Eighty Days Yellow Read Online Free PDF Page A

inherit the lot. It had been a pleasant surprise. Another of those unseen crossroads on the road of life.
    Following the lecture, he’d met with a couple of students in his office, arranging future tutorials and answering questions, and had found himself short of time. He had originally planned to see a new movie at the Curzon West End, a late-afternoon performance, but this was no longer possible. Not to worry – he could catch it at the weekend.
    His mobile vibrated and beeped, shuffling crablike over the smooth surface of his desk. He picked it up. A message flashed.
    ‘Care to meet? C.’
    Dominik sighed. Should he? Shouldn’t he?
    His affair with Claudia had been going on for a year, and he wasn’t certain how he felt about it, about her, any more. Technically speaking, he was in the clear, as it had begun after she had completed her classes with him. By just a few days, mind. So the ethics were OK, but he was no longer sure if he wanted the relationship to continue.
    He decided not to respond right now. Time for reflection. He took his black scuffed leather jacket from the wall hook, gathered his books and lecture files into his canvas tote bag and made his way onto the street. Zipped up against the chilly wind racing up from the river, he made his way towards the Tube. It was already getting dark outside, the dull metal-grey shade of London autumn. The crowds felt menacing as the rush hour descended swiftly, streams of commuters hurrying in both directions, brushing against him anonymously in their slipstream. Usually by now, he’d be out of the centre of town. It was a bit like seeing another side of the city, an uncommon dimension in which the robotic world of work was in the ascendant, heavy, leaden, out of place. Dominik casually picked up the free evening paper he was handed and entered the station.
    Claudia was German, not a true redhead, and a wonderful fuck. Her body often smelled of cocoa oil because of the fragrant cream she regularly used to condition her skin. After a whole night in bed with her, Dominik normally ended up with a faint headache from the prevalent odour. Not that they often spent whole nights together. They made love, chatted perfunctorily and parted until the next time. It was that sort of affair. No strings, no questions, nothing exclusive about it. Fulfilling mutual needs, almost hygienic in virtues. It was a relationship he had somehow drifted into; no doubt she had provided signs, a green light of some sort in the early days, and he was aware he hadn’t consciously taken the first steps. The way things sometimes happen.
    The train came to a halt as he daydreamed on. This was where he had to change onto the Northern line, through a further labyrinth of corridors. He hated the tube, but loyalty to his earlier, less affluent years deterred him most days from taking taxis when travelling to the college and back. He’d bring his car, and damn the congestion charge, were it not for the lack of parking facilities at the institution and in the nearby area, together with the regular infuriating traffic bottlenecks down the Finchley Road.
    The familiar smells of rush hour – sweat, resignation and depression – casually kept on assaulting his senses as he journeyed towards the escalator, and the faint sound of music reached his ears.
    The barista had brought them their coffees outside. Dominik’s usual double espresso and some more sophisticated cappuccino variation with pseudo-Italian add-ons for Claudia. She’d lit a cigarette after he’d offered no objection to it, although he didn’t smoke.
    ‘So were you satisfied with the course?’ he’d asked her.
    ‘Absolutely,’ she confirmed.
    ‘So what are you planning to do now? Staying in London, more studies?’
    ‘Probably.’ She had green eyes, and her dark-red hair was piled up in a chignon, if that was what it was still called these days. A thin fringe swept across her forehead. ‘I’d like to do a doctorate, but I don’t