“Do you love trees?” she asked, absently jingling a handful of 10 penny spikes.
“Sure,” I grunted noncommittally. I extracted a pencil from behind my ear, entranced by the perfect, gentle swells undulating beneath her snug Earth First! t-shirt.
“I mean, really love them?” she demanded over the raspy cough of nearby chainsaws. She gazed suspiciously at the rutted logging road snaking across my back yard.
“What’s your point?” I asked leaning in for a better view, shifting my notebook to a more concealing position.
She leaped from her lawn chair, turned and crossed her arms across that luscious expanse of eco-maniacal fashion. “Well, if you don’t love trees, you can’t possibly love me!” she cried stomping down my porch steps toward the darkening woods and the stutter of happy chainsaws. I gave a lick to the finely honed point of my trusty pencil as twilight and distance swallowed her.

“Silly,” I snorted. “Of course I love trees.” I turned back to my pad. “Be damned hard to write without ‘em.”