“Is anyone sitting here?” he asks.

“No. Go ahead.”

I move my purse that I had placed there carelessly, not to intentionally ward off strangers.

I am distracted watching Steve Wilkos on the TV. No volume, just closed-caption, which lags, so I practice my lip-reading skills and test my accuracy with the captions that come a second later.

“Are you Korean?” the man asks in Korean.

“I am,” I reply in Korean, “but my Korean isn’t very good…”