The Peacock 792

 "I have a confession to make, everyone."  Here he pauses as though to create dramatic effect.  And just now, I can see two things about Adam.  One is that he has clearly had some kind of theatrical training and experience.  He appears to be a master of stagecraft with the way he can manipulate us.  The other thing is that he suddenly no longer seems so young.  Still youthful for forty-six, but there I something in his face, his skin, what suggests tiredness and age, plus, I have just noticed gray in his hair.  Or could it be that now that he is about to actually speak the truth about himself, that the magic has ended, the illusion of eternal youth has faded.

"As you can all see, I am completely alert, not in an altered state, I am Jason, the guy you know as Adam.  I have been living a lie, and in order to cover my butt I have been faking this illusion of being an eternal entity.  There is nothing ethereal about me.  I am extremely well read and have an active, perhaps over active imagination.  Plus, I have studied history and classical studies in the university of Toronto.  But never did I know Fanny Mendelssohn  or her kid, nor was I around to hang out with Persephone.  And you, Lazarus", he says turning to his companion, "to you I have been particularly cruel, lying to you and persuading you that you are bonded to a mystic being from other dimensions.  There is nothing mystic or other about me.  Everybody", he says, gathering together the full force of his stagecraft, "I have been lying to all of you, to the entire world.  My mother was not a ballerina with the Kirov.  She is a frustrated now retired accounts payable manager long divorced and living in Don Mills in Metro Toronto, in a small one bedroom apartment.  We talk on Skype every week.  My father is remarried with a couple of kids I've never met, and the Faberge eggs that I gave to you, Matthew, were probably stolen.  I don't know how I got them."

Or he simply doesn't want to tell us.  But now I know Adam, or Jason.  I remember now, twenty-three years ago, at the firehall Theatre, he played the lead role in Romeo and juliet.  He was breathtaking, and now I am going to tell him this...