She had opened the restaurant late.
In hindsight, that was obviously the cause of this whole madness.
She had opened the restaurant late, and that was obviously why there was a man claiming to be an alien bleeding all over the couch.
Jiang Ailan rarely described herself as superstitious, but there were some days when logic and normal reasoning had clearly left the building, and when that happened, she tended to cling to any sort of links she could conjure up.
"What," she said as she observed the kettle with the determination of a staring-contest champion. "Did you say your name was, again, er…?"
The man, to be fair to him, was making a tremendous effort not to ruin her couch with his blood, and she appreciated that.
"I'm the Doctor," he replied.
"The Doctor?" she repeated.
"The Doctor," he confirmed.
If there was one thing Ailan had learnt since moving to this particular city in this particular country in this particular part of the world, it was that people named their children all sorts of things. Vogue. Princess. Nirvana. Blip. Ellyza. George. But none of those involved the definite particle, and that made her curious.
"That's not a name."
"It certainly is not, but the fact remains that I am the Doctor."
"Well," she said finally. "What kind?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What kind of doctor are you? Paediatrician? Radiographer? Cardiologist?" She squinted at him. "You're not one of those fruity academics who claim to be doctors just because they have a PhD, are you?"
She had a son-in-law like that, and she hated him. Studying social sciences for seven years, whether at Cambridge or at GMIT, she had decided early into her relationship with the man, did not a doctor make, and every time the subject came up, she dismissed it with that same snort and shake of her head that had served her well in life – from battlefield to dentist's waiting room, no one was left unaffected by the snort and head-shake.
"No," he said. "I am not."
Well, there was that.
She tore her eyes away from the kettle, glanced into the sitting room, and regretted it. He was pointing a shiny object at her television and muttering to himself.
He was obviously, Ailan decided, insane. And therefore, he ought to be approached with a certain degree of caution, as one might a – a – a rabid badger. Yes. A rabid badger.
Then something occurred to her, and she had to lean into the sitting room, regretting now that she had left her umbrella by the front door of her apartment. She felt like she needed a weapon – this man towered over her in the way that most did.
"Xiansheng. Nin hui shuo Putonghua ma?"
Because, of course, she had spent the entire conversation speaking to him in the fluent Chinese she slipped back into when stressed or perturbed by an unusual event.
And he, a pale, English-accented crazy doctor, had replied.
"Shuo," he replied, still fluent. And then , as the screwdriver he held began to buzz, her television began to flicker, which really shouldn't have happened, because she plugged it out every night before bed, in case it spontaneously combusted, and what with the blue phonebox and the blood and the bow-tied man, she hadn't had the chance to plug it back in.
The old woman nodded. Stepped back into the kitchen. Shut the door. Made the tea.
And then returned to the living room. If there was one thing Jiang Ailan liked, it was a mystery.