cracked the door to my uncle and aunt's bedroom and stepped a few feet inside. I listened to the hall. From the living room, Nat Cole was crooning When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. It was the kind of music my uncle wanted after a day in the dental office, needed it to ease his tired feet and make him think of smoky nightclubs and Las Vegas, those grainy pictures in Aunt Maxine's movie magazines with celebrities gathered like killdeer around the restaurant table. It was the kind of music that made me want to bite a hole in my wrist.
          I held a towel, turned the closet doorknob, and flipped on the light. The full-length mirror tried to check me out but I didn't look. I unwrapped the burgundy hatbox purse. Inside were the three things Aunt Maxine couldn't be without—wintergreen mints, tissue, and money. I pocketed the ten-dollar bill, thinking of all the teeth Uncle Milo had pulled to buy this closet. A hill of teeth. Molars and incisors pulled from gums at the edge of rot.
          The clasp to the metal mesh stuck. I bit it, shaking the bag upside down, a mirror on a red silk ribbon spilling like a thread of blood along with a five-dollar bill. I pocketed the five. My first taste of stolen money. The mirror too. I yanked on the ribbon and ripped the lining. The blood beat in my temples. I clicked open the black purse with seashell clasp. Two fives. The pantsuits Aunt Maxine played bridge in seemed to breathe, the Eastern Star gowns, with their bows and rhinestone trains trickled down the wall like translucent ice crystals, and on the back wall were her minks. I moved the shoetree, wanting to throw the foam-soled dental shoes at the ceiling—the green, orange, and blue pumps too. I edged the wicker shoulder basket between my legs, sticking my hand in deep like it was a plucked chicken. Under a crumpled Kleenex was a ten-dollar bill. The tissue opened and I saw the bleeding outline of Aunt Maxine's lips, like she had wiped her mouth on a handful of crushed glass. More Kleenex lips. A ten and five. I shouldn't steal anymore, but it was so easy. My fingers whipped through the purses. "Come on, honey. They got money." I could almost hear Easton egging me on. Inside the evening bag with sequins sewn to it like fish scales I found a twenty. My hand shook; a twenty was real thieving. "Honey, the money can't matter to her." More wintergreen mints, a roll broken in half. I popped one into my mouth.
          "Angelique," Aunt Maxine called from the end of the hall.
          I froze.
          "Will you come set the table?"
          My hair tingled at the roots. My ears could hear anything, and now they followed Aunt Maxine back into the kitchen. I let out a long breath, shook the suede shoulder bag. Another twenty. How many more purses were stacked on the top shelf, stored away in boxes? It was easy as picking corn. Soon I would be rich. I was harvesting the purses.
          "You've got a long way to travel. That's not enough," Easton's voice again. "Get some more. More, honey, more." I couldn't stop my hands. I wedged my fingers into the green python tote I used to love on Aunt Maxine's shoulder when she visited Mom and me on the farm. I didn't know why I always thought of Liz Taylor when Aunt Maxine stepped out of the car in sandals, her toenails painted. They looked nothing alike. Liz's eyes were a slanting violet, and Aunt Maxine's, hazel and tiny, but each had a soft black mole on her cheek and black eyelashes, only Liz Taylor's eyelashes went on and on and Aunt Maxine's were hardly there at all. I used to compare her to Mom when they hugged, Mom, in her ribbed undershirt and pedal pushers, her face bruised from drinking, sleek Aunt Maxine reaching into the python tote for Fanny Farmer candy. I'd eat the mint patty behind the barn and save the shiny green wrapper to look at later. It was her hand inside the tote that I snatched the four singles from. She had been my Liz, and now, I hardly liked her. What would I say if she caught me? Oh, Aunt, I'm just dreaming here about the diameter of rain. I used to love you so much, and now that's ended. I love that boy I met in the park.
          My jean pockets bulged. "Come on, come on." I didn't need any more help going on, I needed to stop. The telephone ringing made me stiffen. Soon Aunt Maxine's voice rushed down the hall, "Milo, Katy and Wilbur are coming. I've got to change. Milo, you change too. You look like you're wearing old fishing clothes."
          The bedroom light cracked on. I winced and hit the light switch, grabbed the towel. I fumbled purses back into their sacks, piled them one on top the other, pulled the hems of the cocktail dresses over them. I'm caught. I hid behind the mink coat, making myself very small. The closet door opened, the dry cleaning bags swooshed.
          "Where is my hair piece?" Aunt Maxine panted. I knew she was frowning, her hazel eyes darting up and down. Then her foot crunched on the sequin bag. I must have missed the mirror, a glittering sinker. She bent to pick it up and sniffed. Was the smell of wintergreen overpowering? When she came towards me, I wanted to push her away, shove her shoulders. I buried my face in the mink's satin lining:  I couldn't see her, so she couldn't see me. Like hiding in a dream, except this was the Bible Belt and you could feel the old time religion blowing in from the fields, cutting off every direction of escape. Aunt Maxine reached between the coats; her elbows rolled closer. I looked down, saw the hem of her quilt robe. If only they had paid me instead of depositing my dental assistant wages into a savings account in their name. If only they had stopped saying, "You'll want to go to college someday." Get it and get out. Hurry up, Aunt. You don't want to find me. You don't want to know the real Angelique. I'm not the same Angelique who sought you out to curl up and read National Enquirer with, to eat ice cream bars, six at one sitting, who thought Vinton, Iowa was the center of the universe. At ten, you were my real mother. Now I'm seventeen.
          But I didn't have to defend myself at all.
          She lifted her hair carrier from the upper shelf. Silence. I peeked out. Aunt Maxine had loosened the pins from her ponytail. How pretty she looked with black hair waving past her shoulders. Hair softened the crease between her eyebrows, but then she twisted her hair back up, stuck in the pins, and plopped the hairpiece on top. She rubbed at the line between her eyes, switched off the light.
          "Angelique, hurry up. Katy and Wilbur will be here soon." I heard her knock on the door of the guest bathroom. "We have to eat."
          It was dark. I breathed. This was the dark of Highway 218 I had a date with for later. This closet was Indiana, a state I'd never been to but soon would. The names of the towns rose up from the Great Plains—Terre Haute, Lebanon, Palmyra. Aunt Maxine's evening gowns rustled in their dry cleaning sheaths, the uniforms in their fog.
          I escaped into the guest bathroom and locked the door, emptying my pockets. The money stared up at me from the beige carpet, the frozen faces of Andrew Jackson, Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. Abraham Lincoln was different, his face alive, and though he was homely and strange, even on a five dollar bill I could feel his kindness. One hundred and twelve dollars. I had stolen that much and yet it was still me in the mirror. I looked the same. Apple cheeks, big brown eyes, unblemished skin. I was only cute, maybe even plain, a farm girl you might not see in a crowd. But Easton had seen me, really seen who I was. That's why I had to travel alone to him. The prettiest part of me was lost under my clothes. I was beautiful there. Like Mom before the beer in her coffee mug. Undressing while the tub filled, goosebumps multiplying over my body, I rested my hand on my hip. My body was cut like an antelope's, slender haunches and buttocks, flat stomach, firm handfuls of breasts.
          I unwrapped the boots I'd bought the day before at Mahood's. The overhead speakers had drifted the same kind of Henry Mancini Orchestra that Uncle Milo played. It was pitiful music, but beautiful. I had come for the lace-up boots with long narrow toes, the irresistible wisps of smoke next to the navy blue vinyl, and Hush Puppies. Mr. Mahood brushed through the cloth door; when he came back out he was carrying one box. "Six is all I have and your foot is six and a half." I made my foot go in. The brown suede boots were fawns running. Everything felt new. My jeans hung differently, and I carried my head higher. In the mirror, the orange sconce had cast a glow on me. Indian Summer radiated around my head. Now standing in money, the boots seemed to dare me to put them on and show them highway, to show them fogbows and ghost lights.
          How high should I raise my arm? Straight out and even with my shoulder, or low slung with my hip? I made a fist. That wasn't it. Hip jutting, I dropped my arm, cocked my thumb. I tried again; arm not all the way down but not straight out. Look at the end of your thumb, not into the mirror where the car will be. That's how to do it, like you couldn't care less if anyone stopped. Better, like I'd done it before.
          I let myself sink to the bottom of the tub, blowing out bubbles. Last bath in the avocado tub with the Rubbermate mat, so I wanted to take in everything, how the tile and soap dish and drain stopper heard my thoughts. Even in the water I was shivering; my flesh wouldn't warm up, because I was afraid. Fear was white, not a pale yellow, just bright white, the color of all the talk of what happens to girls alone on the road, how they're not just raped, but thrown into the ditch, how the night heron watches, singing them to a shallow grave. I pushed my fist into the pit of my stomach where the bright white was like a wall of ice. I pressed until the wall fell down.
          Still dripping, I combed my shoulder-length brown hair that Mom always cut, used cuticle scissors to trim the uneven ends, but left my bangs hanging in my eyes. Then I unrolled adhesive tape, the kind you wrapped sprained fingers in, and crisscrossed the twenties to my thighs, one on each side. The fives and most of the tens I folded into my boot. Already I felt the money spots, like charcoal briquettes set to smolder on the inside of my legs, the tape pinching skin. I taped a ten above my navel, a ten between my breastbones. I liked myself decorated with money. If Mom were here, she'd say I was using my head by breaking the money up and putting it in many places at once. Mom told me she sewed dollar bills to her clothes when she was young and took the bus to El Paso. Her first time off the farm.
          I flexed, my biceps rippling from chores and hauling thirty-pound bags of oyster shells for the chickens. The men at the grain elevator loaded the bags into Mom's trunk but she couldn't lift them out, her arms weak from not eating. Booze goes straight to your bones and that was something I knew. Her finger joints cracked even when she did the simplest things, like turning on a light switch. I put on the triangle halter, a blue work shirt over it, knotting it above my belly button, where the fear was. I could take the cold, shiver like crazy and get warm. Old people couldn't shiver. That's why they always wanted you to pile on clothes. I 'd saved the last of my Ben Hur perfume for tonight. Even if I was rich I'd choose Ben Hur; it was a seventeen-year-old girl's cheap scent. I tapped the bottle twice on each wrist and when I sniffed chewy red licorice I knew I'd put on enough. Easton's letter rested between the bath towels. I unfolded it.

m equals October 1234 am

Right now I'm listening to "Chorale" off John Cale's Sabotage/LIVE

And the code of the living
And the code of the dead,
Hand in hand from the beginning to end

End Quote

Hello Angelique:

My money came before I could say goodbye. How's everything in that dull place? My only regret leaving your state was not getting to know you better.
PS: My friend Charlie is planning a Thanksgiving Party. His folks are in Paris so it's going to be a big shindig. If you're in the neighborhood, why doncha drop by. I wouldn't mind laying eyes on you again.

Easton / 914 Normandy Street, Cary, NC