A FEW YEARS ago I consulted my feng shui book to change my luck, and it suggested I paint my front door red and my luck would change. So I painted the door red, and by golly, my luck changed. A kind neighbor brought my trash cans back up to the house.

Okay, no biggie, but not even feng shui is perfect.

Then when it came time to buy a car, we thought, well, if a red door worked on the trash cans, why not a red car? Red in literature evokes “a strong sense of passion, lust, sex, energy.” Fun stuff all.

So this week we went to our good friends at Toyota, and seeing that the lot was empty of any updated red 2017 Priuses, we were shown an alternate menu of colors from which to choose.

For myself, I sort of had in mind something like Nick Carraway’s car in “The Great Gatsby,” which Fitzgerald described as ” a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns.” You won’t find that kind of writing in the Toyota sales folders.

Steve, our affable guide to the wonderful world of Prius, was unable to offer anything on his lot this rainy day that “mirrored a dozen suns” and certainly nothing “bright with nickel” or “swollen.”

Then something happened.

She, who is not given to dramatic moments, stopped short of an oily puddle, drew in a sharp burst of damp air, touched one gloved hand to her lips, and exhaled. “Look at that … just look at that gorgeous thing.”

There it was, sitting alone in the gray drizzle under the hovering clouds, a pure white 2017 Prius. Wait … what? WHITE?

White? I envisioned Dairy Queen delivery trucks, milk wagons, and Rosemary DeBranco’s first communion dress that she filled out so magnificently as she clutched her pure pearl-white missal and rosary beads.

Still transformed, She took off one glove and ran her hands on the cold, rain-streaked whiteness of the metal.

I had not seen this side of her since our third date some years ago, when on a cold winter’s night, while waiting for a bus in front of the United Nations building in Manhattan, she took off a glove and touched my wind-chapped cheek. Her eyes had glowed. A sensuous, almost ancient smile had broken through, the same smile she had at this moment.

“You’re gorgeous,” she had said that night.

“You’re gorgeous,” she said now at this moment.

“Don’t you love it?” She asked.

“It’s white,” I replied. “You’ve always been a woman of color, flourishes of dazzling hues, magentas, cerulean blues, magnificent flashes of summer green, but white?”

“Yes, white, the color of fresh snow, pure fresh and good. Like a freshly ironed sheet or shirt. I think it’s gorgeous. I want it.”

The next day we were back in the grand ballroom of the Toyota display room, working with our guide Steve and an assortment of other number-juggling professionals.

Oh, how She changes when she deals with money. The number game bounced back and forth between She and the accountants, while I sat beside her nodding in agreement.

It’s ours now. Red Rover is over, and we’ve named her “White Satin.” We always name our cars. We even name our kitchen appliances. The black stove and fridge are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The microwave is Gatsby — don’t ask me why.

Now “White Satin” sits in our cluttered garage like Zhivago’s lovely Lara standing on a factory floor, still emanating the new car smell that I call “the smell of money.”

For the foreseeable future, there will be no eating or drinking inside her, no crumpled papers or empty “Dunkin” cups, no candy bars or flip flops.

“White Satin” does have one flaw: This model doesn’t have the Sirius radio channel. So no political MSNBC or music of the ’50s. With that Gollum in the White House looking for a magic ring of acceptance, there’s no real need for news.

Let’s just enjoy the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” on the disc player.

“Nights in White Satin,/never reaching the end … Yes, I love you,/Oh, how I love you.”