that I was boring him with my random knowledge, but I was also revved up by the familiar trivia and couldn’t help myself.
“It got me thinking about the myth of Persephone.” I felt a little excited as I began reciting the tale told to me so many times. Truth be told, I hadn’t even thought about it in a long time. “Hades was in the Underworld one day, and when he saw Persephone picking flowers in a field, he instantly fell in love with her. He tore a hole through the earth and carried her to his palace in hell to be his bride. And when Persephone’s mother, Demeter, found out what happened, she refused to continue nourishing the earth so all of the mortals would die.”
If this was the underworld, then what did that make Charlie?
“Well, without mortals, Zeus would have no one to worship him, so he told his brother (Hades was one of his brothers) to return Persephone. But being Hades and everything, he tricked Persephone into consuming six seeds of a pomegranate. The seeds tied her to the Underworld forever so even though she went back to earth, she always wanted to be somewhere else.”
“Then what?”
Finally, a response. His voice was so abrupt it ruined my line of thinking.
“Oh—um, well, For every seed she ate, Persephone stayed a month with Hades, and the other half of the year she had to return to earth. The months that she’s on Earth is supposed to account for the spring and summer months—winter is when Demeter is too upset to let us mortals harvest.” I tried to laugh.
“That’s lousy,” Charlie said after a minute.
I became defensive. “What do you mean?”
He put out his cigarette and sighed. “Think ‘bout it, Addie. Nobody got what they really wanted and so nobody was really happy.”
I considered his words and weighed them. “Well, sometimes I guess you have to compromise in life. If may not be fair, but that’s the way it is.”
“Nah,” Charlie shook his head. “I mean yeah, I get what you’re sayin’, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. The good stuff should be all or nothin’. Either you get what you want or you get nothin’ at all. Otherwise, wanting somethin’ doesn’t mean much of nothin’ to begin with.”
“There’s a difference between want and need, Charlie.” I was still feeling defensive about my myth retelling, the desire to explain how it was relevant to our situation was made more intense by how he tried to change the subject. Only now, Charlie was looking at me differently than before, and I felt as though we weren’t just talking about mythology.
“Nah.” He shook his head fiercely. “Need is somethin’ right ‘round the corner from want. It’ll creep up on ya when you think you got all your want under control. And then they end up being the same thing—ain’t no different in the end.”
The conversation was quickly making me uncomfortable, and I knew if I didn’t change the subject right away, he would get the best of me again. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be in control of the dialogue as I didn’t want him to be in control. As it was, I didn’t like the control he had over me; the way he made my body feel, the way he made me question my instincts…
“I’ve never thought about it like that. Fine then, if you’re an expert on stories, you tell me one.”
“One what?” He laughed.
“A story.”
He smiled his Charlie smile. “Okay,” he said. “I think I can do that.”
He cleared his throat as he began. “Once an old farmer found a viper half-frozen to death in the snow. He put him in his coat to warm him up. When he did, the snake bit him. So the farmer died.”
I looked at him and smiled—he was staring at me again. “That’s an Aesop fable.”
“The point is to mind your own business or else get bit.”
“I think that’s lousy. And completely inaccurate,” I added. “Not every act of kindness results in disaster.”
He put his head back down and, shrugged. “I heard it at a bar in the Maldives once.”
I sighed dramatically and threw myself to the floor in a likewise fashion. “The Maldives? I’m jealous.”
He sat up and laughed. “You never been?”
“Ha, ha.” My laugh was equally sarcastic. “The only beach I’ve seen is on the coast of New Jersey.”
He scoffed again and slid down to the floor beside me, lying down so our heads were adjacent