The Saved Seat
A bag makes an unusually confident customer. It occupies its chair without buying anything, apologising or wondering whether it belongs. The person standing beside it has considerably more difficulty. I like the small reversal in this drawing: making room begins when an object loses a privilege we had almost forgotten giving it.
There are reasonable explanations for the occupied chair. Someone may be expected; the floor may be wet. Strangers cannot know the story. But that uncertainty is precisely why a gesture matters. Moving the bag communicates something that an empty chair, by itself, cannot quite promise: you will not be an intrusion.
We often discuss belonging as though it were a quality a place possesses. Here it is an action, performed by someone already comfortable enough to sit down. Nobody has to become a friend. The conversation may go no further than a thank-you. Even so, the room has become a little easier to enter.