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you for hearing my statement and considering my case.”
    I was sentenced to fifteen months in federal prison, and I could hear Larry, my parents, and my friend Kristen crying behind me. I thought it was a miracle it wasn’t a longer sentence, and I was so exhausted by waiting that I was eager to get it over with as quickly as possible. Still, my parents’ suffering was worse than any strain, fatigue, or depression that the long legal delay caused me.
    But the wait continued, this time for my prison assignment. It felt a lot like waiting for my college acceptance letter—I hope I get into Danbury in Connecticut! Anywhere else would have proved disastrous in respect to seeing Larry or my family with any frequency. West Virginia, five hundred miles away, had the next closest federal women’s prison. When the thin envelope arrived from the federal marshals telling me to report to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Danbury on February 4, 2004, my relief was overwhelming.
    I tried to get my affairs in order, preparing to vanish for over a year. I had already read the books on Amazon about surviving prison, but they were written for men. I paid a visit to my grandparents, nervously fighting off the fear that I might not see them again. About a week before I was to report, Larry and I met a small group of friends at Joe’s Bar on Sixth Street in the East Village, for an impromptu going-away. These were our good friends from the city, who had known my secret and done whatever they could to help. We had a good time—shot pool, told stories, drank tequila. The night went on—I wasn’t slowing down, I wasn’t going to exercise any tequila restraint, I wasn’t going to be a bummer. Night turned into morning, and finally someone had to go home. And as I hugged them as hard and relentlessly as only a girl drunk on tequila can, it sank in on me that this was really goodbye. I didn’t know when I would see any of my friends again or what I would be like when I did. And I started to cry.
    I never wept in front of anyone but Larry. But now I cried, and then my friends started to cry. We must have looked like lunatics, a dozen people sitting in an East Village bar at three in the morning, sobbing. I couldn’t stop. I cried and cried, as I said goodbye to every one of them. It took forever. I would calm down for a minute and then turn to another friend and start to sob again. Completely beyond embarrassment, I was so sad.
    The next afternoon I could barely see myself between the puffy slits that were my eyes. I had never looked worse. But I felt a little better.
    My lawyer, Pat Cotter, had sent his share of white-collar clients off to prison. He advised me, “Piper, I think for you the hardest thing about prison will be chickenshit rules enforced by chickenshit people. Call me if you run into trouble. And don’t make any friends.”

CHAPTER 3
#11187–424

    O n February 4, 2004, more than a decade after I had committed my crime, Larry drove me to the women’s prison in Danbury, Connecticut. We had spent the previous night at home; Larry had cooked me an elaborate dinner, and then we curled up in a ball on our bed, crying. Now we were heading much too quickly through a drab February morning toward the unknown. As we made a right onto the federal reservation and up a hill to the parking lot, a hulking building with a vicious-looking triple-layer razor-wire fence loomed up. If that was minimum security, I was fucked.
    Larry pulled into one of the parking areas. We looked at each other, saucer-eyed. Almost immediately a white pickup with police lights on its roof pulled in after us. I rolled down my window.
    “There’s no visiting today,” the officer told me.
    I stuck my chin out, defiance covering my fear. “I’m here to surrender.”
    “Oh. All right then.” He pulled out and drove away.
Had he looked surprised?
I wasn’t sure.
    In the car I stripped off all my jewelry—the seven gold rings; the diamond earrings