In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

ABSINTHE HOUSE
A Filipino boy opened the door, singing into a feather duster as
if it was a microphone, "To be real. Real, real, real." He did a few disco
grinds and went back to tickling the furniture. No Inez.
Ula was stretched out on Dick's new elliptical sofa, barely
dressed in diaphanous white and balancing a tall glass of murky
greenish fluid on her knee. She appeared to have fully recovered from
her illness.
"What happened to Inez?" Penny asked.
"Heart attack." Ula took a sip of the liquid.
"What's in the glass?"
"Absinthe, want some?"
"The stuff that killed Rimbaud? I thought it had been illegal for
like a hundred years."
"The green fairy's making a comeback. This one's artisanal, the
extreme version at seventy percent. Really packs a punch. Legend has it
lifts the spirits, and boy, does it! Here, have a taste." Ula offered the
glass of poison, her eyes spinning saucers. Instead of the forty karat, or
nothing, there was a thin platinum band inset with diamonds on the
third finger of her left hand.
"No thanks, too early in morning for hallucinogens, maybe
some espresso, and make that a doppio, per favore."
Ula smirked, went back to her extreme Absinthe.
In the back the boy bellowed, "Oh, ho, ho, what you feel...
now! What you know... now! Whoa, whoa, whoa."
"Sometimes you have to take a hallucinogen just to keep from
hallucinating, deary." She swirled the drink, dead serious. "Do sit down,
try one of the new Go chairs, they are so MIT"
"To be real. Isth's got to be real isth's got to be reeeeal," the boy
screeched.
The furniture was all new, all curvy with no corners. The
fiberglass chaise and the bent plywood ones were still there, (except
now those two were painted red, or were they new chairs, who knew?)
Spindly titanium chairs were stacked discreetly in the corners. Penny sat
in the chaise and immediately slid into the deep well of the seat, her
feet left dangling several inches from the floor.
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