Beloved Enemy by Eric Van Lustbader

about it,” Dandy said, “but sometimes I need to.”
    Redbird had been wounded severely during their joint mission of revenge. He had presented himself as a target so that Dandy could creep up from behind and blow the murderer’s head to smithereens. She had done it, Redbird had swept her off her feet and, though he had been shot three times, had carried her away from the scene of their crime. Between the adrenaline and the endorphins thundering through him, his shoulder had remained numb until an hour later, after her crying jag, when she had taken him to her cousin, a surgeon of some renown. He had gone into shock and was laid on the surgeon’s operating table. At her cousin’s direction, Dandy had covered him with blankets, and then, a syringe sliding into his vein, he had lost consciousness.
    When he came to, his right shoulder was heavily bandaged, the pain was a red pulse behind his eyes. Dandy held his hand; her cousin had handed him the three bullets he had pried out of the flesh of Redbird’s right shoulder. Small caliber. Some minor muscle damage, that was all. Painkillers and a strong antibiotic. Lucky. Redbird had thrown the painkillers away. He’d be no good to anyone doped up, especially himself.
    Redbird padded into the bedroom, the walls and ceiling a deep, glossy aubergine, the bed huge, a semicircle, like the moon. “What do you need to say?”
    She was at his closet, pulling a shirt and trousers of Thai silk off hangers. She liked choosing his clothes. “I don’t understand why.”
    He pulled on underpants. “Why what?”
    “Why you did what you did.” She began to button his shirt after he had shrugged it on.
    “Why do you ask me this question when I’ve answered it so many times before?”
    “Because.”
    He grunted. “That’s a child’s answer.”
    “I am a child,” she said, “in some respects.”
    He eyed her as he took his trousers from her. “In others, you’re older than I am.”
    “Bangkok does that to you.”
    He sat on the bed while he pulled on socks so thin his skin shone through the close-knit mesh. Midway through, he stopped, elbows on knees. When he patted the bed next to him, she came and sat beside him. Her hands were clasped in her lap, her back rigid, like a schoolgirl awaiting a test score.
    Redbird looked out at the river and the golden temple beyond. Gongs announced the appearance of a line of saffron-robed monks. “I did it because of you.” He could not bear to look at her while he spoke of such intimate things. “Because a girl like you—no, that’s not right—because you shouldn’t have to bear the loss of your father, because he died alone and in darkness, because there was no justice in his death.”
    “He crossed the wrong people.” Her voice was much softer than it had been in the bathroom, carrying with it the whisper of silk against skin. “My father was not a bad man, but nor was he a good one.”
    “He needed money for you and your brothers. As you say, he got caught up with the wrong people.”
    “He was foolish.” There was no anger in her voice, only regret.
    “And why should you have to pay for his foolishness?” Redbird looked at her now, because it had become impossible for him not to. “This man did not get the money your father owed him, so he took his pound of flesh. But do you imagine he would have stopped there? He wanted your father’s death and his money. If we hadn’t stopped him, he would have come after your brothers and then you.”
    “And you could not allow that to happen.”
    “No.”
    “And again I ask, why?”
    “The brown loafers.”
    Dandy went and fetched them, along with a shoehorn carved from a water buffalo horn.
    Redbird slipped the shoes on. They felt good, like being reacquainted with an old friend. There was nothing left to do. He set the shoehorn aside, took a deep breath, and let it slowly out.
    He stood, looking down at Dandy. Then he held out his hand. As she slipped hers into it, he said,