The Duchess responded by cocking her blond head to the side, the way a person does after they’ve just heard something that completely defies logic. “You’re confused?” she snapped. “You’re f**king confused? Why…you…little…bastard!” Little, again! Unbelievable! “Where do you want me to start? How about you flying in here on your stupid helicopter at three in the morning, without so much as a f**king phone call to say you’d be late. Is that normal behavior for a married man?”
“But, I—”
“And a father, no less! You’re a father now! Yet you still act like a f**king infant! And does it even matter to you that I just had that ridiculous driving range sodded with Bermuda grass? You probably f**king ruined it!” She shook her head in disgust, then she plowed on: “But why should you give a shit? You’re not the one who spent your time researching the whole thing and dealing with the landscapers and the golf-course people. Do you know how much time I spent on that stupid f**king project of yours? Do you, you inconsiderate bastard?”
Ahhh, so she’s an aspiring landscape architect this month! But such a sexy architect! There had to be some way to turn this all around. Some magic words. “Honey, please, I’m—”
A warning through clenched teeth: “Don’t—you—honey—me! You don’t ever get to call me honey ever again!”
“But, honey—”
SPLASH!
That time I saw it coming, and I was able to pull the $12,000 silk comforter over my head—deflecting most of her righteous wrath. In fact, hardly a drop of water even touched me. But, alas, my victory was short-lived, and by the time I pulled down the comforter she was already marching back to the bathroom for a refill.
Now she was on her way back. The water glass was filled to the rim; her blue eyes were like death rays; her model-girl jaw looked a mile wide; and her legs…Christ! I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. Still, there was no time for that now. It was time for the Wolf to get tough. It was time for the Wolf to bare his fangs.
I removed my arms from beneath the white silk comforter, careful not to get them tangled in the thousands of tiny pearls that had been hand-crocheted onto the fabric. Then I cocked my elbows, like chicken wings, giving the irate Duchess a bird’s-eye view of my mighty biceps. I said, in a loud, forthright voice, “Don’t you dare throw that water at me, Nadine. I’m serious! I’ll give you the first two glasses out of anger, but to keep doing it again and again…well, it’s like stabbing a dead body when it’s lying on the floor in a pool of blood! It’s f**king sick!”
That seemed to slow her down—but only for a second. She said, in a mocking tone, “Will you stop flexing your arms, please? You look like a f**king imbecile!”
“I wasn’t flexing my arms,” I said, unflexing my arms. “You’re just lucky to have a husband who’s in such great shape. Right, sweetie?” I smiled my warmest smile at her. “Now get over here right this second and give me a kiss!” Even as the words escaped my lips I knew I’d made a mistake.
“Give you a kiss?” sputtered the Duchess. “What are you, f**king kidding me?” Disgust dripped off her very words. “I was an inch away from cutting your balls off and sticking them in one of my shoe boxes. Then you’d never find them!”
Jesus Christ, she was right about that! Her shoe closet was the size of Delaware, and my balls would be lost forever. With the utmost humility, I said, “Please give me a chance to explain, hon—I mean sweetie. Please, I’m begging you!”
All at once her face began to soften. “I can’t believe you!” she said, through tiny snuffles. “What did I do to deserve this? I’m a good wife. A beautiful wife. Yet I have a husband who comes home at all hours of the night and talks about another girl in his sleep!” She started moaning with contempt: “Uhhhhh…Venice…Come to me, Venice.”
Jesus Christ! Those Quaaludes could be a real killer sometimes. And now she was crying. It was a complete disaster. After all, what chance did I have of getting her back into bed while she was crying? I needed to switch gears here, to come up with a new strategy. In a tone of voice normally reserved for someone who’s standing on the edge of a cliff and threatening to jump, I said, “Put down the glass of water, sweetie, and stop crying. Please. I can explain everything, really!”
Slowly, reluctantly, she lowered the glass of water to waist level. “Go ahead,” she said in a tone ripe with disbelief. “Let me hear another lie from the man who lies for a living.”
That was true. The Wolf did lie for a living, although such was the nature of Wall Street, if you wanted to be a true power broker. Everyone knew that, especially the Duchess, so she really had no right to be angry about that either. Nonetheless, I took her sarcasm in stride, paused for a brief moment to give myself extra time to coagulate my bullshit story, and I said, “First of all, you have the whole thing backward. The only reason I didn’t call you last night was because I didn’t realize I’d be getting home so late until it was almost eleven. I know how much you like your beauty sleep, and I figured you’d be sleeping anyway, so what was the point of calling?”
The Duchess’s poisonous response: “Oh, you’re so f**king considerate. Let me go thank my lucky stars for having such a considerate husband.” Sarcasm oozed off her words like pus.
I ignored the sarcasm and decided to go for broke. “Anyway, you took this whole Venice business completely out of context. I was talking to Marc Packer last night about opening a Canastel’s in Venice, Calif—”
SPLASH!
“You’re a f**king liar!” she screamed, grabbing a matching silk bathrobe off the back of some obscenely expensive white fabric chair. “A total f**king liar!”
I let out an obvious sigh. “Okay, Nadine, you’ve had your fun for the morning. Now come back into bed and give me a kiss. I still love you, even though you soaked me.”
That look she gave me! “You want to f**k me now?”
I raised my eyebrows high on my forehead and nodded eagerly. It was the look a seven-year-old boy gives his mother in response to the question: “Would you like an ice-cream cone?”
“Fine,” screamed the Duchess. “Go f**k yourself!”
With that, the luscious Duchess of Bay Ridge opened the door—the seven-hundred-pound, twelve-foot-high, solid mahogany door, sturdy enough to withstand a twelve-kiloton nuclear explosion—and walked out of the room, closing the door gently behind her. After all, a slammed door would send the wrong signal to our bizarre menagerie of domestic help.
Our bizarre menagerie: There were five pleasantly plump, Spanish-speaking maids, two of which were husband-and-wife teams; a jabbering Jamaican baby nurse, who was running up a thousand-dollar-a-month phone bill, calling her family in Jamaica; an Israeli electrician, who followed the Duchess around like a lovesick puppy dog; a white-trash handyman, who had all the motivation of a her**n-addicted sea slug; my personal maid, Gwynne, who anticipated my every need no matter how bizarre it might be; Rocco and Rocco, the two armed bodyguards, who kept out the thieving multitudes, despite the fact that the last crime in Old Brookville occurred in 1643, when white settlers stole land from the Mattinecock Indians; five full-time landscapers, three of which had recently been bitten by my chocolate-brown Labrador retriever, Sally, who bit anyone who dared go within a hundred feet of Chandler’s crib, especially if their skin was darker than a brown paper bag; and the most recent addition to the menagerie—two full-time marine biologists, also a husband-and-wife team, who, for $90,000 a year, kept that nightmare-of-a-pond ecologically balanced. And then, of course, there was George Campbell, my charcoal-black limo driver, who hated all white people, including me.
Yet, with all these people working at Chez Belfort, it didn’t change the fact that, right now, I was all alone, soaking wet, and horny as hell, at the hands of my blond second wife, the aspiring everything. I looked around for something to dry myself off with. I grabbed one of the cascading billows of white Chinese silk and tried to wipe myself. Christ! It didn’t help a bit. Apparently the silk had been treated with some sort of water repellent, and all it did was push the water from here to there. I looked behind me—a pillowcase! It was made of Egyptian cotton; probably a three-million thread count. Must’ve cost a fortune—of my money! I removed the pillowcase from the overstuffed goose-down pillow inside it and started wiping myself. Ahhh, the Egyptian cotton was nice and soft. And such terrific absorption! My spirits lifted.
I scooted over to my wife’s side of the bed to get out of the wet spot. I would pull the covers over my head and return to the warm bosom of my dream. I would return to Venice. I took a deep breath…Oh, shit! The Duchess’s scent was everywhere! All at once I felt the blood rushing to my loins. Christ—she was a frisky little animal, the Duchess, with a frisky little scent! No choice now but to jerk off. It was all for the best, anyway. After all, the Duchess’s power over me began and ended below my waist.
I was about to do a little self-soothing when I heard a knock at the door. “Who is it?” I asked, in a voice loud enough to get through the bomb-shelter door.
“Iz Gwaayne,” answered Gwynne.
Ahhh, Gwynne—with her wonderful Southern drawl! So soothing it was. In fact, everything about Gwynne was soothing. The way she anticipated my every need, the way she doted on me like the child she and her husband, Willie, were never able to conceive. “Come in,” I replied warmly.
The bomb-shelter door swung open with a tiny creak. “Guh mawnin, guh mawnin!” said Gwynne. She was carrying a sterling-silver tray. There was a tall glass of light iced coffee and a bottle of Bayer aspirin resting on it. Tucked beneath her left arm was a white bath towel.
“Good morning, Gwynne. How are you this fine morning?” I asked with mock formality.
“Oh, I’m fine…I’m fine!” Ahhhm fahyn…Ahhhm fahyn! “Well, I see you’re over on your wife’s side of the bed, so I’ll just walk right on over there and bring you your iced coffee. I also brought a nice soft towel for you to wipe yourself with. Mrs. Belfort told me you spilled some water on yourself.”
Un-f**king-believable! Martha Stewart strikes again! All at once I realized that my erection had given the white silk comforter the appearance of a circus tent—shit! I elevated my knees with the speed of a jackrabbit.
Gwynne walked over and placed the tray on the antique night table on the Duchess’s side of the bed. “Here, let me dry you off!” said Gwynne, and she leaned over and began dabbing the white towel on my forehead, as if I were an infant.
Holy Christ! What a f**king circus this house was! I mean, here I was, lying flat on my back, with a raging hard-on, while my fifty-five-year-old plumpish black maid, who was an anachronism from a bygone era, leaned over with her drooping jugs three inches from my face and wiped me with a five-hundred-dollar monogrammed Pratesi bath towel. Of course, Gwynne didn’t look even the slightest bit black. Ohhh, no! That would be way too normal for this household. Gwynne, in fact, was even lighter than me. The way I had it figured, somewhere in her family tree, perhaps a hundred fifty years ago, when Dixie was still Dixie, her great-great-great-great-grandmother had been the secret love slave of some wealthy plantation owner in south Georgia.