep track of all her fucking aspirations? So tiring it is…so tiring to be married to Martha Stewart in embryo.
Just then I feel a drop of water. I look up. What the hell? Storm clouds? How can there be storm clouds inside the royal bedchamber? Where’s my wife? Holy shit! My wife! My wife! Hurricane Nadine!
SPLASH!
I woke up to the angry yet gorgeous face of my second wife, Nadine. In her right hand was an empty twelve-ounce water glass; in her left hand was her own balled-up fist, punctuated by a seven-carat, yellow canary diamond in a platinum setting. She was less than five feet away, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, like a prizefighter. I made a quick mental note to watch out for the ring.
“Why the fuck did you do that?” I yelled halfheartedly. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and took a moment to study Wife Number Two. God, she was a real piece of ass, my wife!I couldn’t begrudge her that even now. She was wearing a tiny pink chemise that was so short and low cut that it made her look more naked than if she were wearing nothing at all. And those legs of hers! Christ, they looked scrumptious. But, still, that was beside the point. I needed to get tough with her and show her who was boss. Through clenched teeth, I said, “I swear to God, Nadine, I’m going to fucking kill—”
“Oh, I’m really fucking scared,” interrupted the blond firecracker. She shook her head in disgust, and her little pink nipples popped out of her next-to-nothing outfit. I tried not to stare, but it was difficult. “Maybe I should go run and hide,” she quipped. “Or maybe I’ll just stay here and kick your fucking ass!” The last few words she screamed.
Well, maybe shewas boss. Either way, she had definitely earned her scene with me; there was no denying that. And the Duchess of Bay Ridge had a vicious temper. Yes, she was a duchess, all right—a Brit by birth, who still carried a British passport. It was a wonderful fact she never failed to remind me of. Yet, it was all very ironic, since she had never actually lived in Britain. In fact, she had moved to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, when she was still a baby, and it was there, in the land of dropped consonants and tortured vowels, where she was raised. Bay Ridge; it’s that tiny corner of the earth where words like fuckand shitand bastardand prickroll off the tongues of young natives with the poetic panache of T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman. And it was there that Nadine Caridi—my lovable English, Irish, Scottish, German, Norwegian, and Italian mutt-of-a-duchess—learned to tie her curses together, as she was learning to tie the laces on her roller skates.
It was sort of a grim joke, I thought, considering that Mark Hanna had warned me about going out with a girl from Bay Ridge all those years ago. His girlfriend, as I recalled, had stabbed him with a pencil while he was sleeping; the Duchess preferred throwing water. So, in a way, I was ahead of the game.
Anyway, when the Duchess got angry it was as if her words were bubbling up from out of the rancid gullet of the Brooklyn sewer system. And no one could make her angrier than me, her loyal and trustworthy husband, the Wolf of Wall Street, who less than five hours ago was in the Presidential Suite of the Helmsley Palace with a candle in his ass.
“So tell me, you little shit,” snapped the Duchess, “who the fuck is Venice, huh?” She paused and took an aggressive step forward, and all at once she struck a pose, with her hips cocked in a display of insolence, one long, bare leg slewed out to the side, and her arms folded beneath her breasts, pushing her nipples out into plain view. She said, “She’s probably some little hooker, I bet.” She narrowed her big blue eyes accusingly. “You don’t think I know what you’re up to? Why, I oughta smash your fucking face in, you…you little… ugghhhhh!” It was an angry groan, and the moment she’d finished groaning she gave up her pose and began marching across the bedroom—marching on the custom-made beige and taupe $120,000 Edward Fields carpet. And she marched fast as lightning, all the way to the master bathroom, which was a good thirty feet away, where she turned on the faucet, refilled the water glass, turned off the faucet, and came marching back, looking twice as angry. Her teeth were clenched in unadulterated rage, making her square model-girl jaw really stand out. She looked like the Duchess from Hell.