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Description
Been too long, and it's hard to get back into the groove so this isn't as well written as many, but here you go. OMG.

The Mana Farms story line frequently contains mature language, topics, and situations. The characters within are fictional beings with weaknesses and faults, and I cannot promise you that you will like them for what they believe, say and do.

Join the community of MANA readers! Start from the beginning. (New readers, it is strongly recommended you begin this series from the very first story...which can be found here: [link] ) Thanks!

PREVIOUSLY ON:

Despite being bundled under a dark blue blanket and a rectangular pillow stuffed at an angle under her head, Santa could never sleep on a plane. The reasons were the usual. The stiff upright seats, the constant roaring in her ears from the window next to her ear, the fear of catching lice or a virus or the flu, and the fact that Brett North was often a passenger next to her, flying the same flight to catch a taxi to the same track, and besides listening to his music far too loud, Brett was also an enthusiastic chewer of spearmint gum. For four hours and one layover, she’d been as silent and passive as Saint Francis de Sales. This was hour number five and she was no longer Catholic. She smacked him.

“Chew with your mouth closed.”

He rolled his head around and looked at her, a wad of bright green gum tucked into the right side of his jaw, copper curls falling over his eyes, his left knee bumping into hers. “Or what, Mom?”

“Or I’ll slap you again.”

He gave her that unblinking snake-like grin made famous by the Norths.

“And I’ll poison your gum,” she added.

Brett North slid further down into his seat as if he had all the room in the world to be obnoxiously feline. It helped that he was already slender, but paired with his long history as an agitator, it only made Santa’s hand itch to slap him again.

“Look at you going all Colombian on my ass. What the hell’s your problem?” he muttered.

“You and your gum,” she passed him her napkin and with a dangerous enough look from her, he took it.

“Me and my gum were fine. You’re the one with the problem.” He stuck his gum into the napkin and then shoved it into his empty plastic cup. “You know I need to chew.”

“I never said you couldn’t chew. I said chew with your mouth closed. It’s not hard and it’s not even the same thing.”

“I don’t like to chew gum with my mouth closed.”

“Obviously.”

“When people chew with their mouths closed, their lips move like panties in a dryer.”

Santa rolled her eyes at him and for a few blessed minutes Brett North remained silent as they floated over the Rocky Mountains. She stared out the oval windows and counted the clouds floating by like sheep scattered across the map of continent below, trying to speed away the minutes until she could run home, run home and into Maxwell’s old room and lose herself in the business of trying to find his familiar smell somewhere in the sheets. She’d wrap herself up in them and ask his ghost if she’d been right to do what she had done. But the reverie was broken. Brett was already squirming in his seat like a toddler with an interest in the bag of gummy bears in mommy’s purse.

“I need to chew something.”

“Dios mio, Brett, here have some cinnamon altoids from my bag. You want some of those?” She threw her blue blanket at him and dove under the seat in front of her.

He caught her blanket and wrapped himself up in it as if she had meant it as a conciliatory gift. “I don’t like cinnamon.”

Santa raised her eyebrow at him, her purse half unzipped.

“I’m serious, Santa. I had cinnamon once when I was kid right before I went to bed and I had a nightmare and for the longest time I wouldn’t sit on a toilet afterward without making sure there wasn’t a smoking rat floating in it.”

Santa sighed and dropped her purse back between her feet and shoved it underneath the seat in front of her with a kick.

“You’re not going to ask about the rat?”

“No." Santa ran her hands through her hair, “If you won’t eat cinnamon, and I can’t listen to you chew on your nasty mint gum without shoving a...”

“Chainsaw.”

“...under your chin, how else do I get you to shut up for the last three hours of our flight?”

Brett shrugged, “I don’t know. Be civil. Talk to me. Stop threatening me with a chainsaw. Wait for the peanut cart.”

“I never...”

“You realize you’re missing your necklace?” he added quickly, deftly, as though the words were a slight of hand, like a magician pulling out her wallet to reveal he’d had it all along and she hadn’t even known.

Her hand instinctively flew to her throat. “Que?”

“Your necklace. It’s gone.”

Santa glanced down at the hollow space between her breasts. “Oh that.” She dropped her hand to her heart and was reminded again of what had happened only the night before. She scowled. “I lost it.”

“Lost it, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Rumour says you threw it.”

“And then I lost it.”

“At Laurence Leclerc in the gallop out of the King’s Bishop,” Brett added with a narrowed look that may have only been bested by the Artful Dodger himself; it was all at once criminal and swaggering, the look of a man who had dabbled in the thieving arts most of his life. Santa would know. She’d been one herself once.

“Ah, here comes your peanut cart to divert me. Saved by the peanuts,” he added, as two flight attendants intervened with their clattering cart and offerings of snacks. Brett happily took a bag of peanuts and opened them up with an immediate tug, relishing the whiff of something like a ballpark minus the hotdogs.

Santa accepted a can of ginger ale. “It’s a long story,” Santa admitted to him.

“It’s an even longer flight.”

“Am I to be your only entertainment?” Santa sighed, slipping her fingernails under the tab to her ginger ale.

“Well, it’s either that or I go back to watching all the porn I saved on my iPhone.” He glanced at her, and when she ignored him, dutifully sipping her ginger ale for the godsend it was, he continued, “So...was it the deadheat? Were you just mad at him for nailing you at the wire?” She took several more long, indulgent gulps. “I mean that’s never happened to me, but I can imagine if it were me and some skinny frenchman is giving me hell down the stretch...particularly Larry, I would have sent something his way too.”

Santa lowered her ginger ale. He knew something was up. Brett North could always sniff trouble. But he wanted to play. “I wasn’t mad at him for the deadheat.”

“So was this some kind of early Christmas present?”

“No.”

“Swatting a fly off of his face with your chain?”

“I was breaking up with him.”

That got Brett North to shut up.

“I made him call off whatever his hopes or his plans were. It’s not going to work, Brett. It wouldn’t have or couldn’t have. You know that.” Her voice was quiet and pensive.

There was something about the Norths that got confessions out of her. Tomas, the older brother, was clairvoyant as everyone said around the backstretch with a sort of respectful nod, but Brett...Brett made it impossible to keep anything secret. He’d piss you off until you caved.

She’d confessed a lot of things to him lately.

“I chased him, you know. After Maxwell passed. I liked him and I chased him. Maybe because I thought here was a safe object I could hide away what I felt for Maxwell, and it wouldn’t come back. All this love with no direction now, no vessel to pour itself into. I didn’t understand that Laurence was a...a...”

“Boomerang?” Brett offered.

Santa laughed uncomfortably. “A rebound,” she replied.

He lowered his second bag of peanuts. “You’re serious?”

Santa turned to him and nodded.

“Is this...temporary?”

She looked down at her empty can. Fuck it. It was the Canada Dry brand. It was going to be just as she had feared, like how it had been with Maxwell. Laurence was going to appear everywhere in her life now. Like a ghost. Or like a mistake.

Brett followed her eyes to the can and reaching over, he stuffed his empty peanut bag into the empty mouth. It was as if he was saying, I’ll silence your ghosts for you, but as obnoxiously as possible. Santa found herself laughing. A high hysterical laugh.

“You should come home with me,” he said simply.

She didn’t need to look into his eyes to understand the offer being made. “No,” she replied. It was the kind of thing Eddie would have said, and it only made her laughter teeter toward the manic.

“Even so. I don’t think you’re in a state to be going home alone.”

She held up her can, stuffed with his peanut bag, and waved it around like a metaphor. “It was a ginger ale, Brett, not a vodka.”

“Maybe it should have been a vodka. I have vodka. Something strong and Russian. Can’t have you pissing wine anymore.”

She wiped at her eyes and he watched her. Together they stared at the clouds. The engines at the wings droned and hummed, the man in front of them probably farted, and behind them a couple chatted and a toddler cried and the plane bounced a little in the air currents. The seatbelt sign came on with a friendly chime.

“So you threw St. Christopher at him,” he declared in the middle of the turbulence.

“I did.”

“Because he was a rebound.” The look Brett gave her told her he didn’t believe it, and his green-gold eyes became a portal.

Santa saw it again, in her mind. The race. Timpanac roaring down the stretch collaring Laurence in the King’s Bishop in the final two furlongs. His head, then the white crow’s head, then the grey mountain, then the crow. And Laurence still wouldn’t look her in the eye. His whip was out, he was chirping to the crow, and he wouldn’t look her in the eye. She realized it with a start. Laurence had already known about Rocco. Known before she’d even stuttered out his name like a dying rooster in the hallway when he’d worn the pink silks. He’d known all along, and he’d said and done nothing. She’d given him her necklace in the bedroom in Montreal, and in the morning found it back around her neck. And when he’d climbed on top of her the next night, she’d gently pushed him off. He’d taken her up into a treehouse. He’d promised to marry her, and yet always the indirect remarks. Always he looked forward. As he was looking forward now, in the stretch of the King’s Bishop. Afraid to confront what was running alongside him. In the moments after the dead heat, she’d decided to force his hand. Their hand. She ripped off her necklace. She screamed at him that he had better be ready to catch her. And he didn’t. The necklace fell into the dirt of Saratoga and was lost to the stampede of hooves behind them.

To be fair...he was caught off guard. But she still shouted at him. She still said the words: No mas. And the defeated look in his eyes told her he understood. She was breaking up with him. They both walked stunned into the locker room. And later that night when she went to the track to recover her necklace she found him already there digging through the sand.

She should have dug with him. Instead she turned and left, and walked past Brett North telling Therese Leclerc as casually as he could that he wouldn’t be joining her and her family for dinner.

Santa looked at Brett now. Saw him clearly. “It’s been a bad weekend for us,” she whispered.

And he sighed and took her hand.

NEXT ON:

Description
Been too long, and it's hard to get back into the groove so this isn't as well written as many, but here you go. OMG.

The Mana Farms story line frequently contains mature language, topics, and situations. The characters within are fictional beings with weaknesses and faults, and I cannot promise you that you will like them for what they believe, say and do.

Join the community of MANA readers! Start from the beginning. (New readers, it is strongly recommended you begin this series from the very first story...which can be found here: [link] ) Thanks!

PREVIOUSLY ON:

Despite being bundled under a dark blue blanket and a rectangular pillow stuffed at an angle under her head, Santa could never sleep on a plane. The reasons were the usual. The stiff upright seats, the constant roaring in her ears from the window next to her ear, the fear of catching lice or a virus or the flu, and the fact that Brett North was often a passenger next to her, flying the same flight to catch a taxi to the same track, and besides listening to his music far too loud, Brett was also an enthusiastic chewer of spearmint gum. For four hours and one layover, she’d been as silent and passive as Saint Francis de Sales. This was hour number five and she was no longer Catholic. She smacked him.

“Chew with your mouth closed.”

He rolled his head around and looked at her, a wad of bright green gum tucked into the right side of his jaw, copper curls falling over his eyes, his left knee bumping into hers. “Or what, Mom?”

“Or I’ll slap you again.”

He gave her that unblinking snake-like grin made famous by the Norths.

“And I’ll poison your gum,” she added.

Brett North slid further down into his seat as if he had all the room in the world to be obnoxiously feline. It helped that he was already slender, but paired with his long history as an agitator, it only made Santa’s hand itch to slap him again.

“Look at you going all Colombian on my ass. What the hell’s your problem?” he muttered.

“You and your gum,” she passed him her napkin and with a dangerous enough look from her, he took it.

“Me and my gum were fine. You’re the one with the problem.” He stuck his gum into the napkin and then shoved it into his empty plastic cup. “You know I need to chew.”

“I never said you couldn’t chew. I said chew with your mouth closed. It’s not hard and it’s not even the same thing.”

“I don’t like to chew gum with my mouth closed.”

“Obviously.”

“When people chew with their mouths closed, their lips move like panties in a dryer.”

Santa rolled her eyes at him and for a few blessed minutes Brett North remained silent as they floated over the Rocky Mountains. She stared out the oval windows and counted the clouds floating by like sheep scattered across the map of continent below, trying to speed away the minutes until she could run home, run home and into Maxwell’s old room and lose herself in the business of trying to find his familiar smell somewhere in the sheets. She’d wrap herself up in them and ask his ghost if she’d been right to do what she had done. But the reverie was broken. Brett was already squirming in his seat like a toddler with an interest in the bag of gummy bears in mommy’s purse.

“I need to chew something.”

“Dios mio, Brett, here have some cinnamon altoids from my bag. You want some of those?” She threw her blue blanket at him and dove under the seat in front of her.

He caught her blanket and wrapped himself up in it as if she had meant it as a conciliatory gift. “I don’t like cinnamon.”

Santa raised her eyebrow at him, her purse half unzipped.

“I’m serious, Santa. I had cinnamon once when I was kid right before I went to bed and I had a nightmare and for the longest time I wouldn’t sit on a toilet afterward without making sure there wasn’t a smoking rat floating in it.”

Santa sighed and dropped her purse back between her feet and shoved it underneath the seat in front of her with a kick.

“You’re not going to ask about the rat?”

“No." Santa ran her hands through her hair, “If you won’t eat cinnamon, and I can’t listen to you chew on your nasty mint gum without shoving a...”

“Chainsaw.”

“...under your chin, how else do I get you to shut up for the last three hours of our flight?”

Brett shrugged, “I don’t know. Be civil. Talk to me. Stop threatening me with a chainsaw. Wait for the peanut cart.”

“I never...”

“You realize you’re missing your necklace?” he added quickly, deftly, as though the words were a slight of hand, like a magician pulling out her wallet to reveal he’d had it all along and she hadn’t even known.

Her hand instinctively flew to her throat. “Que?”

“Your necklace. It’s gone.”

Santa glanced down at the hollow space between her breasts. “Oh that.” She dropped her hand to her heart and was reminded again of what had happened only the night before. She scowled. “I lost it.”

“Lost it, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Rumour says you threw it.”

“And then I lost it.”

“At Laurence Leclerc in the gallop out of the King’s Bishop,” Brett added with a narrowed look that may have only been bested by the Artful Dodger himself; it was all at once criminal and swaggering, the look of a man who had dabbled in the thieving arts most of his life. Santa would know. She’d been one herself once.

“Ah, here comes your peanut cart to divert me. Saved by the peanuts,” he added, as two flight attendants intervened with their clattering cart and offerings of snacks. Brett happily took a bag of peanuts and opened them up with an immediate tug, relishing the whiff of something like a ballpark minus the hotdogs.

Santa accepted a can of ginger ale. “It’s a long story,” Santa admitted to him.

“It’s an even longer flight.”

“Am I to be your only entertainment?” Santa sighed, slipping her fingernails under the tab to her ginger ale.

“Well, it’s either that or I go back to watching all the porn I saved on my iPhone.” He glanced at her, and when she ignored him, dutifully sipping her ginger ale for the godsend it was, he continued, “So...was it the deadheat? Were you just mad at him for nailing you at the wire?” She took several more long, indulgent gulps. “I mean that’s never happened to me, but I can imagine if it were me and some skinny frenchman is giving me hell down the stretch...particularly Larry, I would have sent something his way too.”

Santa lowered her ginger ale. He knew something was up. Brett North could always sniff trouble. But he wanted to play. “I wasn’t mad at him for the deadheat.”

“So was this some kind of early Christmas present?”

“No.”

“Swatting a fly off of his face with your chain?”

“I was breaking up with him.”

That got Brett North to shut up.

“I made him call off whatever his hopes or his plans were. It’s not going to work, Brett. It wouldn’t have or couldn’t have. You know that.” Her voice was quiet and pensive.

There was something about the Norths that got confessions out of her. Tomas, the older brother, was clairvoyant as everyone said around the backstretch with a sort of respectful nod, but Brett...Brett made it impossible to keep anything secret. He’d piss you off until you caved.

She’d confessed a lot of things to him lately.

“I chased him, you know. After Maxwell passed. I liked him and I chased him. Maybe because I thought here was a safe object I could hide away what I felt for Maxwell, and it wouldn’t come back. All this love with no direction now, no vessel to pour itself into. I didn’t understand that Laurence was a...a...”

“Boomerang?” Brett offered.

Santa laughed uncomfortably. “A rebound,” she replied.

He lowered his second bag of peanuts. “You’re serious?”

Santa turned to him and nodded.

“Is this...temporary?”

She looked down at her empty can. Fuck it. It was the Canada Dry brand. It was going to be just as she had feared, like how it had been with Maxwell. Laurence was going to appear everywhere in her life now. Like a ghost. Or like a mistake.

Brett followed her eyes to the can and reaching over, he stuffed his empty peanut bag into the empty mouth. It was as if he was saying, I’ll silence your ghosts for you, but as obnoxiously as possible. Santa found herself laughing. A high hysterical laugh.

“You should come home with me,” he said simply.

She didn’t need to look into his eyes to understand the offer being made. “No,” she replied. It was the kind of thing Eddie would have said, and it only made her laughter teeter toward the manic.

“Even so. I don’t think you’re in a state to be going home alone.”

She held up her can, stuffed with his peanut bag, and waved it around like a metaphor. “It was a ginger ale, Brett, not a vodka.”

“Maybe it should have been a vodka. I have vodka. Something strong and Russian. Can’t have you pissing wine anymore.”

She wiped at her eyes and he watched her. Together they stared at the clouds. The engines at the wings droned and hummed, the man in front of them probably farted, and behind them a couple chatted and a toddler cried and the plane bounced a little in the air currents. The seatbelt sign came on with a friendly chime.

“So you threw St. Christopher at him,” he declared in the middle of the turbulence.

“I did.”

“Because he was a rebound.” The look Brett gave her told her he didn’t believe it, and his green-gold eyes became a portal.

Santa saw it again, in her mind. The race. Timpanac roaring down the stretch collaring Laurence in the King’s Bishop in the final two furlongs. His head, then the white crow’s head, then the grey mountain, then the crow. And Laurence still wouldn’t look her in the eye. His whip was out, he was chirping to the crow, and he wouldn’t look her in the eye. She realized it with a start. Laurence had already known about Rocco. Known before she’d even stuttered out his name like a dying rooster in the hallway when he’d worn the pink silks. He’d known all along, and he’d said and done nothing. She’d given him her necklace in the bedroom in Montreal, and in the morning found it back around her neck. And when he’d climbed on top of her the next night, she’d gently pushed him off. He’d taken her up into a treehouse. He’d promised to marry her, and yet always the indirect remarks. Always he looked forward. As he was looking forward now, in the stretch of the King’s Bishop. Afraid to confront what was running alongside him. In the moments after the dead heat, she’d decided to force his hand. Their hand. She ripped off her necklace. She screamed at him that he had better be ready to catch her. And he didn’t. The necklace fell into the dirt of Saratoga and was lost to the stampede of hooves behind them.

To be fair...he was caught off guard. But she still shouted at him. She still said the words: No mas. And the defeated look in his eyes told her he understood. She was breaking up with him. They both walked stunned into the locker room. And later that night when she went to the track to recover her necklace she found him already there digging through the sand.

She should have dug with him. Instead she turned and left, and walked past Brett North telling Therese Leclerc as casually as he could that he wouldn’t be joining her and her family for dinner.

Santa looked at Brett now. Saw him clearly. “It’s been a bad weekend for us,” she whispered.

And he sighed and took her hand.

NEXT ON: