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By Root 1299 0

letters from around the world. Walker introduced them to Dr. Lamartine, a lean, skull-faced psychiatrist, who explained that Leonard was presently under heavy sedation. They were administering an antipsychotic manufactured by Rhône-Poulenc and not available in the States. He had had excellent results with the drug in the past, and saw no reason why the present case would be different. The clinical results of the drug were so outstanding, in fact, that the FDA’s refusal to approve it was a mystery—or perhaps not so mysterious, he added in a tone of professional complaint, given that the drug was not American-made. At that point he seemed to remember Leonard. His physical injuries were as follows: chipped teeth, bruises to the face, a broken rib, and other minor abrasions. “He is sleeping now,” the doctor said. “You can go in and see him, but please let him sleep.”

Madeleine went in alone. Before parting the curtain around the bed, she could smell the tobacco vaporizing from Leonard’s skin. She almost expected him to be sitting up and smoking in bed, but the person she found was neither the erratic, wild Leonard nor the shaken, withdrawn one, neither manic nor depressive but merely inert, an accident victim. An intravenous tube ran into his arm. The right side of Leonard’s face was swollen; his split upper lip had been sutured, the flesh around it deep purple, beginning to crust. The doctor had told her not to wake him, but she bent over him and gently lifted his upper lip. What she saw made her gasp: both of Leonard’s front teeth had been cracked off at the root. Pink tongue glistened behind the gap.

What had happened was never entirely clear. Leonard was too out of it to remember the final thirty-six hours. From the Casino de Monte-Carlo he’d gone to the restaurant where the Swiss bankers were having dinner. He had no money, but he convinced them that he had a foolproof method of counting cards. After dinner, they took him to the Loews casino, an American place, and gave him seed money. The agreement was to split the winnings fifty-fifty. This time, either by design or by luck, Leonard did well at first. He went on a little streak. Soon he was up a thousand dollars. At that point the night grew wilder. They left the casino and visited a series of bars. The bankers’ girlfriends were still there, or maybe they had left. Or he was with another group of bankers by then. At some point, he returned to Loews. The dealer there used only a single deck. Despite his mania, or because of it, Leonard managed to count cards and keep them straight in his head. He was perhaps insufficiently secretive about what he was up to, however. After an hour, the pit boss arrived and kicked Leonard out of the casino, warning him never to come back. By this time Leonard was up nearly two thousand dollars. And it was here his memory faded out. The rest of the story Madeleine pieced together from police reports. After getting kicked out of Loews the final time, Leonard had been seen at an “establishment” in the same neighborhood. Sometime the next day, he ended up at the Hôtel de Paris with a group of people who may or may not have been the Swiss bankers. At some point, drinking in their adjoining rooms, Leonard had made a bet that he could jump from one balcony to the other next door. This was only on the second floor, fortunately. He’d taken off his shoes to do this, but didn’t make it. He slipped, hitting his cheek and mouth against the balcony railing and falling to the ground below. Bleeding, half out of his mind, he’d wandered off down the beach. At one point he’d taken off his shirt and gone for a swim. It was when he came out of the sea and tried to reenter the hotel that the police had picked him up.

The French antipsychotic was indeed a wonder drug. Within two days Leonard was lucid again. He was so full of remorse, so horrified by his behavior and his attempt to alter his medications, that he spent Madeleine’s visits either apologizing to her or mute with regret. She told him to forget about it. She said it wasn’t his fault.

For the duration