The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [188]
The evening got worse from there. After finishing the bottle of champagne mostly by himself, Leonard insisted on ordering another. When Madeleine refused to let him, he got angry and went down to the bar. He began buying drinks for the other patrons, a group of Swiss bankers and their girlfriends. When Madeleine went to find him an hour later, Leonard acted overjoyed to see her. He hugged and kissed her, over doing it.
“This is my beautiful bride,” he said. He introduced the bankers. “This is Till and Heinrich. And these girls’ names I forget, but I’ll never forget their pretty faces. Till and Heinrich know a great restaurant they’ll take us to. It’s the best in town, right, Till?”
“It’s very good,” the Swiss said. “A local secret.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to go to a place with any American tourists in it, you know what I mean? Or maybe we should go straight to the casino. Can you eat at the casino?” It was difficult to tell if the Europeans saw how strange he was acting or if they took his excessive familiarity as an American trait. They seemed amused by Leonard.
It was then that Madeleine did something she regretted. Rather than hauling Leonard off to see a doctor (though she had no precise idea how to do this), she went back upstairs to the room. Getting Leonard’s pills from where he’d left them, she had the hotel operator place a long-distance call to Dr. Perlmann’s number, which was written on the prescription label. Perlmann wasn’t in his office, but after Madeleine said it was an emergency, the secretary took the number of Madeleine’s hotel and promised that Dr. Perlmann would call her right back.
After fifteen minutes passed with no response, Madeleine went back down to the bar, but Leonard and the Swiss bankers were no longer there. She checked the hotel restaurant and the patio but found no sign of them. With growing alarm, she returned to the room to find that Leonard had been there while she was out. His suitcase was open and clothes were flung on the floor. There was no note from him. At that moment the phone rang. It was Perlmann.
Madeleine told Perlmann everything that had happened in a long rush of words.
“O.K., I need you to calm down,” Perlmann said. “Can you do that for me? I’m hearing a lot of anxiety in your voice. I can help you, but you need to calm down, O.K.?”
Madeleine gathered herself. “O.K.,” she said.
“Now, do you know where Leonard might be going?”
She thought for a moment. “The casino. He said he wanted to go gambling.”
“Listen to me,” Perlmann said, his voice steady. “What you need to do is get Leonard to the nearest hospital. He needs to be evaluated by a psychiatrist. Right away. That’s the first thing. They’ll know how to take care of him at the hospital. Once you get him there, give them my number.”
“What if he won’t go to the hospital?”
“You need to get him there,” Perlmann said.
The taxi driver sped down the corniche with his brights on. The road twisted back and forth. Sometimes the sea was in front of them, black and empty, and it seemed as if they might plunge over the cliff, but then the car swerved, and the lights of the city appeared, ever closer. Madeleine wondered if she should go to the police. She tried to think of how to say “manic-depressive” in French. The only word that came to mind, maniaque, sounded too severe.
The taxi entered the densely populated area around the harbor. The traffic grew heavier as they neared the casino. Surrounded by formal gardens and lighted fountains, the Casino de Monte-Carlo was a Beaux Arts construction, with fanciful wedding-cake towers and a domed copper roof. Lamborghinis and Ferraris were parked six deep outside, the lights of the marquee reflecting off their hoods. Madeleine had to show her passport for admission, citizens of Monaco being prohibited by law from entering the casino. She bought a ticket for the main gaming room and made her way inside.
As soon as she entered, she despaired of finding Leonard.