The tires were bald, officially, so I took the car to Costco to get new tires installed. It’s reasonably cheap, compared to other tire shops or even Walmart, but you can’t schedule the installation because they want you to go inside and buy $300 worth of frozen cow ribcages and some patio furniture and extra large sweatpants and some Glenn Beck books.

I did not want these things. So I found what looked to be a safe place to get a sandwich and do some editing work: a natural foods store with an attached cafe. I was halfway through my bland vegetarian sandwich when some weirdo called out from the counter, “Ooooooooooo, Ipad!” And then he ran over and started yelling nonsense at me. My mouth was full and I was at this point looking at my bank balance online, so I put the tablet computer back in the old foam netbook case and tried to be polite about saying Go Away.

Then he started on about my phone — a common, cheap, years-old basic mobile phone of no interest to anyone. It is the kind old people buy, specifically because it doesn’t do anything. He left for a while and started loudly discussing the regular cordless telephone behind the counter. I still don’t know if the guy was autistic or crazy or if this is normal now, in our weird empty era when the kinds of portable communication devices we carry are the main subject of conversation.

I fled, walking a mile across a series of giant empty parking lots separating the Costco from the other three big box strip malls. The Costco tire center has no indoor seating, just a single narrow bench outside in the direct Coachella Valley desert sun. I looked across the next parking lot and saw a shady oasis of some kind, not that far away. It’s the waiting area for a car wash. It is directly behind the giant blowers that dry off the wet cars, and the noise is like at that one parking lot at LAX directly beneath the landing runway. A woman sitting next to me is actually asleep, her head in her lap.