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

would be, but truthfully she thought the subject was as dull as the professors who studied it. Madeline didn’t want to talk about her classes—she thought about them enough already—but Hunter was interested in her thoughts on what she was learning. Oddly, Madeline had never thought about her courses in that way, she had only thought about them in the ways required to pass an exam or write a perfect paper. The conversation made her even more intrigued by Hunter, who seemed to defy everything a stranger might think of a tall, African American man who worked in landscaping, food delivery, and was handy enough with his hands that someone might think he could also perform the job of a locksmith.

By the time they finished, Hunter’s friend was already waiting for them at the brownstone, annoyed that Hunter wasn’t there when he arrived. He fixed the lock, letting Madeline into her apartment and leaving her with a feeling of disappointment that Hunter would also probably now leave.

“Everything good?” he asked standing at her doorstep. She nodded, realizing they never introduced themselves to each other.

“I’m Madeline, by the way,” she said. “So you know the next time we run into each other.”

“Hunter,” he responded. “If you’re interested, we can run into each other on Friday. My bro is performing at the Cat Club. Been there?”

Madeline shook her head. She’d never been to the Cat Club, but she’d walked by. There was always loud music, usually rap, and a line around the block. “Your bro?” she commented with a smile.

“Yeah, my little brother. He raps. The next Tupac if you ask any deaf person.” Hunter responded. “I promise he’s not so bad.”

Madeline agreed. That Friday, Hunter met her at the stoop in front of the flowers he had planted weeks ago and were then blooming, and he walked her to the Cat Club. They listened to his little brother rap, it wasn’t as terrible as Madeline expected, and she enjoyed the company. She only felt a little uncomfortable that her skin was several shades lighter than everyone else’s in the club, but everyone Hunter introduced her to was friendly and welcoming. No one seemed to pay her skin tone any mind.

Afterwards they went out to eat, Hunter paid, even when Madeline insisted they split the bill. She didn’t feel right, letting this man who worked two jobs pay for her when she was going to one of the country’s most expensive universities without a penny of financial aid. “I would never in a million years let you pay,” he once said to her later on. “I was raised to be a gentleman, and that means holding doors, paying and doing right by my woman.” His woman, she quickly became. Her friends didn’t understand it. When they were busy chasing the Wall Street type, she was going with Hunter to visit his friends’ ‘street art’, which to another person’s eye could look like graffiti. She went with him to underground poetry readings and ate the fried hush puppies Hunter’s mom would make and he would bring to her.

Hunter wasn’t educated like she was, but he was knowledgeable. He had grown up in Harlem, just blocks away from the university. He knew someone like him would never study there. Someone like him meaning the oldest of four boys being raised by a single mother in a two-bedroom apartment for which every month his mother fought for the rent. His mother was a cleaning lady, who trekked down to the Upper East Side daily, cleaning multiple apartments for people who lived in buildings with doormen and carpets out front. Her hands were always peeling from the cleaning materials, but it was honest work. Sometimes she’d come home with something one of her customers wanted to throw away—barely worn clothing (that Hunter and his brothers would never wear. Just think how badly they would get made fun of!), kitchen utensils which didn’t match the apartments’ décor, or even old computers or electronics that his mother would lug on the subway feeling like she had just won the lottery.

Hunter got his first job when he was 14. He started working for Smith and Son’s Landscaping, cutting grass and pulling weeds wherever the company was hired. The company’s owner, Bill Smith, took a liking to Hunter, as none of his actual sons were ever so dedicated, and soon taught him about planting trees, pruning bushes and turning a mess of greenery into something beautiful. Hunter used to work mornings before school and quickly became responsible for the shrubbery in front of some of the very same apartments his mother cleaned. When he graduated high school, he got a second job as a deliveryman. At first he worked for a pizza place down on the Upper East Side. But soon he was notified that customers didn’t feel comfortable when a black man came to deliver their pizza. They preferred a white person come, especially when they had to open their doors and hand over money. So Hunter got a new job, delivering for P’s Diner, only above 120th street. In fact, he usually didn’t deliver to the Columbia dorms because his boss understood that some of the privileged university students might take offense and stop ordering. He usually made deliveries only in the neighborhood, except on rare occasions when he was the only deliveryman available. He worked hard to help his mom pay rent, so she only needed to clean one or two apartments a day.

In his free time, he would read. He figured out how to use the New York Public Library to get any book he wanted. He loved Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes, but also read other classics from Mark Twain, George Orwell or Charles Dickens. He tried introducing his siblings to reading, but none were interested. One was busy dreaming about his rap career, while another didn’t seem to be busy with anything at