Wherever you went in Beijing, you were liable to run into Patton in some café – the 6-foot man in the corner, wearing a big brown jacket with millions of pockets and tapping away on his famous old IBM laptop. And you could be sure that his laptop would be plugged into the only available socket on the wall, the cable trailing across the floor like a vine, climbing over chic Beijingers drinking their overpriced cappuccinos, intent only on reaching its ultimate destination: Patton's messy but clever brain.

I went back to scribbling on my napkin. Maybe I should call Patton and see if he wanted to get something to eat. But he probably wouldn't want to. Patton didn't eat much, or not as much as I did anyway. You see, that was the problem: not very many people ate as much food as I did. Whenever anyone had a meal with me, they ended up spending far more time and money on it than they wanted. I knew I ate too much, but I couldn't help it. I was ravenous all the time.

In the end, I decided to give Patton a call anyway. Needless to say, he was in some café.

'Which one?' I asked, getting ready to go.

'The café in the Foreign Business University,' he said. 'The Get Ahead Café, have you been yet? They just opened it.'

'Get Ahead Café?'

'Yes. It's great here, they serve you free tea.'

'Sounds good. But don't you want to eat something?'

I could hear him hesitating.

'Well, I'm not in an eating mood,' said Patton. 'But if you're really desperate, we can go to a restaurant and you can eat.'

'That would be great. Do you fancy Western food or Chinese food?'

'You decide, since you're the one who's going to be eating.'

I could sense Patton was getting a bit impatient with me.

'In that case, let's go to Chong Qin Gold Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant on the Third North Ring Road,' I said. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, had I been missing their spicy duck soup.

'Chong Qin Red Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant on the Third North Ring Road,' Patton tried to repeat.

'No, not Red Mountain, Gold Mountain. Chong Qin Gold Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant on the Third North Ring Road,' I corrected him.

Sometimes Patton's Chinese got muddled, especially with names.

'Okay, whatever goddamn mountain it is, I'll see you there in one hour.'

I was just about to leave when I realised I would have to walk past this geeky young couple perched near my table. The two of them were all over each other, spectacles knocking together, lips glued together like sticky dates. It was embarrassing to look. I tried so hard to avoid staring that I got a crick in my neck.

Spectacle Boy: What blood type are you?

Spectacle Girl: Type B.

Spectacle Boy: That's a selfish blood type.

Spectacle Girl: But you said I was nice and sweet.

Spectacle Boy: I do think you're nice and sweet.

Spectacle Girl: But now you know my blood type. You still have time to reconsider your position.

Spectacle Boy: I don't regret anything.

Spectacle Girl: If that's what you want, we can go our separate ways when we leave this place.

Spectacle Boy: I told you, I don't regret anything.

I took a deep breath and dashed past them to the door.

'The Theory of Relativity!' announced Patton as soon as he arrived at my table at the Chong Qin Gold Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant. He took off his multi-pocketed big brown jacket, and put his famous laptop on the table.

'Theory of what?' I had no idea what he was talking about.

'Einstein,' said Patton. 'The Theory of Relativity. So, last month I told my girlfriend to come back and live with me. But now, of course, I want to leave her again. I can't do my own thing any more. I have to switch off the light before midnight so she can get her sleep, and I have to wake up before nine to clean the kitchen and take a shower. When I lived alone, I didn't give a damn about dirt – my own, or the kitchen's. It's like being a married couple, it bores me to death. But it's all my fault – I was the one who asked her to come back because I was scared of being lonely.'

'But, what's this got to do with the Theory of Relativity?' I was confused.

'Don't you think that is the Theory of Relativity?'

'Sounds more like the Theory of Independence,' I said.

'Whose Theory of Independence?'

'Oh, I don't know. Maybe that American President's. Didn't he write some Theory of Independence?'

'Okay, Fenfang, let's have some beer.'

But I didn't feel like having beer, somehow beer doesn't make people happy.

'What about having some sake?' I suggested. 'Sake is light, it makes you light-hearted.'

'Shit, that's way too expensive. Let's have beer, and we'll make it the cheapest one too – Revolution Beer.'

I nodded and Patton ordered us two Revolution Beers in his formal Chinese.

'What happened to that wild ex-boyfriend of yours?' he asked as he lifted the bottle to his mouth.

I thought about Xiaolin and felt like it was a story from a previous incarnation. Since I moved to Haidian, I hadn't heard from him. He didn't know the phone number of my new flat, and I had changed my mobile. My nights were no longer interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.

Without answering, I changed the subject.

'Listen, Patton, you're American. What do you know about Tennessee Williams's writing technique?' I asked.

'You want to know about Tennessee Williams? Jesus, he's as old as a dinosaur, I must have read him when I was twelve.'

'So you mean he already died?'

'Oh, ages ago. He choked on a bottle top.'

'He did what?' I was horrified.

'Yes, a disgraceful way to die. He was a very sad man. He was an alcoholic and a homosexual, his lover died long before him, from cancer. He lived almost completely alone for his last twenty years

Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, I didn't want to hear depressing things about Tennessee Williams. I wanted to hear about his Streetcar of Desire, and his method for writing first drafts. And if this Williams guy's life was really as tough as Patton made out, I wanted to discover that fact for myself.

I broke off the conversation and turned my attention to the menu. Summoning the waitress, I ordered us the spicy duck soup hotpot. There would be tons of chillies and garlic in the broth. Patton and I could enjoy torturing our tongues instead of dwelling on the sad life of Tennessee Williams.

Almost immediately a large, steaming pot arrived. We began sweating like the soup in front of us, and Patton started taking off layers of clothes until I could see his chest hair through his thin, damp shirt. I did the same, and kept stripping until there was nothing reasonable left to take off. The other customers just stared at us.

With his face red and dripping wet, Patton said, 'Fenfang, I have a great idea for a script.'

'Oh? Has it got anything to do with drinking duck soup?'

Patton nodded. 'Yes, definitely. It starts like this. Two aliens arrive from another planet to study humankind. They land on Beijing 's Third Ring Road, take a look around, and transform themselves into an American and a Chinese scriptwriter. They're starving, so they head for the nearest restaurant, the Chong Qin Red Mountain, and order spicy Ma La hotpot. The food is so hot that they start removing bits of their equipment, until they realise they've become the centre of attention. Suddenly they get worried that their true identities might be discovered.

'And then?'

'I don't know, I haven't got that far yet. But anyway it's about these two aliens at the Chong Qin Red Mountain Ma La Hotpot Restaurant, trying to bring some civilisation to this earth.'

' Not Red Mountain, Gold Mountain,' I said. My mouth was stuffed with seaweed and duck. But even as I was swallowing it, I still felt hungry, even when the food dropped into my stomach.