Jordan Belfort - The Wolf of Wall Street

And George actually agreed with me! Yes, in his opinion my drug interventionist did deserve to die. So we spent the next few minutes debating the best ways to kill him—starting with my idea of cutting off his dick with a pair of hydraulic bolt cutters. But George didn’t think that would be painful enough, because the interventionist would go into shock before his dick hit the carpet and bleed out in a matter of seconds. So we moved on to fire—burning him to death. George liked that because it was very painful, but it worried him because of the possibility of collateral damage, since we would be burning his house down as part of the plan. Next came carbon monoxide poisoning, which we both agreed was far too painless, so we debated the pros and cons of poisoning his food, which, in the end, seemed a bit too nineteenth century. A simple botched-burglary attempt came to mind, one that turned into murder (to avoid witnesses). But then we thought about paying a crack addict five dollars to run up to the interventionist and stab him right in the gut with a rusty knife. This way, George explained, he would bleed out nice and slow, especially if the stab wound was just over his liver, which would make it that much more painful.

Then I heard the door swing open and a female voice yell, “George, whose Mercedes is that?” It was a kind, sweet voice, which happened to have a ferocious Brooklyn accent attached to it, so the words came out like: “Gawge, whoze Mihcedees is that?”

A moment later, one of the cutest ladies on the planet walked in the kitchen. As big as he was, she was tiny—maybe five feet, a hundred pounds. She had strawberry-blond hair, honey-brown eyes, tiny features, and perfect Irish Spring skin, smattered with a fair number of freckles. She looked to be in her late forties or early fifties, but very well preserved.

George said, “Annette, say hello to Jordan. Jordan, say hello to Annette.”

I went to shake her hand, but she moved right past it and gave me a warm hug and a kiss on the cheek. She smelled clean and fresh and of some very expensive perfume, which I couldn’t quite place. Annette smiled and held me out in front of her by my shoulders, at arm’s length, as if she were inspecting me. “Well, I’ll give you one thing,” she said matter-of-factly, “you’re not the typical stray George brings home.”

We all broke up over that one, and then Annette excused herself and went about her usual business, which was making George’s life as comfortable as possible. In no time flat, there was a fresh pot of coffee on the table, as well as cakes and pastries and donuts and a bowl of freshly cut fruit. Then she offered to cook me a full-blown dinner, because she thought I looked too thin, to which I said, “You should’ve seen me forty-three days ago!”

And as we sipped our coffee, I kept going on about my interventionist. Annette was quick to jump on the bandwagon. “He sounds like a real bastard”— bahstid —“if you ask me,” said the tiny Brooklyn firecracker. “I think you got every right in the world to wanna chop his cojones off. Don’t you, Gwibbie?”

Gwibbie? That was an interesting nickname for George! I kinda liked it, although it didn’t really suit him. Perhaps Sasquatch, I thought…or maybe Goliath or Zeus.

Gwibbie nodded and said, “I think the guy deserves to die a slow, painful death, so I want to think about it overnight. We can plan it out tomorrow.”

I looked at Gwibbie and nodded in agreement. “Definitely!” I said. “This guy deserves a fiery death.”

Annette said to George, “And what are you gonna tell him tomorrow, Gwib?”

Gwib said, “Tomorrow I’m gonna tell him that I want to think about it overnight and then we can plan it out the next day.” He smiled wryly.

I smiled and shook my head. “You guys are too much! I knew you were fucking around with me.”

Annette said, “ I wasn’t! I think he does deserve to have his cojones chopped off!” Now her voice took on a very knowing tone. “George does interventions all the time, and I’ve never heard of the wife being left out of it, right, Gwib?”

Gwib shrugged his enormous shoulders. “I don’t like passing judgment on other people’s methods, but it sounds like there was a certain warmth missing from your intervention. I’ve done hundreds of them, and the one thing I always make sure of is that the person being intervened on understands how much he’s loved and how everyone will be there for him if he does the right thing and gets sober. I would never keep a wife away from her husband. Ever.” He shrugged his great shoulders once more. “But all’s well that ends well, right? You’re alive and sober, which is a wonderful miracle, although I question whether or not you’re really sober.”

“What do you mean? Of course I’m sober! I have forty-three days today, and in a few hours I’ll have forty-four. I haven’t touched anything. I swear.”

“Ahhh,” said George, “you have forty-three days without drinking and drugging, but that doesn’t mean you’re actually sober. There’s a difference, right, Annette?”

Annette nodded. “Tell him about Kenton Rhodes, † * Name has been changed. George.”

“The department-store guy?” I asked.

They both nodded, and George said, “Yeah, but actually it’s his idiot son, the heir to the throne. He has a house in Southampton, not far from you.”

With that, Annette plunged into the story. “Yeah, you see, I used to own a store just up the street from here, over on Windmill Lane; it was called the Stanley Blacker Boutique. Anyway, we sold all this terrific Western wear, Tony Lama boo—”

George, apparently, had no patience for drizzling even from his own wife, and he cut her right off. “Jesus Christ, Annette, what the hell does that have to do with the story? No one cares what you sold in your goddamn store or who my tenants were nineteen years ago.” He looked at me and rolled his eyes.

George took a deep breath, puffing himself up to the size of an industrial refrigerator, and then slowly let it out. “So Annette owned this store up by Windmill Lane, and she used to park her little Mercedes out in front. One day she’s inside the store waiting on a customer, and she sees through the window this other Mercedes pulling in behind her car and hitting her rear bumper. Then, a few seconds later, a man gets out with his girlfriend, and without even leaving a note he goes walking into town.”

At this point, Annette looked at me and raised her eyebrows, and she whispered, “It was Kenton Rhodes who hit me!”

George shot her a look and said, “Right, it was Kenton Rhodes. Anyway, Annette comes out of the store and sees that not only did he hit the back of her car but he also parked illegally, in a fire zone, so she calls the cops and they come and give him a ticket. Then, an hour later, he comes walking out of some restaurant, drunk as a skunk; he’s goes back to his car and looks at the parking ticket and smiles, and then he rips it up and throws it in the street.”

Annette couldn’t resist the temptation to chime in again: “Yeah, and this bahstid had this smug look on his face, so I ran outside and said, ‘Let me tell you something, buddy—not only did you hit my car and make a dent but you got the nerve to park in a fire zone and then just rip the ticket up and throw it on the floor and litter.”

George nodded gravely. “And I happened to be walking by as all this is happening, and I see Annette pointing her finger at this smug bastard and screaming at him, and then I hear him call her a bitch, or something along those lines. So I walk up to Annette and say, ‘Get in the damn store, Annette, right now!’ and Annette runs inside the store, knowing what’s coming next. Meanwhile, Kenton Rhodes is mouthing off to me something fierce, as he climbs inside his Mercedes. He slams the door shut and starts the car and hits the power-window button, and the thick tempered glass starts sliding up. Then he puts on this enormous pair of Porsche sunglasses—you know, the big ones that make you look like an insect—and he smiles at me and gives me the middle finger.”