The strip mall has a music school and I take my daughter to it weekly for a year. At the edge of the lot is a stand of eucalyptus trees with a nest of vultures. They shit all over the parking space closest to it. Anyone who parks there never makes that mistake again. The stores inhabiting the L-shape strip are the music school, a military recruitment office, a discount cigarette store, and a real estate office. Each real estate agent drives a shiny yellow or red Hummer as there is a real estate boom. In the last space is a Boba tea shop.

I drive north from my town, a sleepy and tony East Bay suburb. I can see the vultures circling as I approach the street to take a right. It’s creepy energy. I have nothing against vultures, the roadkill cleaners of America, but they’re big and have ugly heads.

Across the street is an enormous mall anchored by Sears, Macy’s, and JCPenney. It has enough parking for a stadium and the spots are never full. I rarely go in but have bought Doc Maarten’s at Hot Topic on the lower level, managing to dodge the Cinnabon. I don’t feel like driving over there and walking into the Gap or Sears to turn around again, and I get a lot more out of sitting in my car and watching the people and vultures come and go.

Toward the end of the tenure of Sydney’s enrollment at the school, the economy turns sour. The real estate office closes amid the mortgage crisis. I learned that there is no downturn in an economy that causes anyone to smoke less or stop. I never see anyone other than a military officer enter or exit the Recruiting Center. No one got recruited on my watch. The Boba shop started great and got better. Every teenager spends their last dollar on sugary drinks after school.

My daughter leaves the music school after the guitar teacher tells me she has become a more skilled player than he is— she can “do the thumb over the neck of the guitar thing like Jimi Hendrix,” he tells me. I write a final check to the teacher, not sorry that she won’t go back.