The Key to Midnight Read Free Page A

and you're better than she was.'
        'You flatter me too much. You're a jazz buff?'
        'Mostly swing music.'
        'So we like the same corner of jazz.'
        Looking around at the crowd, he said, 'Apparently, so do the Japanese. I was told the Moonglow was the nightclub for transplanted Americans. But ninety percent of your customers are Japanese.'
        'It surprises me, but they love the music - even though it comes from an era they otherwise prefer to forget.'
        'Swing is the only music I've developed a lasting enthusiasm for.' He hesitated. 'I'd offer you a cognac, but since you own the place, I don't suppose I can do that.'
        'I’ll buy you one,' she said.
        He pulled out a chair for her, and she sat.
        A white-jacketed waiter approached and bowed to them.
        Joanna said, 'Yamada-san, burande wo ima omegai, shimasu. Remy Martin.'
         'Hai, hai,' Yamada said. 'Sugu.' He hurried toward the bar at the back of the big room.
        The American had not taken his eyes off her. 'You really do have an extraordinary voice, you know. Better than Martha Tilton, Margaret McCrae, Betty Van-'
        'Ella Fitzgerald?'
        He appeared to consider the comparison, then said, 'Well, she's really not someone you should be compared to.'
        'Oh?'
        'I mean, her style is utterly different from yours. It'd be like comparing oranges to apples.'
        Joanna laughed at his diplomacy. 'So I'm not better than Ella Fitzgerald.'
        He smiled. 'Hell, no.'
        'Good. I'm glad you said that. I was beginning to think you had no standards at all.'
        'I have very high standards,' he said quietly.
        His dark eyes were instruments of power. His unwavering stare seemed to establish an electrical current between them, sending an extended series of pleasant tremors through her. She felt not only as though he had undressed her with his eyes - men had done as much every night that she'd stepped onto the stage - but as though he had stripped her mind bare as well and had discovered, in one minute, everything worth knowing about her, every private fold of flesh and thought. She'd never before met a man who concentrated on a woman with such intensity, as if everyone else on earth had ceased to exist. Again she felt that peculiar combination of uneasiness and pleasure at being the focus of his undivided attention.
        When the two snifters of Remy Martin were served, she used the interruption as an excuse to glance away from him. She closed her eyes and sipped the cognac as if to savor it without distraction. In that self-imposed darkness, she realized that while he had been staring into her eyes, he had transmitted some of his own intensity to her. She had lost all awareness of the noisy club around her: the clinking of glasses, the laughter and buzz of conversation, even the music. Now all that clamor returned to her with the gradualness of silence reasserting itself in the wake of a tremendous explosion.
        Finally she opened her eyes. 'I'm at a disadvantage. I don't know your name.'
        'You're sure you don't? I've felt… perhaps we've met before.'
        She frowned. 'I'm sure not.'
        'Maybe it's just that I wish we'd met sooner. I'm Alex Hunter. From Chicago.'
        'You work for an American company here?'
        'No. I'm on vacation for a month. I landed in Tokyo eight days ago. I planned on spending two days in Kyoto, but I've already been here longer than that. I've got three weeks left. Maybe I'll spend them all in Kyoto and cancel the rest of my schedule. Anata no machi wa hijo ni kyomi ga arimatsu.'
        'Yes,' she said, 'it is an interesting city, the most beautiful in Japan. But the entire country is fascinating, Mr. Hunter.'
        'Call me Alex.'
        'There's much to see in these islands, Alex.'
        'Maybe I should come back next year and take in all those other places. Right now, everything I