The Key to Midnight

kisses.
        On their last night in Japan, they didn't sleep at all. They wrapped the hours of the night around them, as though time were a brightly shining thread and they were a wildly spinning spool.

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    44
        
        In Zurich, in the magnificent house above the lake, Ignacio Carrera was working diligently on his calves, thighs, buttocks, hips, waist, lower back and abdominal muscles. He'd been lifting weights for two hours, with little time off to rest. After all, when he rested there was no pain, and he wanted the pain because it tested him and because it was an indication of muscle-tissue growth.
        Seeking pain at the limits of his endurance, he began his last exercise of the day: one more set of Jefferson lifts. He straddled the barbell, keeping his feet twenty-four inches apart. He squatted, grasped the bar with his right hand in front of him and his left hand behind, and inhaled deeply. Exhaling, he rose to a standing position, bringing the bar up to his crotch. His calves and thighs throbbed painfully.
        'One,' said Antonio Paz.
        Carrera squatted, hesitated only a second, and rose with the bar again. His legs seemed to be on fire. He was gasping. His pumped-up muscles bulged like thick steel cables. While Paz counted, Carrera squatted, rose, squatted, and rose again, and the pain was at first a flame and then a roaring blaze.
        Other men lifted weights to improve their health. Some did it just to have their pick of the women who pursued bodybuilders. Some did it to gain improved strength for martial arts, some merely to prove their perseverance, some as a game, some as a sport.
        To Ignacio Carrera, those were all secondary reasons.
        'Seven,' said Paz.
        Carrera groaned, striving to ignore the pain.
        'Eight,' said Paz.
        Carrera endured the torture because he was obsessed with power. He enjoyed holding power of every kind over other people: financial, political, psychological, and physical power. His wealth would have meant nothing to him if he had been physically weak. He was able to break his enemies with his bare hands as well as with his money, and he enjoyed having that range of options.
        Ten,' said Paz.
        Carrera put down the barbells and wiped his hands on a towel.
        'Excellent,' Paz told him.
        'No.'
        Carrera stepped in front of a full-length mirror and posed for himself, studying every visible muscle in his body, searching for improvement.
        'Superb,' Paz said.
        'The older I get, the harder it becomes to build. In fact, I don't think I'm growing at all. Only thirty-eight, yet these days it's a battle just to stay even.'
        'Nonsense,' said Paz. 'You're in wonderful shape.'
        'Not good enough.'
        'Getting better and better.'
        'Never good enough.'
        'Madame Dumont is waiting in the front room,' said Paz.
        'She can continue to wait.'
        Carrera left Paz and went upstairs to the master suite on the third floor.
        The ceiling was high, white, richly carved, with gold-leafed moldings. The fabric wallpaper was a two-tone gold stripe, and the wainscoting had been painted with a gray wash. The Louis XVI bed had a high headboard and a high footboard, and against the wall directly opposite the bed stood a matched pair of Louis XVI mahogany cabinets with painted tole plaques on the drawers and doors. One corner was occupied by an enormous eighteenth-century harp that was intricately carved, gold-leafed, and in perfect playing condition.
        Carrera sometimes joked that he was going to take harp lessons in order to be ready for Heaven when he was called, but he was aware that in his elegant bedroom he looked like an ape that had lumbered into the middle of a lady's tea party. The contrast between himself and his refined surroundings emphasized his wild, animal power - and he liked that.
        He stripped out of his sweat-damp shorts, went into the huge master bath, and spent ten minutes baking in the attached sauna. He thought about Madame Marie Dumont, who was surely tapping her foot impatiently downstairs, and he smiled. For another half an hour, he soaked in the big tub. Then he suffered through a brief icy shower to tone his skin, staying warm by picturing Marie down in the reception room.
        He toweled himself vigorously, put on a robe, and walked into the bedroom just as the telephone sounded. Paz