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Wayward Angel

by Lizbeth Dusseau

ISBN-13: 978-1-934349-18-2

ISBN-10: 1-934349-18-6

A Pink Flamingo Ebook Publication

CHAPTER ONE

Cousin Juno, Short Plaid Skirts

& Lipstick In The Girls’ Room …

Sometimes I think I never should have left Back Streets—there are too many memories I can’t forget and would never want to. The smell of tamales and beans in Pepe’s Café… the bell in St. Mary’s church… and Old Gomez who smokes a cigar while his fingers fly over thick guitar strings. Little ones play kickball in litter-lined streets, paying no mind to honking taxis and the mustachioed stallions in their old jalopies. When I was six, the pretty girls had long black hair that grew right to their asses. Their hips rolled, one plump cheek and then the next, as they strolled the broken sidewalks, flirting.

When I was thirteen I became one of them, piling my black hair on top of my head, painting my face with too much make-up and having more fun out of school than in—and who wouldn’t? We smoked in back alleys, giggling like we were drunk. Then, at fifteen when Sonia, Jess and I began to drink, we’d stumble out from behind old dumpsters, looking like we were twenty-five and acting like kids. The truant officer would haul us back to school, just so we could sneak out again—sometimes twice in one day. They hauled us home and I’d get a licking from Papa’s strap—that is, if he was around. He rarely was. Mama would cry over me as though I was lost to sin forever. I smiled at her a lot, and said the nicest things to make her think I was reformed. Next day, my party began again.

I can still recall the day, the three of us skipped out of Social Studies before it began. How could they expect us to concentrate on Rome and Greece when the sweltering heat of Back Streets turned our classrooms into ovens? Mouths parched, we grabbed a quick beer from Carlos out of the back of his bar and hit the streets. Peering over the fence at the Fidelity Bank construction site my eyes settled on tan sweaty arms and a muscled chest. For fifteen minutes, I studied every move that hot boy made—every flex and bend. Every quiver that made me quiver. And every time he ran a hand through his curly hair, I wanted to run mine through the same space. When he turned around, his smile eased into my crotch melting it to liquid, so I was sure my fluid arousal dripped to the ground. I blushed. Thinking I’d explode on the spot, I dragged Sonia and Jess away with me where we cooled down with a smoke.

It didn’t work, though. I was ready to explode. I must have been sixteen by then—I remember begging Papa to let me borrow the truck when the evenings got too hot. I would drive out of the city to the county park where I could masturbate in peace.

Boys got into my blood. Even the guy from the construction site, when I met him at Carlos’ bar. He thought I was much older than I was and almost rode off with my virginity until my big brother’s best friend, Joey, starts acting like a saint protecting me from sin. He spilled my age to my muscled friend, and my poor crotch ended up waiting another six months before it got its first taste of cock.

Sonia had been screwing around for years, Jess at least eight months. But me, I wanted something special that I couldn’t even name. So I waited. And when special didn’t come, I finally let the whole thing slide and took my first cock in Daddy’s truck. Thank the Lord it was quick because it hurt like hell, so much I didn’t want to try again for months. “You’re just small and tight,” Sonia told me. “You do it enough, you’ll loosen up.” I got this picture of my cunt sagging open and my insides falling out—no thank you!

Special took lots of forms in my mind, but the one I remember most was the day my cousin Juno spanked me at the family Christmas party. My sassy mouth was on a roll, and Aunt Rose had just said one too many things about my short skirt. I flipped her off and started toward the kitchen, ignoring the stares of my relatives whose rowdy conversation ceased instantaneously. Getting fifteen of my relations to stop their crazy half-Spanish, half-American jabbering for even ten seconds was quite a feat. I did it for nearly sixty. The quiet in the room became so eerie that I stopped and turned around.

“What the fuck are you staring at?” I blurted out, knowing that all their eyes had been on my jiggling butt.

Their blank-faced expressions turned into a few anxious gasps before the remark finally registered.

Cousin Juno was twenty-three, quite a hunk with the girls, and very strong. He’d been a wrestler in high school and still lifted weights so his biceps looked like mountains. Pissed off, he threw me over his shoulder—with my panties showing—and hauled me upstairs. He didn’t even give me a chance to apologize, which just seeing the look on his face, I would have done in a second. He had me over his lap, spanking my ass with the force of thunder before I mounted a decent revolt.

“Ouch, you evil bastard!” I blared, while the house was still silent enough to hear. After that, I don’t know what they heard.

Juno laid in to my butt with such rip-roaring passion, that my cries and the sound of his hand connecting with my ass cheeks were all that I heard. Maybe they were listening, maybe they went back to their arguing. I didn’t care. I wouldn’t be showing my face for the rest of the day.

My ass wiggled, as my cheeks roasted under the beat of Juno’s hand. Surely, his palm had to be hurting as badly as my ass, but, he was immune to the pain. Worse yet, because my skirt was so damn short, the hem rode high on my ass, and he hardly had to push it away to have bare skin. Thank heavens I’d worn panties—which I sometimes didn’t. If he’d had my butt free and clear, I would have had to knee him in the groin before I ran off. But as long as he kept my pink lace panties between us, I let him have me—grudgingly of course, and with a heck of a lot of hollering.

Problem was, it wasn’t just pain, humiliation and rage I was feeling. Something sexual was happening inside my next to virgin body. The sting backed off, hardly hurting anymore, even when Juno would smack me harder. The heat was glorious and confusing, doing frantic things to my mind, and dangerous things to my crotch. I’d only felt this way when I was thinking about sex, and it made no sense to feel this way now. But I did, in a big way. I kept seeing pictures, and imagining stuff no girl my age should think about. My shame made me blush, even if no one including Juno saw the red on my face. It was all I could do to hold myself down and let the spanking come to an end without my body giving away the truth.

Thank God he stopped before the sensation took over and I did something I’d regret. Back on my feet, I had Juno’s black burning eyes pinning me to the wall behind me as though he saw the guilt in my scared expression.

“Don’t you ever, ever, flip anyone off again, you hear me, Angel?” His voice was as curt as his eyes, and as hot as the palm of his hand.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” I tried to be smug.

“I meant it,” he jumped right back, obviously unhappy with my answer. “I’ll blister your ass with my belt—you act like such a vulgar brat.”

Something about his holy attitude was making me so mad that I almost forgot the wild warmth in my ass. “She’s a witch, Juno!”

“I don’t care if she’s the devil incarnate. You don’t sass her, or anyone else in the family, you understand?”

I didn’t exactly know what he meant by ‘devil incarnate’, but I got his drift.

“You hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you.” Seeing the heavily laden look of anger in his eyes—and the way he was about to pull me over his lap again, I retreated just a little. “Sorry, Juno, don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You sure didn’t. Now, get down there and apologize to Aunt Rose.”

“I will not!”

“Oh, yes, you will!”

Now I really shook, and it wasn’t all just fear. But I didn’t want to feel it, I didn’t want to think about it. Whatever I could do to get this day behind me, I would. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell her anything you want me to tell her, but I won’t mean it, and she’ll know the truth—and so will everyone else.”

“And that’s fine. Some things you do in life just because you need to make peace, because there’s something more important than your personal thoughts—and because it’s just plain common sense. This is one of those.”

Wise words for a guy as young as Juno. And ones I’d probably remember more times than I can count in the next few years.

Except for Aunt Rose, and getting caught by the truant officer, and Papa’s drinking, I tend to remember my Back Streets neighborhood with a sappy, idyllic sort of filter that forgets what really happened there. I know my memory warps things. To remember what really happened—the way it really happened would be pretty painful. Remembering Juno, and Aunt Rose and even Papa’s drinking is easy, but the rest, what happened after I finally got through school, that takes guts.

If I really think about it, there was a hell of a lot of misery in that old neighborhood. Homeless people, gang wars, drugs, and the first drive-by shooting in the state. I forget those things, mostly because they hardly touched me. Even Sonia and Jess escaped most of it. The rough stuff went on under our noses, while we managed to slip through our teen years relatively unscathed. It wasn’t because we were angels. But we were on the fringes, careful enough to stay clear of the worst, and dumb enough to get caught for petty stuff before the hard core crime of Back Streets caught up with us.

There’s no denying that I got my share of the school paddle when principal Trenton labeled me ‘recalcitrant’. Probably six, seven times in two years, I draped my body over the old fart’s desk and let him whack my behind until he’d raised a nasty smart. These were routine trips. I think Trenton got his jollies taking pretty schoolgirls into his office for his ‘disciplinary measures’ as he called them.

He liked me especially—perhaps because I blossomed prematurely. He was always looking at my tits, which stuck out rather unseemly through my tight school sweaters. And there wasn’t a day that went by, I didn’t see him eyeing the long line of my slender legs beneath my plaid school skirt—he probably picked the short length for our uniforms, just so he could eye our thighs; and when we bent over, get a leering look at our ass ends. I know how the man thinks: if the school board wouldn’t let him raise our skirts to spank us, let it happen naturally without his having to lay a finger on our bottoms. My junior year, Trenton lobbied for more severe punishment—bare bottomed paddlings for resistant girls like me. He was reminded—and I have this on good authority from the school secretary—that “resistant girls are sent to the reformatory, so his kind of intervention was unnecessary.” I’m glad of that, there was no way I would take down my panties for Trenton, or anyone else for that matter.

After my Christmas Day spanking from Cousin Juno, I began to recall the punishments from Trenton: the weird excitement I got going down the hallway, my knees knocking, my stomach turning flip-flops, my head on a rollercoaster ride with fear. I don’t know what I was thinking or feeling when I made those awful trips; but my body was certainly speeding toward something unexpected.

Was that sexual, too? Good lord, I hope not!

I managed to get through school with the usual punishments, reprimands and spankings dealt out to the rebellious girls of Back Streets. There were a few that got it harder than me, like Sonia who has a mouth bigger than mine; while a few, like Jess—who could weasel their way out of most anything bad with a big smile—had it a whole lot easier. I did just enough to keep my life from getting boring, and little enough to stay out of the high school girls’ reformatory. Sonia was my only friend who had that fate.

She got two months for vandalizing the girls’ bathroom with lipstick—something we must have done a hundred times. No one could tell me that this small crime was enough to throw her in that awful place. But since Sonia had a long list of petty crimes on her school record, she was tapped to pay, and pay dearly with her cute, plump behind. I’m not sure she was ever the same afterwards—I guess that was their plan—reformation. She came back from Latham Hall much more sober, and determined to get out of high school as fast as possible. She took the same slow route as the rest of us, but she made sure there were no return trips to Latham.

Sonia confessed very little about what happened there. It was all about corporal punishment and hard labor, but she was damn light on the specifics. Thinking back now, I wished she would have said more. The way things turned out two years later, I could have used the voice of experience to prevent my own incarceration in Latham’s sister school—Brody Reformatory for Wayward Women.

By the time I finally got my high school diploma it was pretty clear that a good swat on my rear end turned my girlish insides all aflutter. Didn’t matter what the source, didn’t matter who gave me that good whack, I had a physical response that didn’t seem to quit. Even when I wasn’t getting spanked, I’d imagine the act with almost pleasurable feelings of lust brewing in my belly. I must have created a hundred fantasies in my head—all about me, with my two pink dimpled cheeks turned scarlet from the sting of a hairbrush, or the crack of a leather strap, or the force of some man’s hand.

Last time Trenton spanked me, it was just before graduation. I was already eighteen and no longer subject to this kind of punishment. If I’d howled enough, I’m sure I could have stopped it. At the same time, if I’d howled a lot, he could have stalled my diploma and made my life hell all summer. When he caught me squashing my cigarette just outside the girls’ gym, I knew what would happen, and I didn’t complain. Maybe I wanted it one last time. Maybe I knew there wouldn’t be too many places I could satisfy this crazy spanking hunger. Maybe I was out of my mind, but I let him lead me to his gallows without one sassy remark.

“In my office, Angel,” Trenton lowered his voice, and I almost smiled. My ass was already leap-frogging to the finish line, getting tingly with sexual anticipation. (I didn’t call it sexual then, but I sure recognize that feeling now.) By the time we traipsed across the courtyard between buildings, through the back hall of the main building, and finally landed at the administration offices, I could feel myself wet between my legs. In Trenton’s office, I was suddenly faced with a dilemma I’d never faced before. Since he’d rousted me directly from gym class, I hadn’t time to change. There I was in my gym shorts and nothing else, just one layer of thin nylon fabric separating me from the paddle.

I bent over, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to tell that I was so scantily dressed. But he knew. He took extra time to admire my behind—especially how the nylon dipped into the crack of my ass. There was no way to prevent him from seeing my behind almost as clearly as if I’d been nude. He might as well have taken them down. I had no protection; and once Trenton’s paddle hit the mark, I knew the difference between a paddling over a wool school skirt and one without that protection.

It must have been his parting shot. I don’t put it past him to have planned it out in advance, sneaking around school just trying to catch me in the act of doing something punishable, just so he could whack my butt again. He made the spanking twice what I’d suffered before—a full forty smacks, which was unheard of for something as minor as a squashed cigarette. He hadn’t even seen the thing in my mouth. Didn’t matter with Trenton, though, he’d write it up as the standard twenty and no one would be the wiser.

The first ten smacks were tough, so hard I was sure I would be jumping right out of my skin. If there was any lust involved on my part, it was long gone by the second blow. But by the twelfth, he was slowing down, giving the paddle this extra turn of his wrist so the wood lingered on my behind a few brief seconds before it popped off. He timed his next blow to land just as the warmth from the previous strike was beginning its curious meandering path through my groin. Everything seemed on fire, toes to scalp and particularly in my middle where my ass was piping hot. The slower he went, the more my insides responded and the more I turned on. We were sweating, labored, each sounding off with grunts that I learned later could be mistaken for sexual. Sure it was painful. But I was feeling alive and I wasn’t in tears.

I could have gotten lost in all that crazy perversion, but I held on tightly to my wits. Trenton knew… he understood my fussing wasn’t misery at all, that all my crude gyrations weren’t to fend off his blows, but to greet each one while looking forward to the next. The bastard screwed the whole deal for me making it clear that he knew I was aroused.

I couldn’t leave his office fast enough that afternoon. Too scared of where this wild excitement would lead, I vowed I’d never return.

CHAPTER TWO

Caught In The Act Of Lust

The summer after graduation, I waitressed at Chico’s, a tiny Mexican dive with the best enchiladas in Back Streets. It was either that or Carlos Cantina, and Papa said he’d throw me out if I worked there. Truth was, when I wasn’t sweating between Chico’s kitchen and my customers, I was sweating at the Cantina, sitting in the back of the bar drinking beer, as long as there were no cops around.

The uniform police carried their weight around and great big clubs. Sort of made me shiver seeing all that official hardware on their belts. The creaking leather in their boots ran shivers up my spine, and when Officer Santos stared us down, the look was lethal, threatening enough to make Sonia, Jess and I look way too guilty for things we hadn’t even done.

“You girls behaving yourselves?”

“Yes, sir,” we politely answered.

“Good. Just sent a little tart from up the street to Brody Hall last night.” He was threatening us. “Keep your noses clean, or your asses will pay. I don’t think you want the discipline Brody dishes out.”

No one would ever say exactly what that ‘discipline’ was. Sonia knew, but discussions about her sentence at Latham were off limits. Even so, everyone knew that Latham was kindergarten compared with the Reformatory—and that reformatory was just another word for prison.

I thought I could survive Back Streets without a major skirmish. I even had a plan—after I earned a few hundred bucks at Chico’s. I was moving north, another city, a fresh new place to breathe, and no Back Streets to drag me down. In my clearer thinking moments, it was a sane idea. But then I got sideswiped by that certain something I couldn’t explain.

I’d been pushing the crude stuff in my head away for months, deciding that my body should give up the hots for getting spanked and settle on normal sex and normal thoughts. Cousin Juno, Trenton, the hot rush of desire grabbing at my crotch when I got paddled—it made no sense. Getting spanked should have nothing to do with sex at all; and it wouldn’t anymore, if I could help it.

Jimmy Slater and I were dating, spending most of our time rubbing thighs together and kissing in public until we suddenly found ourselves in some back alley, with Jimmy’s cock ramming my turned-up behind like a jack hammer. My warmth slid around the pistoning head, sheathing it in the creamy juices running out of my cunt. He’d squeeze my back cheeks as though he’d tear them off, while I’d hush my voice, saying raunchy stuff like, “yessss, baby, hurt me, yes.” Jimmy got my drift, but all it meant to him was fuck me harder.

He was good, but not good enough. That certain magic never happened, there were no wild shooting spasms though my crotch. I’d cum, a sort of dim suggestion of what could happen if I had what I needed. But then, too, I’d never had the grinding, heart palpitating, gut wrenching, cum-soaked, body screaming dance with danger I imagined climax should be. It teased me, as though it were hanging out at the fringes laughing, and with its fat, greasy smile begging me to follow somewhere else.

Jimmy was good, real good for a first hot fuck… and a second, third, and an everyday sort of pussy pleasing ride. He was cute, real cute. Sandy hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and a hell of a body. To see All-American features in my Latin Back Streets world was odd; and at eighteen, anything out of the ordinary turned me on. Maybe Back Streets was responsible for my skewed sense of sex, and Jimmy was my Great White Hope.

We might have fucked forever. We might have gotten married and had six kids, and even moved out of the neighborhood. It wasn’t part of my plan to settle down, but I could see it happening. At least until the Saturday night in May that changed everything.

Maybe it was me, Angel Santana, revolting against Jimmy’s picket-fence mentality. Maybe it was deciding that life could never be that easy for a Back Streets slut. Maybe it was getting my head on straight for once, realizing that Jimmy Slater had only half my dreams in his pockets, and the rest, he could never understand.

That Saturday was one of the best nights of my life—it was also the worst. Even for the education I gained, I’d never pay the price again. There’d have to be easier ways.

Jimmy was out of town, looking into a construction job up north that would take us out of this barrio into that better life. I’d spend the evening at Carlos’ bar and have my head on my pillow by midnight…

But then midnight turned into one a.m. and I was still there, drinking coke and rum with Sonia and Jess. No mistaking the facts, I was drunk and very happy, sleazing my way around the bar with my hands on several male groins. With a black tight skirt, tiny tee-shirt top, bare legs and high-heeled sandals, I looked sweetly whorish.

“Angel,” Carlos moved his burly Mexican body behind me, close enough so I could feel his breath on my neck. I breathed his heat, and felt him rub his hand against my ass. “You need to ease up,” he told me.

“Why now?”

“This time of night we get visitors.”

“Oh, they’re used to me here.”

“And Santos just as soon arrest you.”

I whipped around, “Never! He’s just waiting until I’m twenty-one. Then he’s gonna make a move, you just wait.”

“Angel, darling, if you want to play around, get in the back room.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

He’d never invited me there before, and I only heard the rumors. “So, it’s real?”

“For you, babe, I’ll make it real. But you gotta stay cool out here.”

“Sure, sweetheart,” I gave him a kiss and let him lead me into the back hallway. He knocked twice on an unmarked door, and gave me over to his private party.

“You want out, tell Sam, he’ll open the door.”

The drink in my veins was so overpowering, I was swimming into the sea of bodies thinking I’d found heaven. All this time Carlos had been holding out on me… maybe twenty five were crowded into his tiny lounge where a fast salsa played the air, and the strong smell of smoke and booze were enough to make you drunk. There were six women by my count, and me, dressed like sluts and ready for what sluts do in back rooms on Saturday night.

I recognized Cotille from school, though I’m not sure how I could tell. She was lying back against a table, her skirt up to her waist, and the wet curls of her black pussy getting turned on by two guys’ slithery hands. My own cunt clenched, but I didn’t see more. A second later, I was shoved on top of a table and told to dance. All that salsa music in my hips, what could I do but smile and keep them happy with my tease? Groveling at my legs, their hands turned all the tricks toward the sex my glad body needed—except one. I thought they’d fuck me right there, until someone swept me off the table and pushed me into a chair, my skirt still riding to my waist. My good-looking rescuer had his hand inside my shirt, plucking a nipple with his fingers. My body began to incinerate. There wasn’t a breath of air in the room, no open windows, too many people, and too much smoke.

“You want sex?” he asked directly.

“Seems like that’s what this place is about,” I said looking around. Someone had put a drink in front of me, so I took a sip, letting the Scotch burn my throat on its way down.

He played with a hundred-dollar bill under his fingers, making it clear that he was planning to pay.

My thinking, being rather fuzzy, the idea sounded cool.

“Where?” I asked.

“Right here.”

“Here?” I looked around again a little surprised.

With my bare cunt sitting squarely on the seat of my chair, I was starting to squirm, like I was hoping to forget the fuck and get off without it. Then I stared at his hands, not just the hundred dollar bill, but the hands themselves, and got mesmerized by his masculinity: his long firm fingers, the tense muscle, the potential power and potential smack.

“And you’d spank my ass?” I asked, surprising even me. The words just jumped right through the barriers in my head.

“Spank your ass?” he grinned amused, and stared me in the eye, seeing the picture in his mind. “Is that what naughty girls get when they’re bad?”

“Is it worth an extra twenty?” I asked.

“Might be worth more than that,” he suggested, but he didn’t tell me what that meant.

Instead, he started playing with my breasts with one hand, then scooting closer, his other met my snatch. I never thought getting screwed in the back of a bar would be easy, but this was almost natural, even with a crowd of half-crazed drunks around us. Most weren’t even looking, since there were other chicks to fuck. What was Carlos thinking, letting me back here? Didn’t matter though, I was sliding into the sex with promised rewards as fast as the hundred and twenty slid into my purse.

Fingering my honey-coated slit, my handsome john put me on the edge of pleasure quick. Then he pulled me to my feet and bent me over the table. Our drinks disappeared, while the tiny pools of water on the table made my tee shirt wet. Without much to cling to, I gripped the far end of the small table with my sticky hands and held on, as the guy grabbed and hung on tight. He gave the surface a few sharp whacks—which sent me into instantaneous spasms—but then he quit so he could shove his dick down the throat of my cunt.

“Oooo, spank me more,” I heard my voice fill with the need. He wanted my cunt, but I wasn’t ready yet. There was no sensuous warmth, no fire-hot sting, just a few empty disappearing leftovers from his last smacks, and lots of expectation. “Please, my ass,” I begged, waving my fanny at his hand. Yet, just when I thought he’d start again, there was something happening behind me. Everything got crazy, and the whole scene ended as fast as waking up from a vanishing dream.

The finish was a nightmare. A dozen cops with grim scowls squeezed their way into the small back room, strong-arming suspects and hauling us out. My john was history, somewhere miles beyond my sight as I waited for my turn. When the room cleared, I was left with Officer Santos swaggering my way with an official look that told me I was in trouble.

“Angel Santana.”

“You know my name,” I sassed lightly. I couldn’t stop the bite in my voice, no matter how humiliated I was.

“Bad night to be turning tricks.”

“Suppose so,” I quietly agreed—which probably wasn’t a good thing to say since I was later told that these breezy comments could be evidence against me.

Still, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d confessed the whole thing to Santos. They had me booked and arraigned on so many charges that I could see the long life ahead of me draining away year by year by year.

***

“Indecent exposure, lewd and lascivious behavior, solicitation, prostitution.” He read them off in his dreary voice. I’d never felt so naughty, guilty or ashamed. Never been in a courtroom either. At least not the kind with paneled walls, and a black-robed judge sitting on a mountaintop of fancy polished wood. He read my sentence in the next breath, and all the triumph of my high school survival disappeared. “Your age remands you to the reformatory at Brody Hall for six months.” He turned to a man standing by a door at the side of the room, “Mr. Casals.” I turned, prepared to see some hulking, grim-faced officer of the court; and instead, stared into a pair of the most dangerously sexy eyes I’d ever seen. I almost did a double take, sure my eyes were fooling me.

Tony Casals was too handsome and too well dressed for social work. I couldn’t believe my good fortune—like he was some guardian angel in his fancy suit and tie, sweeping me into his wings with this beautifully stern made-up look on his face. I could have kissed him for being the one bright spot in this miserable mess. When he took my arm and led me away—as every one else had done in the last two days—my crotch began to come alive. I wanted to run my fingers through his dark, wavy hair, my hands along the muscles in his chest. I wanted to stare into his gleaming eyes and feel his hands on me. I had one second of glory, thinking all was not lost.

As Tony led me into his courthouse office for my induction interview, I let my hard edge soften, expecting that made-for-the-judge look of scorn to readily disappear from his face. He’d be the kind to go by the book, strike the right pose of authority in front of an audience, and in private turn colors like a chameleon, becoming just a nice average guy with a great grin, good teeth and lots of charm. As he shuffled through the papers on his desk, I figured my nightmare was almost over. Even if I had to do some time at Brody, it couldn’t be all that bad if Tony Casals was handling my case.

***