downtown

That weekend the city blushed with a great heat wave but on Monday it rained, cooling the ache in the street__ burn.

Should I have a doughnut or my disgusting cardboard?_ asked Gwynn, as she drew up languidly before me at a study table in a bookstore on State Street, raising a puffed rice cake in the air. My eyes narrowed attentively at her face, but as I hesitated, she announced eagerly, __isgusting cardboard it is!

You know, sometimes I think this is just not it,_ he said, his glasses flashing from the early night__ light. He turned toward me in a thoughtful pause.__ou know what I mean, Tom?_ he asked. __t__ just not.

Really, nobody was there?_ I asked.__ell, nobody important,_ he said, putting his glasses back on and blinking.

Do you want to achieve something or do you just want to make money?_ asked a nearby man in a white shirt to another man in a striped shirt. I waited for the answer as I slowly walked past them. __hy is it an either or question?_ the man in the striped shirt finally murmured philosophically under a sip of beer. They both stood there looking at each other in thought.

Don__ you think most of those kids think too much about who got an A or a B when they were in law school and what that means to an inflated G.P.A. and not enough about the world?_ asked Connor irrelevantly.

One of the professors told me last week that he feels bad teaching with the way the economy is now. __hat__ the point?_ he said. __ids aren__ getting jobs._ You never hear faculty talk that way. He did.

Look, girls know when they__e cute,_ he said. __ou don__ have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn__ have a job. I was like, __ow are you going to get a job there in this market?_ And she__ like, ____l wink and I__l smile._ She__ a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.

I remember when I was twenty-five,_ he said. __o client comes to you when you__e twenty-five. It__ like when you are looking for a doctor. You don__ want the new one that just graduated. You don__ want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys.

There have been times I have thought some dreams should never be dreamt, but I would hate a world where that was true.

I have been dwelling upon downtowns. This is not because mixtures of primary uses are unneeded elsewhere in cities. On the contrary they are needed, and the success of mixtures downtown (on in the most intensive portions of cities, whatever they are called) is related to the mixture possible in other part of cities.

It was a generation growing in its disillusionment about the deepening recession and the backroom handshakes and greedy deals for private little pots of gold that created the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As heirs to the throne, we all knew, of course, how bad the economy was, and our dreams, the ones we were told were all right to dream, were teetering gradually toward disintegration. However, on that night, everyone seemed physically at ease and exempt from life__ worries with final exams over and bar class a distant dream with a week before the first lecture, and as I looked around at the jubilant faces and loud voices, if you listened carefully enough you could almost hear the culmination of three years in the breath of the night gasp in an exultant sigh as if to say, __aw school was over at last!

I remember when I was twenty-five,â_ he said. â__o client comes to you when youâ__re twenty-five. Itâ__s like when you are looking for a doctor. You donâ__t want the new one that just graduated. You donâ__t want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys.

Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The __old Coast_ was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night. The world__ most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake__ edge.

The stars glittered in the sky and as the number of people at the party grew there were merging conversations and laughter and bodies moving in outlines around the kegs of beer in a curtsy of youth.

This is so funny,_ said Ellen, noticing the seating arrangement. __sn__ this funny? Tom, come sit next to Robin. Griffin, sit next to Laura._ I stood up and sat next to Robin while Griffin brought his chair over to Laura. __hat__ better,_ said Ellen. __sn__ that better?

I__e officially turned into a loser,_ she whispered cynically. ____ looking forward to going home and having cereal for dinner and walking Mitchell and studying a little and then going to sleep. I__e had my __oing out and having fun_ quota for the year, I guess, and it__ June.

I don__ think I__e ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don__ think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend.___ow would you introduce her?_ I asked.____ just going to say her name,_ he said.