PARTY PIECE

by Bryan Murphy

The morning light forces its way through threadbare curtains. It startles me awake. Where am I? Roll over. No, the bed is too damned narrow, the narrowest bed I can remember. Not a hotel, then. A prison? No, the room itself is too large, too home-like. Got it! It’s the flat I’ve just rented. Home from home for the next three months. A two-room apartment in a run-down leafy suburb in a major East European city. Why? What on earth am I doing here? I don’t know anyone. I don’t speak the language. I’m not even running away from anything. Not really. Just a sore coccyx that forced me to change jobs, get out of that anti-ergonomic study and back to something I could do standing up, namely teaching. Or, in this case, consultancy, for a small dollar salary they say will go far here, and a fat euro-cheque that will fly me to Asia at the end of it. It certainly won’t kill me. OK, let’s have some action: leap out of bed, see how that coffee machine works, have a bash at the neighbourhood market, try and make a phone call. After all, this is my party piece: starting from zero.