He was sitting on the bench on his street reading The Walking Dead when the stranger approached him.
“Hi there. Reading a comic, huh?” she asked.
“Yup.”
“In public?”
“Yeah, that’s the general idea.”
“You know Read a Comic in Public Day was yesterday, right?”
He looked over his copy of The Walking Dead and raised his eyebrows.
“You’re a day late,” she said with a sly smile.
“I worked all day yesterday. A double. And it doesn’t have to be Read a Comic in Public Day to read a comic in public. Maybe I sit here every Sunday and read. Maybe I read novels, literature, classics, and everything else on Sundays. Maybe this week just happens to be a comic.”
“Maybe,” she said with a hint of doubt, “But I doubt it,” she finished as she sat next to him. “Walking Dead, huh? Like zombies?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“True, true. So what did you read sitting here last week? War and Peace? Great Gatsby, perhaps?”
His face turned the slightest hint of red. “The Last Man,” he mumbled.
“Thought so,” she smiled.
She riffled through her bag and pulled out an earlier copy of The Walking Dead.
“Mind if I join you? I worked a double yesterday too.”
“Sure.”
She opened it to page one. “Just don’t tell me what happens. You’re ahead of me.”
He continued to read, but now with a big smile on his face.
A Flash of Inspiration 