The Longer The Fall by Aviva Gat (best new books to read txt) 📗

“Well this is certainly an upgrade,” Madeline commented to him. He was wearing a dirty ripped T-shirt that said Smith and Sons Landscaping on the back.

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in,” he responded. Madeline instantly recognized the quote. She had just seen the play recently and had also been struck by that line in Les Misérables.

“One definitely needs immensity to dream in when calling this a garden,” she said about their little patch of dirt. She was struck that her landlord would have a landscaper come to beautify the dirt patch. This was the same landlord who had taken months to fix her air conditioning, suggesting she sleep with bags of ice in her bed while she waited for his technician to be available, and refused to put in a new lock on the brownstone’s front door after someone jammed it. “Is Smith and Sons Landscaping doing some volunteering in beautifying the neighborhood?”

“Doing it as a favor to my uncle, your landlord, I guess,” Hunter said. “Hope it makes you smile when you come and go.” Madeline blushed and smiled at him, noticing his strong arms, short curly hair and deep dark skin. Then she went into the brownstone, walked up the three flights of stairs and went to sleep.

The next time she saw Hunter, she was in a friend’s dorm room at school. It was a Saturday evening and they had just ordered delivery from P’s Diner, the place with the best burgers in all of Manhattan if you asked any Columbia student. When the doorbell rang, there was Hunter in a P’s Diner t-shirt standing with a brown bag that had grease stains soaking through the bottom corners.

“Jean Valjean,” Madeline said, calling him the lead character in the play he had quoted at their last meeting. “What are you doing here?”

“Delivering burgers,” he said with a smile. Madeline wasn’t sure if he recognized her, she was focused on his white teeth surrounded by his thick lips.

“Landscaper by day, food delivery man by night,” Madeline commented as she took the burgers from him and handed him the money. She was suddenly self-conscious about the tip she and her friends had contributed for their dinner. Did it make her look like some cheap, privileged, college student?

“I try to be well-rounded,” Hunter responded. “That’s what you call it, right?”

Again, Madeline blushed and thanked him, as she closed the door and brought the burgers to her friends. For the next few weeks, Madeline ordered burgers whenever her college budget would allow it, but sadly, P’s Diner apparently had multiple deliverymen and Hunter hadn’t been the one to bring her orders.

The next time she saw him, she was sitting on the stairs outside of her apartment. Her lock was jammed and her key got stuck inside, leaving her locked outside of her apartment. She called her landlord, who as usual, was angry for the disturbance and had to be strong armed into helping. After a heated conversation, he promised he’d get a locksmith over to her soon. She needed to study, but her books were inside. Every minute wasted could be docking her grades that semester. She’d been waiting for more than two hours when Hunter showed up.

“Don’t tell me you’re a locksmith,” Madeline said when she saw him.

“I’m not,” he responded. “But I’m good with my hands and my uncle asked a favor. No guarantees I can fix the issue.”

“Well that’s promising,” Madeline said with fake annoyance. Being stuck outside her apartment wasn’t as frustrating anymore now that Hunter was there. Hunter fiddled with the lock, tried pulling out the key and even tried breaking into the apartment, but all attempts failed.

“I think you need a real locksmith,” he said after thirty minutes of effort seemed to make the door even more stuck. “I have a friend I can call.”

Madeline sighed deeply as she thought about more hours of waiting for Hunter’s friend to come. Hunter called his friend who promised to come soon, and then he looked at Madeline. She must have looked like a pathetic Ivy League princess, sitting there with her backpack and books that she had just gotten from the library.

“Do you want to get something to eat while we wait?” Hunter asked. “Anything but burgers.”

Of course she wanted to get something to eat. She gathered her backpack and her books, which Hunter offered to carry for her and he looked silly doing it, and the two of them walked a few blocks to a small deli that Hunter recommended. “The best chicken and waffles,” he promised and he was right. The chicken was just the right amount of salty and crispy and the waffles were thick, fluffy and soaked up the maple syrup they slathered on top.

While they ate, Hunter asked her about the books she was carrying – The Clash of Civilizations for her International Relations course, an anthropology textbook (for one of her general education requirements which she had put off in previous terms and absolutely hated), and a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (reading materials not prescribed by any professor).

“This book is an insult to our society,” Hunter had said about the last one, holding up the beat-up paperback. Afraid that Hunter would judge her, she said it was for a class she was taking on capitalism and literature and she quickly threw the book back in her bag. She would never mention to him that she found the story fascinating and honestly believed that society could be making its way towards the downtrodden dystopia described in the novel. It would be years before she would tell anyone outside of her Republican circle about her love of the book.

Hunter said he always thought anthropology would be fascinating and Madeline joked that maybe with a different professor it