On a much sadder note, before I hung up with Gwynne, Channy came to the phone and said, “Are you in Atlant-ica because you pushed Mommy down the stairs?”

I replied, “That’s one reason, thumbkin. Daddy was very sick and he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“If you’re still sick, can I kiss away your boo-boo again?”

“Hopefully,” I said sadly. “Maybe you can kiss away both our boo-boos, Mommy’s and Daddy’s.” I felt my eyes welling up with tears.

“I’ll try,” she said, with the utmost seriousness.

I bit my lip, fighting back outright crying. “I know you will, baby. I know you will.” Then I told her that I loved her and hung up the phone. Before I went to bed that night I got down on my knees and said a prayer—that Channy could kiss away our boo-boos. Then everything would be okay again.

I woke up the next morning ready to meet the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, or was it Dr. Josef Mengele? Either way, the entire rehab—patients and staff alike—was getting together this morning in the auditorium for a regularly scheduled group meeting. It was a vast space with no partitions. A hundred twenty bridge chairs had been arranged in a large circle, and at the front of the room was a small platform with a lectern on it, where the speaker of the day would share his tale of drug-addicted woe.

I now sat as just another patient in a large circle of drug-addicted doctors and nurses (or Martians, from the Planet Talbot Mars, as I’d come to think of them). At this particular moment, all eyes were on today’s guest speaker—a sorry-looking woman in her early forties who had a rear end the size of Alaska and a ferocious case of acne, the sort you usually find on mental patients who’d spent the better part of their lives on psychotropic drugs.

“Hi,” she said in a timid voice. “My name is Susan, and I’m…uhhh…an alcoholic and a drug addict.”

All the Martians in the room, including myself, responded dutifully, by saying, “Hi, Susan!” to which she blushed and then bowed her head in defeat—or was it victory? Either way, I had no doubt she was a world-class drizzler.

Now there was silence. Apparently, Susan wasn’t much of a public speaker, or perhaps her brain had been short-circuited from all the drugs she’d consumed. As Susan gathered her thoughts, I took a moment to check out Doug Talbot. He was sitting at the front of the room with five staff members on either side of him. He had short snow-white hair, and he looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties. His skin was white and pasty, and he had the sort of square-jawed, grim expression that you would normally associate with a malevolent warden, the sort who looks a death-row inmate in the eye before he flips the switch on the electric chair and says, “I’m only doing this for your own good!”`

Finally, Susan plowed on. “I’ve…been…uhhh…sober…for almost eighteen months now, and I couldn’t have done it without the help and inspiration of…uhhh…Doug Talbot.” And she turned to Doug Talbot and bowed her head, at which point the whole room rose to their feet and started clapping—the whole room except for me. I was too shocked at the collective sight of more than a hundred ass-kissing Martians trying to get their licenses back.

Doug Talbot waved his hand at the Martians and then shook his head dismissively, as if to say, “Oh, please, you’re embarrassing me! I only do this job out of a love of humanity!” But I had no doubt that his happy hit squad of staff members were making careful notes as to who wasn’t clapping loudly enough.

As Susan continued to drizzle, I began craning my head around—looking for the curly-haired blonde with the gorgeous face and the killer body, and I found her sitting just across from me, on the opposite side of the circle. She was gorgeous, all right. She had soft, angelic features—not the chiseled model features of the Duchess, but they were beautiful nonetheless.

Suddenly the Martians jumped to their feet again, and Susan took an embarrassed bow. Then she lumbered over to Doug Talbot, bent over, and gave him a hug. But it wasn’t a warm hug; she kept her body far from his. It was the way Dr. Mengele’s few surviving patients must’ve hugged him, at atrocity reunions and such—a sort of extreme version of the Stockholm syndrome, where hostages come to revere their captors.

Now one of the staff began doing a bit of her own drizzling. When the Martians stood this time, I stood too. Everyone grabbed the hands of the people on either side of them, so I grabbed too.

In unison, we bowed our heads and chanted the AA mantra: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Now everyone began clapping, so I clapped too—except this time I was clapping with sincerity. After all, in spite of being a cynical bastard, there was no denying that AA was an amazing thing, a lifesaver to millions of people.

There was a long rectangular table at the back of the room with a few pots of coffee on it and some cookies and cakes. As I headed over, I heard an unfamiliar voice yelling: “Jordan! Jordan Belfort!”

I turned around and— Holy Christ!—it was Doug Talbot. He was walking toward me, wearing an enormous smile on his pasty face. He was tall, about six-one, although he didn’t look to be in particularly good shape. He wore an expensive-looking blue sport jacket and gray tweed slacks. He was waving me toward him.

At that very instant, I could feel a hundred five sets of eyes pretending not to look at me—no, it was actually a hundred fifteen sets of eyes, because the staff was pretending too.

He extended his hand. “So we finally meet,” he said, nodding his head knowingly. “It’s a pleasure. Welcome to Talbot Marsh. I feel like you and I are kindred spirits. Brad told me all about you. I can’t wait to hear the stories. I got a few of my own—nothing as good as yours, I’m sure.”

I smiled and shook my new friend’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you too,” I replied, fighting back the urge to use an ironic tone.

He put his arm on my shoulder. “Come on,” he said warmly, “let’s go to my office for a while. I’ll drop you off later this afternoon. You’re being moved up the hill to one of the condos. I’ll drive you there.”

And just like that, I knew this rehab was in serious trouble. I had the owner—the unreachable, the one and only Doug Talbot—as my new best buddy, and every patient and staff member knew it as well. The Wolf was ready to bare his fangs—even in rehab.

Doug Talbot turned out to be a decent-enough guy, and we spent a good hour exchanging war stories. In fact, as I was soon to find out, virtually all recovering drug addicts share a morbid desire to play a game of “Can You Top the Insanity of My Addiction.” Obviously, it didn’t take long for Doug to realize that he was seriously outmatched, and by the time I’d gotten to the part where I’d cut open my furniture with a butcher knife he’d heard enough.

So he changed the subject and began explaining how he was in the midst of taking his company public. Then he handed me some documents, to illustrate what a terrific deal he was getting. I studied them dutifully, although I found it difficult to focus. Apparently something had clicked off in my brain insofar as Wall Street was concerned too, and I failed to get that usual rush as I looked through his papers.

Then we climbed into his black Mercedes and he drove me to my condo, which was just down the road from the rehab. It wasn’t actually part of Talbot Marsh, but Doug had a deal worked out with the management company that ran the complex, and about a third of the fifty semiattached units were occupied by Talbot’s patients. Another profit center, I figured.