The Wolf of Wall Street (5 page)

I had never meant to hurt Denise. In fact, it was the furthest thing from my mind. But Nadine swept me off my feet, and I swept her off hers. You don’t choose who you fall in love with, do you? And once you do fall in love—that obsessive sort of love, that all-consuming love, where two people can’t stand to be apart from each other for even a moment—how are you supposed to let a love like that pass you by?

I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, trying to push all this Denise business back down below the surface. After all, guilt and remorse were worthless emotions, weren’t they? Well, I knew they weren’t, but I had no time for them. Forward motion; that was the key. Run as fast as you can and don’t look back. And as far as my wife went—well, I would right things with her too.

Having worked things out in my mind for the second time in less than five minutes, I forced myself to smile at my own reflection and then headed for the sauna. Once there, I would sweat out the evil spirits and start my day anew.

CHAPTER 3

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T
hirty minutes after beginning my morning detox, I emerged from the master bedroom feeling rejuvenated. I was wearing the very gray pinstripe suit that Gwynne had laid out for me. On my left wrist I wore an $18,000 gold Bulgari watch that was thin and understated. In the olden days, before the Duchess came to town, I had worn a solid gold Rolex that was thick and chunky. But the Duchess, being the self-proclaimed arbiter of taste, grace, and gentility, had immediately discarded it, explaining to me that it was gauche. Just how she would know such a thing I still couldn’t figure out, given the fact that the nicest watch she’d seen growing up in Brooklyn probably had a Disney character on it. Nevertheless, she seemed to have a knack for these things, so I usually listened to her.

No matter, though. I still maintained my masculine pride with one holdout: a terrific pair of handmade black crocodile cowboy boots. Each boot had been cut from a single crocodile skin, making them absolutely seamless. They had cost me $2,400, and I absolutely loved them. The Duchess, of course, despised them. Today I wore them with great pride, hoping to send a clear signal to my wife that I couldn’t be pushed around, in spite of the fact that she had just pushed me around.

I was on my way to Chandler’s bedroom for my morning nip of fatherhood, which was my favorite part of the day. Chandler was the only thing in my life that was completely pure. Each time I carried her in my arms it was as if all the chaos and insanity was held in harness.

As I made my way toward her room, I felt my spirits lifting. She was almost five months old and she was absolutely perfect. But when I opened Channy’s door—
what a tremendous shock!
It wasn’t just Channy, it was Mommy too! She’d been hiding in Channy’s room all along, waiting for me to come in!

There they were, sitting in the very middle of the room on the softest, most glorious pink carpet imaginable. It was another outlandishly expensive touch from Mommy, the formerly aspiring decorator—
who was looking mighty fine, for Chrissake!
Chandler was sitting between her mother’s slightly parted legs—
slightly parted legs!
—with her delicate little back resting against Mommy’s firm tummy and Mommy’s hands clasped around her belly for added support. The two of them looked gorgeous. Channy was a carbon copy of her mother, having inherited those vivid blue eyes and glorious cheekbones.

I took a deep breath to fully relish the scent of my daughter’s room. Ahhhh, the smell of baby powder, baby shampoo, baby wipes! And then another deep breath to relish the smell of Mommy. Ahhhh, her four-hundred-dollar-a-bottle shampoo and conditioner from God only knew where! Her hypoallergenic, custom-formulated Kiehl’s skin conditioner; that tiny hint of Coco perfume she wore oh so insouciantly! I felt a pleasant tingling sensation shoot through my entire central nervous system and into my loins.

The room itself was absolutely perfect, a little pink wonderland. Countless stuffed animals were scattered about, all arranged just so. To the right was a white crib and bassinet, custom-made by Bellini of Madison Avenue, for the bargain price of $60,000. (Mommy strikes again!) Above it hung a pink and white mobile that played twelve Disney songs, while strikingly realistic Disney characters went round and round at a merry clip. It was another custom-made touch of my dear aspiring decorator, this one only $9,000 (for a mobile?). But who cared? This was Chandler’s room, the most favored room in the house.

I took a moment to regard my wife and daughter. All at once the word
breathtaking
popped into my mind. Chandler was naked as a blue jay. Her olive skin looked buttery smooth and utterly flawless.

And then there was Mommy, who was dressed to kill or, in my case, to tease. Mommy wore a salmon-pink sleeveless minidress with a plunging neckline. Her cleavage was extraordinary! Her terrific mane of golden blond hair shimmered in the morning sunlight. The dress was hiked up above her hips, and I could see all the way up to the top of her waist. There was something missing from this picture…but what was it? I couldn’t seem to place it, so I dismissed the thought and kept right on staring. Her knees were slightly bent, and I let my eyes run down the full length of her legs. Her shoes matched her dress perfectly, to the very shade and hue. They were Manolo Blahnik, probably cost a thousand bucks, but worth every penny, if you want to know what I was thinking at that particular moment.

So many thoughts were roaring through my head I couldn’t keep track of them. I wanted my wife more than ever…yet my daughter was there too…but she was so little that it didn’t really matter! And what about the Duchess? Had she already forgiven me? I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t find the words. I loved my wife…I loved my life…I loved my daughter. I didn’t want to lose them. So I made the decision right there, in that very instant: I was done. Yes! No more hookers! No more midnight helicopter rides! No more drugs—or at least not as much of them.

I was about to speak, to throw myself on the mercy of the court, but I never got the chance. Chandler spoke first.
My daughter, the baby genius!
She smiled from ear to ear and in a little tiny voice she said, “Da-da-da-da-da-da-da…Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.”

“Good morning, Daddy!” said Mommy, in a little baby’s voice. So sweet! So incredibly sexy! “Aren’t you going to give me a good-morning kiss, Daddy? I really, really want one!”

Whuhh? Could it really be this easy? I crossed my fingers and went for broke. “Do I get to kiss both of you, Mommy
and
Daughter?” I pursed my lips and gave Mommy my best puppy-dog face. Then I said a prayer to the Almighty.

“Ohhh, no!” said Mommy, bursting Daddy’s bubble. “Daddy doesn’t get to kiss Mommy for a very, very long time. But his daughter’s dying for a kiss. Isn’t that right, Channy?”

Good Lord—she doesn’t fight fair, my wife!

Mommy soldiered on in her baby’s voice: “Here, Channy, now go crawl over to your daddy right now. Now, Daddy, you bend down so Channy can crawl right into your arms. Okay, Daddy?”

I took a step forward—

“That’s far enough,” warned Mommy, raising her right hand in the air. “Now bend down just like Mommy said.”

I did as I was told. After all, who was I to argue with the luscious Duchess?

Mommy put Chandler down on all fours, ever so gently, and gave her a loving shove forward. Chandler started crawling toward me at a snail’s pace, repeating: “Dadadadadadada…Dadadadadadada.”

Ahhhh, such happiness! Such
joie de vivre
! Was I the luckiest man alive or what? “Come here,” I said to Chandler. “Come to Daddy, sweetie.” I looked up at Mommy, slowly lowering my gaze…and…“Holy shit! Nadine, what the…what the hell is wrong with you! Are you out of—”

“What’s wrong, Dada? I hope you don’t see anything you want, because you can’t have it anymore,” said Mommy, the aspiring cock-teaser, with her glorious legs spread wide open and her skirt hiked up above her hips and her panties nowhere in sight. Her pretty pink vulva was staring me right in the eye and was glistening with desire. All Mommy had was a tiny patch of soft blond peach fuzz, just above her mons pubis, and that was it.

I did the only thing any rational husband could do: I groveled like the dog that I was. “Please, honey, you know how sorry I am about last night. I swear to God I’ll never—”

“Oh, save it until next year,” said Mommy, with a flap of the back of her hand in the air. “Mommy knows how much you like to swear to God about this and that and everything else when you’re about to burst. But don’t waste your time, Daddy, because Mommy’s only getting started with you. From now on it’s going to be nothing but short, short skirts around the house! That’s right, Dada! Nothing but short, short skirts, no underwear, and this…” said the luscious Mommy with great pride, as she put her palms down behind her and locked out her elbows and leaned all the way back. Then, using the very tips of her Manolo Blahnik high heels in a way the shoe designers had never imagined, she turned them into erotic pivots and let those luscious legs of hers swing open and closed and open and closed until on the third pivot she let them fall so wide open that her knees almost hit the glorious pink carpet. She said, “What’s wrong, Dada? You don’t look so well.”

Well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen it before. In fact this wasn’t the first time Mommy had pulled a fast one on me. There were elevators, tennis courts, public parking lots, even the White House. There was no venue completely safe from Mommy. It was just the fucking shock of it all! I felt like a boxer who never saw the punch coming and ended up getting knocked out cold—permanently!

Making matters worse, Chandler had stalled in mid-crawl and decided to take some time to inspect the glorious pink carpet. She was pulling on the fibers as if she’d discovered something truly wonderful, completely oblivious to what was transpiring around her.

I tried to apologize once more, but Mommy’s response to that was to stick her right index finger inside her mouth and start to suck. It was then that I lost the power of speech. She seemed to know she’d just delivered the knockout punch, so she slowly pulled her finger out of her mouth and then poured on the baby voice even more: “Ohhh, poor, poor Dada. He loves to say how wrong he is when he’s ready to come in his own pants, isn’t that right, Dada?”

I stared in disbelief and wondered if any other married couples did things like this.

“Well, Daddy, it’s too late for apologies now.” She pursed her luscious lips and nodded slowly, the way a person does when they feel like they’ve just let you in on some great truth. “And it’s such a
shame
that Daddy likes to fly around town in his helicopter at all hours of the night after doing God only knows what, because Mommy loves Daddy so, so much and there’s nothing she wants to do more right now than to make love to Daddy all day long! And what Mommy’s really in the mood for is for Daddy to kiss her in his favorite spot, right where he’s looking right now.”

Now Mommy pursed her lips again and pretended to pout. “But, ohhh…poor, poor Daddy! There’s no chance of that happening now, even if Daddy was the very last man on planet Earth. In fact, Mommy has decided to be like the United Nations and institute one of her famous sex embargoes. Daddy doesn’t get to make love to Mommy until New Year’s Eve”—Whuh? Why, the impudence of it!—“and that’s only if he’s a very good boy between now and then. If Daddy makes even one mistake it’s going to be Groundhog’s Day!” What the fuck? Mommy’s lost it!

I was just about to sink to unprecedented levels of groveling when all at once something hit me.
Oh, Christ!
Should I tell her? Fuck it, the show’s too good!

Mommy in baby voice: “And now that I think of it, Daddy, I think it’s time for Mommy to break out her silk thigh-highs and start wearing them around the house, and we all know how much Daddy loves Mommy’s silk thigh-highs, don’t we, Daddy!”

I nodded eagerly.

Mommy plowed on: “Oh, yes, we do! And Mommy’s so sick and tired of wearing underwear…
uhhh!
In fact, she’s decided to throw them all away! So take a good look, Dada”—time to stop her? Uhhhn, not yet!—“because you’re going to be seeing an awful lot of it around the house for a while! But, of course, under the rules of the embargo, touching will be strictly prohibited. And there’ll be no jerking off either, Daddy. Until Mommy gives her permission it will be hands at your sides. Is that understood, Daddy?”

With renewed confidence: “But what about you, Mommy? What are you going to do?”

“Oh, Mommy knows how to please herself just fine. Uhhhn…uhhhn…uhhhn,” groaned the fashion model. “In fact, just the thought of it is getting Mommy all excited! Don’t you just hate helicopters, Daddy?”

I went for the jugular: “I don’t know, Mommy, I think you’re all talk and no action. Please yourself? I don’t believe you.”

Mommy compressed those luscious lips of hers and slowly shook her head, then she said, “Well, I guess it’s time for Daddy to be taught his first lesson”—ahhh, this was getting good! And Chandler, still inspecting the carpet, no comprehension—“so Mommy wants Daddy to keep his eye on Mommy’s hand and watch very closely or else Groundhog’s Day will become Easter Sunday faster than Daddy can say ‘blue balls!’ Do you understand who’s in charge here, Daddy?”

I played along, getting ready to drop the bomb. “Yes, Mommy, but what are you going to do with your hand?”

“Shhh!” said Mommy, and just like that she stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked and sucked until it glistened with saliva in the morning sunlight, and then, slowly, gracefully, lubriciously headed south…down her plunging neckline…past her cleavage…past her belly button…and all the way down to her—

“Stop right there!” I said, holding up my right hand. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you!”

This shocked Mommy. And infuriated her too! Apparently she had been looking forward to this magic moment as much as I had. But it had gone far enough. It was time to drop the bomb on her. But before I had the chance, Mommy began scolding me: “That’s it! Now you’ve done it! They’ll be no kissing or lovemaking until July Fourth!”

“But, Mommy, what about Rocco and Rocco?”

Mommy froze in horror. “Huh?”

I leaned over and picked Chandler up off the glorious pink carpet, held her close to my chest, and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. Then, with her safely out of harm’s way, I said, “Daddy wants to tell Mommy a story, and if after he’s done Mommy is glad Daddy stopped her before she did what she was about to do, then she has to forgive him for everything he’s done, okay?”

No reaction. “Okay,” I said, “this is the story about a little pink bedroom in Old Brookville, Long Island. Does Mommy want to hear about it?”

Mommy nodded, a look of complete confusion on her perfect little model face.

“Does Mommy promise to keep her legs spread wide, wide open while Daddy tells the story?”

She nodded slowly, dreamily.

“Good, because it’s Daddy’s favorite view in the whole world, and it inspires him to tell the story
just
right! Okay—now, there was a little pink bedroom on the second floor of a great stone mansion on a perfect piece of property in the very best part of Long Island, and the people who lived there had lots and lots of money. But—and this is very important to the story, Mommy—of all the possessions they had, and of everything they owned, there was one thing that was much more valuable than all the rest combined, and that was their little baby daughter.