Witchcraft & Externalities

We were sprawled like intellectual lions on the mattress, our limbs criss-crossing each other.  My head was buried in Paths to a Green World as it absorbed the tenets of sustainable development and externalities - effects of an action outside the closed loop of its genesis and perpetuation.  Hers rested in the House of Seven Gables, murmurs of witchcraft walking the alleys of her mind.

"What's that play about the witches?" she asked.

"The Crucible," I answered offhandedly.

I paused in my reading.

"Arthur Miller," I said to myself.

Another pause.

"Death of a Salesman," I remarked, fond remembrance flowing past me.

She stared at me, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and probably clichely in at least a few other discernible ways.

"What?" I ask, and she tells me I've just answered all three of the questions she wanted to ask.  Witchcraft and externalities, indeed.