The Key to Midnight

this time.' She put a glass of ice water on the counter.
        Mariko turned the glass slowly in her small hands, but she didn't drink from it.
        Joanna admired the woman's natural grace, which transformed every ordinary act into a moment of theater. Mariko was thirty, two years younger than Joanna, with big, dark eyes and delicate features. She seemed to be unaware of her exceptional good looks, and her humility enhanced her beauty.
        Mariko had come to work at the Moonglow Lounge one week after opening night. She'd wanted the job as much for the opportunity to practice her English with Joanna as for the salary. She'd made it clear that she intended to leave after a year or two, to obtain a position as an executive secretary with one of the larger American companies with a branch office in Tokyo. But six years later, she no longer found Tokyo appealing, at least not by comparison with the life she now enjoyed.
        The Moonglow had worked its spell on Mariko too. It was the main interest of her life as surely as it was the only interest in Joanna's.
        Strangely, the insular world of the club was in some ways as sheltering and safe as a Zen monastery high in a remote mountain pass. Nightly, the place was crowded with customers, yet the outside world did not intrude to any significant extent. When the employees went home and the doors closed, the lounge - with its blue lights, mirrored walls, silver-and-black art deco appointments, and appealing air of mystery - might have been in any country, in any decade since the 1930s. It might even have been a place in a dream. Both Joanna and Mariko seemed to need that peculiar sanctuary.
        Besides, an unexpected sisterly affection and concern had developed between them. Neither made friends easily. Mariko was warm and charming - but still surprisingly shy for a woman who worked in a Gion nightclub. In part she was like the retiring, soft-spoken, self-effacing Japanese women of another and less democratic age. By contrast, Joanna was vivacious, outgoing - yet she also found it difficult to permit that extra degree of closeness that allowed an acquaintance to become a friend. Therefore, she'd made a special effort to keep Mariko at the Moonglow, regularly increasing her responsibilities and her salary; Mariko had reciprocated by working hard and diligently. Without once discussing their quiet friendship, they had decided that separation was neither desirable nor necessary.
        Now, not for the first time, Joanna wondered, Why Mariko?
        Of all the people whom Joanna might have chosen for a friend, Mariko was not the obvious first choice - except that she had an unusually strong sense of privacy and considerable discretion even by Japanese standards. She would never press for details from a friend's past, never indulge in that gossipy, inquisitive, and revelatory chatter that so many people assumed was an essential part of friendship.
         There's never a danger that she'll try to find out too much about me.
        That thought surprised Joanna. She didn't understand herself. After all, she had no secrets, no past of which to be ashamed.
        With the glass of dry sherry in her hand, Joanna came out from behind the bar and sat on a stool.
        'You had a nightmare again,' Mariko said.
        'Just a dream.'
        'A nightmare,' Mariko quietly insisted. 'The same one you've had a thousand other nights.'
        'Not a thousand,' Joanna demurred.
        'Two thousand? Three?'
        'Did I wake you?'
        'It sounded worse than ever,' Mariko said.
        'Just the usual.'
        "Thought I'd left the TV on.'
        'Oh?'
        'Thought I was hearing some old Godzilla movie,' Mariko said.
        Joanna smiled. 'All that screaming, huh?'
        'Like Tokyo being smashed flat again, mobs running for their lives.'
        'All right, it was a nightmare, not just a dream. And worse than usual.'
        'I worry about you,' Mariko said.
        'No need to worry. I'm a tough girl.'
        'You saw him again… the man with the steel fingers?'
        'I never see his face,' Joanna said wearily. 'I've never seen anything at all but his hand, those god-awful metal fingers. Or at least that's all I remember seeing. I guess there's more to the nightmare than that, but the rest of it never stays with me after I wake up.' She shuddered and sipped some sherry.
        Mariko put a hand on Joanna's