green.
"I'll have the absinthe," I said over my shoulder, stepping through.
Whoa. I was in some kind of New Age subway tunnel, with nowhere to go but forward.
The setup, despite its relentless laser-green glow, immediately reminded me of the detoxifying entrance tunnel to germ-phobic Howard Hughes's 1001 Knights getaway on the low-rent end of the Strip.
Green laser lights buzzed and swiveled as they rose and fell on either side of me, etching my form as if I were a jigsaw puzzle piece. I walked through an emerald-green mist, feeling warm and then cool. Unseen air vents lifted my heavy plaits to writhe and untwine around my face and shoulders like Medusa's serpents - not Kelly green, I hoped.
I came though the opposite doors feeling I'd enjoyed a steam room, sauna, and massage. In fact, I felt absolutely wonderful.
Snow was waiting with two tall, thin glasses of opaque, chartreuse-tinted absinthe. The drink had been a nineteenth-century fad with a bad rep because an herbal ingredient called wormwood had a marijuana-like effect.
"'A great star fell from Heaven,'" he recited as he handed me one glass, "'burning like a torch, and ... the name of the star is wormwood.'"
"'And Kansas, she said, is the name of the star,'" I sang like the Good Witch Glinda.
If Snow wanted to quote the Book of Revelation to an Our Lady of the Lake girl, I could quote The Wizard of Oz right back.
"Nice pipes," he said, the sunglasses dipping to eye my legs.
I was shocked to view a thigh-high slit in a long green satin skirt that showcased the familiar as a silver "garter" snake.
"Passing through the Green Room has a stunning effect, doesn't it?" Snow commented. "Like going through a glamorizing car wash for humans. They call it the 'Emerald City Dorothy spa option.' The lasers take your measurements and melt off your everyday wear, 'painting' the bedazzled client with more formal clothes. I see the females get a gown fit for a movie queen, so the obsessed gambler has his lady distracted from the moment they enter their suite."
"I suppose the gaming man only gets a fistful of green casino cards."
"Oh, no. They offer a spa experience for gentlemen clients too." He held out his suited arms. "They need the money man relaxed and ready to rock and roll the dice and roulette wheel all night long. You don't think I'd dress like a riverboat gambler on purpose? My only ... successful resistance to the process was to reject the bilious green color." He eyed me from top to toe. "Well, you are black Irish, and the plaits didn't suit you as well as having your hair loose."
"I hate wearing green," I muttered to dismiss his compliment.
Green was for jigging, red-haired, freckled Irish lassies, not a dark and deep depressive diva like me. Okay, I dramatize. Shut up, Irma.
However, I was determined to avoid any and all of the green mirrors in the suite in case they skewed my mirror affinity, so I found his comments a mystery, except for the hair, which I'd felt unwinding. He led me through another set of doors, and down a dim aisle of shallow stairs.
A giant movie screen faced us, but it was matte black and mirrored nothing.
Looking around, I spotted glassy green reflections bouncing from multiple surfaces, all too fractured to add up to a mirror. That was comforting. I didn't want to display any mirror-walking tricks in front of Snow.
I could only glimpse a tiny reflection of myself in his sunglasses' lenses. Although my hair was still black, I was wrapped in shiny shades of green, like a Christmas present.
"If I were a talking mirror," Snow said, the sunglasses moving up and down me like the laser lights, "I could report that you'd whip that slinky green vintage gown you're wearing off a black-and-white movie screen in a Wichita minute."
"If it's green, I doubt it. The latest antiterrorist technology and clothes manufacturing trends could account for much of the makeover wizardry," I speculated. "Nothing was that 'magical.' The laser measurements. The melting outer garments. Even the clothes spun like webs onto living mannequin forms."
"True," Snow said. "Millennium Revelations may come and go, but if you sell entertainment to the public, you always have to have a gimmick."
He led me down the plush-carpeted stairs to a row of pistachio-colored leather theater seats. I noticed that my navy pumps were as plain and simple as ever, but now dyed teal-green. I wondered how my blue eyes had fared