So it was just the three of us this morning: the Bastard, OCD, and myself.

“You're being quiet this morning,” said OCD. “If you don't want to talk about your personal life, it's okay.”

I shrugged. “What's there to say, other than that my wife must have been sleep-talking during our wedding vows?”

“You think maybe she's having an affair?”

“No, Greg! Not a chance,” I said confidently. Of course she is!I thought. She's fucking that dimwitted Brooklynite Michael Burrico. A dunce like him was an easy target for a prospecting Duchess. “She's definitely not cheating. What's going on with us cuts much deeper than that.”

He smiled warmly. “Don't take offense; I'm just trying to make sense of it all. Usually, when this sort of thing happens, there's another man waiting in the wings. But, hey, what do I know, right?”

Now the Bastard chimed in: “Like Greg, I'm alsosympathetic to your plight, but the only thing you should be worried about now is your cooperation. Everything else is secondary.”

Yeah? What about my kids, asshole?

“Joel's right,” said OCD. “It's probably not a good time to be getting divorced. Maybe you and Nadine should wait a bit, until all the commotion dies down.”

“All right,” snapped the Bastard, “so let's get down to cases, then. Last time we spoke, the market had just crashed and you were out of a job. What happened next?”

What an asshole! I thought. I took a deep breath and said, “Well, I wouldn't actually say I was out of a job, because what I had at LF Rothschild wasn't really a job in the first place. I was a connector, which is the lowest of the low on Wall Street. All I did was dial the phone all day and try to get past the secretaries of wealthy business owners. It was a pride-swallowing siege—but one that I had no choice but to grin and bear. The only thing keeping me going was hope for the future.” I paused for effect. “And then came the crash.

“I still remember what it was like coming home that night on the express bus: You could've heard a pin drop. There was a certain fearin the air that I'd never experienced before. The media was sensationalizing things to the point of hysteria, predicting bank failures, massive unemployment, people jumping out of windows. It was the start of another Great Depression, they said.”

“A depression that never came,” added the Bastard, straight-A student of obvious history.

“Exactly,” I said. “It never came, although no one had any way of knowing that back then. Remember, the lasttime the market had crashed was in ‘29, and the depression came right on the heels of that. So it wasn't all that far-fetched to think it would happen again.” I paused for a moment. “Now, for people who'd actually grown upin the Great Depression—like my parents—the prospect was utterly terrifying, but for people like me, who'd only read about it in history books, it was simply unimaginable. So, whether you worked on Wall Street or Main Street that day, everyone was scared shitless what would happen next.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Everyone except Denise; she was as cool as a cucumber!”

“That's pretty impressive,” reasoned OCD, “considering how broke you two were.”

“Yeah,” I said quickly, “and it would have even been moreimpressive if she had the slightest idea the market had crashed.” I smiled ruefully.

The Bastard narrowed his eyes. “She hadn't heard it on the news?”

I shook my head slowly. “Denise never watched the news. She was more of a soap-opera girl than a news girl.” I paused for a moment, and a profound wave of sadness overtook me. Denise might have had her shortcomings, but she was still a great wife. And she was gorgeous, one of those dark-haired Italian beauties who every teenage boy fantasizes about in high school. She was a great wearer of black leather miniskirts and white cotton sweaters, the latter of which were softer than a baby's bottom.

Thinking back now, the way the two of us had cocooned ourselves in our tiny Bayside apartment had been pure magic. We had sworn eternal love for each other, certain that our love could conquer all. Yet, somehow, we'd managed to destroy that love. We allowed success and money to go to our heads. We allowed it to separate us, to eat away at us. Ultimately, it would turn herinto a world-class shopaholic and meinto a rip-roaring drug addict. And then came the Duchess—

“—still with us?” snapped the Bastard. “You need to take a break for a few minutes?” He offered me his sadistic warden's smile.

“No, I'm fine,” I said. “Anyway, Denise had no idea the market crashed, so the moment I walked through the door she threw her arms around me, as if I were a conquering hero. ‘Oh, my God!’ she said. ‘You're finally home! How was your first day as a stockbroker? Did you break the company record for the most stock sold?’”

OCD and the Bastard started chuckling.

I chuckled back. “Yeah—it was pretty funny, all right, except by mid-November we were down on our hands and knees, rolling up nickels, dimes, and quarters to pay for shampoo. But it wasn't until a month after the crash that I decided to throw in the towel and leave Wall Street.

“It was a Sunday morning, and Denise and I were sitting in the living room, like two zombies, looking through the help-wanted section. After a few minutes, I came across something that struck me as odd. ‘Check this out,’ I said to her. ‘There's a company advertising for stockbrokers, and they're not on Wall Street; they're on Long Island.’

“She looked at the ad and said, ‘What does PT, FTmean?’

“‘Part time, full time,’ I answered, and I found myself wondering what kind of brokerage firm hired part-time stockbrokers? I'd never heard of that before. Still, given my circumstances it seemed like a reasonable idea. So I said to her, ‘Working part-time might not be such a bad thing. Maybe I could earn a few bucks while I'm looking for something else,’ to which she nodded in agreement.

“Anyway, neither of us thought much of it at the time, and when I called the next morning, I was completely turned off. A gruff male voice answered the phone and said, ‘Investors’ Center. How can I helpya?’ and I knew right on the spot that it wasn't a switchboard operator. And the company's name sent shivers down my spine. I was used to names like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch, names that resonated with Wall Street.

“I could only imagine myself saying, ‘Hi, this is Jordan Belfort, calling from the Investors’ Center in Butt-Fuck, Long Island. I'm no closer to Wall Street than you are, so why don't you send me your hard-earned money? You'll probably never see it again!’”

“Very prophetic,” snapped the Bastard.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “although the Investors’ Center wasn't in Butt-Fuck, Long Island; it was in Great Neck, Long Island, which is actually a pretty nice part of town. The company was on the second floor of a three-story office building.” I paused for a moment. “You know, I remember pulling up to the building and feeling rather impressed. I was driving Denise's old piece-a-shit Datsun, which was the only car we had at the time, and I was saying to myself, ‘Hey, this place doesn't look so bad!’ But then the moment I stepped into the boardroom my jaw dropped.

“The space was much smaller than I'd anticipated. It was maybe twenty feet square, and there wasn't a single thing about it that resonated of Wall Street. There were no computer monitors, no sales assistants, no stockbrokers pacing back and forth. There was nothing but twenty old wooden desks—all of them weathered-looking and arranged haphazardly. Only five of the desks had brokers behind them, and there was no pump whatsoever, just a low-level murmur.

“I'd worn a suit and tie to my interview, and I was the only one in the boardroom dressed that way. Everyone else was wearing jeans and sneakers, with the exception of one guy. The only problem was that his suit looked like it came straight out of a Salvation Army box. To this day, in fact, the guy still sticks out in my mind, because of his dim-witted expression. He looked lobotomized. He was in his early thirties, and he had the greasiest black hair imaginable—as if he showered in motor oil and—”