It was the bug’s bad luck to have wandered up the gossamer curtain in our hotel room, just as the early morning sun had revealed its presence like a spotlight from a guard tower.

   “Reid, please kill it, it might be a bedbug,” Carol commanded, as her sleepy, still opening eyes caught sight of the invader immediately.

I was more attuned to the thought of crushing an insect in the city that was home to Kafka’s most famous work, Metamorphosis, than I was contemplating Carol’s summation of the bug’s identity as yet another swipe at my choice of low-rent accommodations. “Sorry, Gregor,” I said, as I knocked it to the floor and crushed it into extinction, “but I can’t allow m’lady to awake from a troubled sleep, now can I?”