All at once he stopped pacing, and he turned on his heel like a prosecuting attorney and looked at Danny. “So what do youhave to say for yourself, Porush? You know, you’re even more of a fucking retard than I thought you were—eating a goldfish in the middle of the boardroom! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Danny stood up and smiled, and said, “Come on, Max! It wasn’t as bad as it seems. The kid deserved—”
“Sit down and shut up, Porush! You’re a fucking disgrace, not just to yourself but to your whole fucking family, may God save them!” Mad Max paused for a brief instant, then added, “And stop smiling, God damn it! Those boiling teeth of yours are hurting my eyes! I need a pair of sunglasses to shield myself, for Chrissake!”
Danny sat down and closed his mouth nice and tight. We exchanged glances, and I found myself fighting a morbid urge to smile. But I resisted it—knowing it would only make matters worse. I glanced over at Kenny. He was sitting across from me, in the same chair Wigwam had sat in, but I failed to make eye contact with him. He was too busy staring at his own shoes, which, as usual, were in desperate need of a shine. In typical Wall Street fashion, he had his shirtsleeves rolled up, exposing a thick gold Rolex. It was the Presidential model—my old watch, in fact, the one the Duchess had made me discard because of its gaucheness. Nevertheless, Kenny didn’t look gauche or, for that matter, sharp. And that new military-style haircut of his made his blockhead look that much blockier. My junior partner, I thought: the Blockhead.
Meanwhile, a poisonous silence now filled the room, which meant it was time for me to put an end to this very madness, once and for all. So I leaned forward in my chair and dug deep into my fabulous vocabulary—extracting the sort of words I knew my father would respect most—and I said in a commanding voice, “All right, Dad, enough of this shit! Why don’t you calm the fuck down for a second! This is my fucking company, and if I have legitimate fucking business expenses, then I’m—”
But Mad Max cut me off before I could make my point. “You want me to calm down while you three retards act like kids in a candy store? You don’t think there’s any end in sight, do you? It’s all one giant fucking party to you three schmendricks; no rainy days on the horizon, right? Well, I’ll fucking tell you something—all this cock-and-bull horseshit of yours, the way you charge your personal expenses to this fucking company—I’m sick and tired of it!”
Then he paused and stared the three of us down—starting with me, his own son. At this particular moment he had to be wondering whether or not I was actually delivered by a stork. As he turned away from me I happened to catch a terrific look at him from just the right angle, and I found myself marveling at how dapper he looked today! Oh, yes, in spite of it all, Mad Max was very snazzy—favoring navy-blue blazers, spread British collars, solid navy neckties, and tan gabardine trousers, all custom-made and all starched and pressed to near perfection by the same Chinese laundry service he’d used for the last thirty years. He was a creature of habit, my father.
So there we sat, like good little schoolchildren, waiting patiently for his next verbal assault, which I knew wouldn’t come until he did one thing first: smoked. Finally, after a good ten seconds, he took an enormous pull from his Merit Ultra low-tar cigarette and expanded his mighty chest to twice its normal size, like a puffer fish trying to ward off a predator. Then he slowly exhaled and deflated himself back to normal size. His shoulders were still enormous, though, and his forward-leaning posture and thin layer of salt-and-pepper hair gave him the appearance of a five-foot-six-inch raging bull.
Then he tilted his head back and took an enormous pull from his Styrofoam cup and downed its fiery contents, as if it were no stronger than chilled Evian. He started shaking his head. “All this money being made and you three imbeciles blowing it like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a fucking travesty to watch. What do you three think, that I’m some sort of yes-man who’s just gonna roll over and play dead while you guys destroy this fucking company? Do you three have any idea of how many people count on this place for their fucking livelihood? Do you have any idea of the risk and exposure that…”
Mad Max went on and on in typical Mad Max fashion, but I tuned out. In fact, I found myself mesmerized by this wonderful ability he had to tie so many curses together with such little forethought and still make each sentence sound so very fucking poetic. It was truly beautiful the way he cursed—like Shakespeare with an attitude! And at Stratton Oakmont, where cursing was considered a high art form, to say that someone knew how to tie their curses together was a compliment of the highest order. But Mad Max took things to an entirely different level, and when he really got himself on a roll, like now, it gave his verbal tirades an almost pleasant ring to the ear.
Now Mad Max was shaking his head in disgust—or was it incredulity? Well, it was probably a bit of both. Whatever it was, he was shaking his head and explaining to us three retarded schmendricks that November’s American Express bill was $470,000, and only $20,000 of it, by his calculations, were legitimate business expenses; the rest were of a personal nature, or personal bullshit, as he put it. Then, in a most ominous tone, he said, “Let me tell you something right now—you three maniacs are gonna get your tits caught right in a wringer! You mark my fucking words—sooner or later those bastards from the IRS are gonna come marching down here and do a complete fucking audit, and you three retards are gonna be in deep shit unless someone puts a stop to all this madness. That’s why I’m hitting each of you personally for this bill.” He nodded in agreement with his own statement. “I’m not running it through the business—not one fucking penny of it—and that’s fucking final! I’m taking four hundred fifty thousand right out of your inflated fucking paychecks, and don’t even try to stop me!”
Why—the fucking nerve!I had to say something to him in his own language. “Hold your fucking horses right there, Dad! That’s a complete load of crap, what you’re saying! A lot of that shit is legitimate business expenses, whether you believe it or not. If you just stop fucking screaming for a second I’ll tell you what’s what and—”
But again he cut me right off, now turning his attack directly toward me: “And you, the so-called Wolf of Wall Street—the demented young Wolf. My own son! From my very fucking loins! How could it be? You’re the worst of the lot! Why the hell would you go out and buy two of the same fur coat, for eighty thousand dollars apiece? That’s right—I called that place, Allessandro’s House of Fucking Furs, because I thought it must be some sort of a mistake! But, no—you know what that Greek bastard down there told me?”
I humored him with a response: “No, Dad, what did he fucking tell you?”
“He told me you bought two of the same mink coat—the same color and style and everything!” With that, Mad Max cocked his head to one side and tucked his chin between his collarbones. He looked up at me with those bulging blue eyes of his, and he said, “What, one coat’s not enough for your wife? Or wait—let me guess—you bought the second mink for a prostitute, right?” He paused and took another deep pull from his cigarette. “I’ve had it up to here with all this cockamamie bullshit. You don’t think I know what EJ Entertainment is?” He narrowed his eyes accusingly. “You three maniacs are charging hookers to the corporate credit card! What kind of hookers take credit cards, anyway?”
The three of us exchanged glances but said nothing. After all, what was there to say? The truth was that hookers didtake credit cards—or at least ours did! In fact, hookers were so much a part of the Stratton subculture that we classified them like publicly traded stocks: Blue Chips were considered the top-of-the-line hooker, zeecrème de la crème. They were usually struggling young models or exceptionally beautiful college girls in desperate need of tuition or designer clothing, and for a few thousand dollars they would do almost anything imaginable, either to you or to each other. Next came the NASDAQs, who were one step down from the Blue Chips. They were priced between three and five hundred dollars and made you wear a condom unless you gave them a hefty tip, which I always did. Then came the Pink Sheet hookers, who were the lowest form of all, usually a streetwalker or the sort of low-class hooker who showed up in response to a desperate late-night phone call to a number in Screwmagazine or the yellow pages. They usually cost a hundred dollars or less, and if you didn’t wear a condom, you’d get a penicillin shot the next day and then pray that your dick didn’t fall off.