Dad walked to my bed and, after doubling over the pillow, lay down and made himself comfortable.

“I’m saying it’s always been a little dream of mine for someone to hear firsthand about my childhood. For instance, did you know that my physical imperfections almost did me in? You’ve heard the expression ‘When they made him, they threw away the mold’? Well, it was as if someone picked up a mold that had already been thrown away, and even though it was cracked and warped by the sun and ants had crawled inside it and an old drunk had urinated on it, they reused it to make me. You probably didn’t know either that people were always abusing me for being clever. They’d say, ‘You’re too clever, Martin, too clever by half, too clever for your own good.’ I smiled and thought they must be mistaken. How can a person be too clever? Isn’t that like being too good-looking? Or too rich? Or too happy? What I didn’t understand was that people don’t think; they repeat. They don’t process; they regurgitate. They don’t digest; they copy. I had only a splinter of awareness back then that no matter what anybody says, choosing between the available options is not the same as thinking for yourself. The only true way of thinking for yourself is to create options of your own, options that don’t exist. That’s what my childhood taught me and that’s what it should teach you, Jasper, if you hear me out. Then afterward, when people are talking about me, I’m not going to be the only one to know they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Get it? When people talk about me in front of us, you and I will be able to give each other sly, secret looks across the room, it will be a real giggle, and maybe one day, after I’m dead, you’ll tell them the truth, you’ll reveal everything about me, everything I’ve told you, and maybe they’ll feel like fools, or maybe they’ll shrug and go, ‘Oh really, interesting,’ then turn back to the game show they were watching. But in any case, that’s up to you, Jasper. I certainly don’t want to pressure you into spilling the secrets of my heart and soul unless you feel it will make you richer, either spiritually or financially.”