Macinations

After seeing David Gordon Green's Undertow, I want to embrace the bright falling late afternoon Chicago light and walk north on Michigan Avenue toward the 66. But I decide to pause at the Mac Store and clear up the rest of the day's business on one of the 14 dedicated-internet iMacs on the second floor. I'm expecting to run into a recently unemployed friend who's been making the place his own drop-by office, but he's elsewhere. The place smells of freshly printed brochures. The security guard is smirking. A Peter Dinklage lookalike, down to the scruffy beard, with blonde accents in his hair, has his eyes pressed right up to one monitor, checking MSN Espanol; three very young faces are clustered around another, murmuring in German and someone's talking in Russian on a cellphone. Even with summer going, going, gone, European tourists taking advantage of the weak dollar also know where to find free stuff.