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Sean can't understand why his boss, John Chang, has an unreasoning hatred for him, a red-headed gweilo who has come to work for a Hong Kong newspaper as part of what appears to be a gentle descent into mediocrity and self-recrimination over a disintegrated relationship with a woman he now loves and hates in equal measure.

Sean, though, begins a very Eastern-flavored process of enlightenment when he encounters an old man smoking an "enemy" pipe -- a pipe that allows the smoker to know his enemy. And Sean does indeed come to know John Chang, whose name he writes on a slip of paper before shredding it into the pipe's bowl, including vivid memories of sexual encounters and food preferences.

A very refreshing aspect of this short story is that it is not a standard tale of revenge, as much as Sean may have assumed that was the path he was following at the beginning. Instead, we get an ending of reconciliation between the narrator and his boss, rather than what could easily have been a corny, vengeful conclusion, or a typical "twist" ending with some bloody coda striking Sean down.

Steve Davis is a Visiting Professor of English with Devry University.