“Oh, the professor? Well he was a professor and he looked it. Tweed!” I said with a chuckle. “He wore tweed and he smoked a pipe. He gave the definite impression he had always wanted to be a professor and now he was one. And by God he was going all out. He’d come in there… he drank Brandy for example, so just think about that. Anyone who drank brandy in the kind of bars I worked was going to distinguish themselves and this is what he did. He was a professor all right.”

“And he actually thought I might kill you?’

“Yeah. Yeah, he thought this was possible. He thought you or an agent of you might kill me under certain circumstances. He could conceive of this and he definitely told me about it.”

“Like what circumstances? Why? How on God’s earth did he think I could possibly kill you or harm you any way? As much as I loved you? And I had never hurt you in any way so why… did I ever hurt you, P?”

“No. I don’t recall you ever mistreating me whatsoever. Not one iota.”

“Well that’s what I thought. So how does he come up with this?”

“Oh, well he had his thoughts. It was because of your family. Your background. He thought I’d better go to the library and read everything I could.”

“Read?”

“Yeah. I was specifically supposed to study so I could try to figure out if you were going to kill me. He said he had tried to do this for me but he could not come up with anything definitive and he figured since it was my life at risk…”

I stopped to let him same something but he didn’t speak. We were on the phone and I figured he was pissed. I would be. I kept talking.

“See he thought we were fine at the moment. He believed you were taken with me and vice versa. But then Special Forces came up and eventually that got very large. And then the idea of me living with your family and going to school…”

“Yes.”

“Well, he thought we were fine at the moment, but say I went with you and then a year or two down the road, I didn’t like it and I wanted to leave? Then what?”

“He thought if you wanted to leave me, someone in my family would kill you?”

“Um… yeah. He did think this was possible and thought I should find out.”

“E, that is insane. That is completely insane.”

“Yes, well I think we all know that now. But back then, not so sure. That was the whole point. He thought I was naive and uneducated which in fact I was. And he thought I better figure out what I was doing which was fairly intimidating considering he was a professor and the history buff and he couldn’t figure it out. Crap! How many hours in a day does he think I have to take a crash course in is-my-boyfriend-going-to-kill-me? Never mind it put me in an incredibly strange spot.”

“How come?”

“Well think about it. What am I supposed to do? Kiss you goodbye and then go to the library and read behind your back to try to see if you’re going to kill me? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, exactly. Whoever might do something like that, I’m not her. I am not cut out for espionage or treason or whatever that might be called. It’s just too strange. And I couldn’t see telling you either.”

“Why? You thought I’d get violent or something? Go kick his ass?”

“No, I didn’t think that. I just thought it was insulting. I thought it would insult you and hurt your feelings, too.”

“My family is going to kill you? It’s very insulting. It’s also insane.”

“Okay, well I agree with you. But it would also be insane to try to discuss this with you. Can you imagine your reaction? Just the lecture alone I would have had to endure. Boy you’ve have been on it all night. You’d have been preaching and lecturing. Oh my God you’d have gone on for days if not weeks and do I want that?”

“Apparently not.”

“Of course not. I haven’t seen you in two days. So what I want to do is screw. Not discuss whether or not you’re going to kill me in the future just because some guy with a pipe and tweed has been reading copious amounts…. he was studying your on microfiche, you know. I actually think he was in the microfiche at the library. He had you and your family on the projector.”

“To find out if I was going to kill you?”

“No. He was studying because it was interesting and the kill me thing came up as a by-product. He stumbled on it. He thought you might be wonderful and make me very happy. He just didn’t know. Happy or dead? Who’s to say,” I said with a chuckle. He just thought… he felt responsible to tell me that I could be marrying the devil incarnate unbeknownst to me and further I could die from it a few years down the road. You know. Everything is fine except for now I am getting stabbed. Damn! Guess I should have listened to that professor after all.”

To be continued.