She half expected a bolt of lightning to strike her dead the minute she crossed the threshold. The entrance was grand, and the sound was muted because the walls had millions of small pebbles pressed into them. The ceiling was covered with wood beams that were stained almost black. A woman in a brown vest sat at a switchboard with a headset on. A happy Bunny with blond hair and a bright yellow outfit worked a table covered with Playboy merchandise—mugs, pens, stacks of magazines. “Here for the interview?”

“I guess,” Sherri said. She didn’t want this woman, so perfect and poised, to see her blotchy face, so she looked down at the navy carpet. Even the carpet was decorated with the bunny logo—bunnies everywhere.

“You’re going to need to show more enthusiasm than that,” the Bunny said, although her voice was kind, concerned.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Sherri asked. She looked up, and the Bunny frowned when she saw streaks of mascara on Sherri’s cheeks.

“Tell you what, I’ll walk you there. Follow me.” She led Sherri by the arm down the hall. “I’m Bunny Tina.”

Sherri felt so dowdy in her parka and velveteen, her face stained and mottled, while Tina could have walked right off the cover of one of the Playboy magazines. Embarrassed, she stared at the black leather furniture and the floor of the main area, which, unlike the lobby, wasn’t carpeted but covered in fieldstone. Between the stones was a sheet of plexiglass, and beneath it ran a river that streamed from a waterfall. It made Sherri think of her father reading Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” to her:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

“What’s your name, hon?”

“Sherri,” she said, still thinking of the next lines she knew by heart. She looked up and noticed the sunken indoor pool behind a glass wall, right there in the middle of the resort. Little bistro tables surrounded it, and there was a bar in the distance with a wall glittering with bottles of liquor under the lights. The air smelled faintly of chlorine.

“We just lost a Sherri.”

“She died?”

“No, silly, she quit! But that means that when you get the job, you’ll be able to keep your own name—you’ll be the only Bunny Sherri for miles around.”

“I’m not going to get this job.”

“Don’t say that! Come on now.”

“Are you really Tina?”