No Manners

I’m reading and writing at a café and this stranger comes up to my table. He looked like a nutty professor of the Asperger’s sort, the sort who couldn’t process the visual cues–the laptop, the books, the papers–that said I’m busy.

“What’re you working on?” he asks. I say “Stuff” as I stare in disbelief as he snatches one of the books off my table. “What kind of stuff?” he says. “Personal stuff,” I say with a look on my face that says, Who the hell are you, why are you talking to me, and more importantly, why are you touching my fucking stuff?

He shrugs his shoulders and walks off as if I’ve put HIM off…