Tony pays a visit to explain it all

Haven't been back for long when I get a visit. I haven't quite worked out how this being dead thing works. Like where you are and what you do. If you stop to think about it, it's really odd - like I don't seem to remember eating or sleeping or anything like that, but I obviously have got somewhere to go, because I went there to get changed into these clothes, for example - but it isn't a house, it isn't really where you live, because you're not alive. There just seems to be a "place" - somewhere you are, even if you're not real - and people can kind of call round to see you, even though you aren't really there. It gives you a bad headache if you think about it too much.
Anyway, Tony turns up to see me, wherever it is that I am. My place. He says straight off that he wants to say sorry for messing me about, and that he's come round to explain. I'm tempted to tell him not to bother, but he looks genuinely remorseful, so I let him begin - whether I'll let him finish is another matter, though.
He tells me that there was a big problem getting away - that she doesn't trust him, so she had made up things he had to do before he could leave. He says that she often does things like that - that there's a really big issue about it almost all the time. He says he'd like to explain it to me, because he thinks I'll understand.
My first reaction is to say - "You mean that your wife doesn't understand you, you poor dear", and see if he gets it -me being ironic - but I decide not to just yet - I've got a strange feeling this might be interesting, and he does look so sad too, and that's something I always have found hard to resist in a man. Sad eyes, and a pretty face.

So he starts to tell me about how he got to be an item with Persephone and where all the problems have come from for her, plus why he's so good at counselling people who are expecting to be rescued. It turns out that he's been rescued himself, and that he gets rescued regularly because he has to die every year. "Every year ? That sounds like it's no fun at all "- I say - "how come? "
He says that if he didn't die every year the crops would fail up there, the seasons wouldn't change and it would just be all barren wilderness.
Hmm. Maybe or maybe not, I think.

Apparently they use his dead body to make things grow. And if he didn't get to escape from down here every year, by being rescued, that the same sort of thing would happen - except that the seeds wouldn't grow and there's be no spring and so on.
That sounds pretty important stuff, I say, thinking he's maybe not quite right about all this - maybe delusions of grandeur or something, but he really does seem to believe it.
So I ask him how did it all start? And he tells me that when he was a lot younger he had a bit of a thing for Aphrodite - or to be more precise she had a bit of a thing for him and that it all went badly wrong, and that's how he ended up down here.
He says he'd like to tell me all of it, but he doesn't know if I'm interested - and he tells me he's not got long - apparently he's due to be rescued very soon himself, and he wants to make sure I'm OK before he goes.

I'm beginning to think his motives aren't what I first thought they were, but I'm still not sure I trust him - it all sounds a bit like those blokes who pretend to be related to gods just to get off with you. But in the end, I decide that maybe it's worth hearing so I let him tell me the whole story. In his own words. I'll tell you what I think later.