MANA: a usted o usted

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As always, it is highly recommended you be up to date with the current editions of the Mana Farms and Brazen Fields storylines before we take you guys on an epic ride...



The first rule of being a jockey is the most obvious: ride safe. Whether others believe it or not this rule is much harder to learn and follow than might otherwise be assumed, especially due to the demands of rule number two: WIN. The third and final rule, also equally incontrovertible and equally difficult, is to pay fucking attention. Joey Gallo was not following rule number three; therefore, Santa concluded to herself as she whipped across his bow and took the hole that could have been his if he’d been a second faster, he was forfeiting rule number two.

The incredulous look the young jock made as he snapped out of swooning subconscious was met with a chuckle from Santa as she crossed under the wire and he flew past her in the gallop out. “Thanks for the five thousand dollar present, kid!”

“Happy Birthday, Santa!” he surrendered, flying past her, still thinking about his date tonight, Santa was certain.

“Have a good Valentines Day, kid, she must be something real special for you to give up a hole like that! You left it wide open!”

He shrugged and pleaded with those youthful blue eyes of his not to mention those ill-timed seconds of pining for trainer Richard Barry’s sun-kissed daughter to his team, and above all, not to Jimmy the Hat who was going to kick his ass as it was for losing a race that had been his to win on the favorite. Santa gave him a wordless nod and the zipped gesture across her pouting lips in response as she dismounted and allowed her valet to remove her saddle and reins.

Why couldn’t Valentines Day fall on a racing weekend more often? If every Valentines Day fell on a weekend then she could make an annual birthday tradition out of fleecing those young lovesick jocks with their head in the clouds and their dick in their brains, which was a much better alternative to her usual tradition of calling Eddie and venting. Four races out of ten and she’d just earned herself more in this single day than some Mexican groom’s cousin makes in three years of landscaping. Pathetic, she sighed wishfully while walking slowly to the jock’s room to close up shop for a bit. Next week it was to Gulfstream with Timpanac, a weekend she was very much looking forward to. Seeing Eddie would clear the stubborn embarrassed cloud hanging over her head the last two weeks faster than any drug Vine Street could offer a jockey.

She swaggered into the Jock’s Room with her shoulders back and her smile wide; she knew what was coming. The penises would never be able to resist it. Freddy Sanchez who had lost race number two to her that afternoon, took the first shot.

“Tell us, santarona, is fifty thousand dollars worth it?”

Santa raised her eyebrows high. Holy shit. Did that little kid just call her frigid? Freddy had to have balls like a bull to suggest what she thought he was suggesting. Clever too to play on her name like that. Santarona. High Saint. Virgin. Cold. Frigid. Old lady. The other jocks in the room whooped at his daring. Alright, she’d bite, but only because she had to see if this kid really was going to say it after she’d just knocked out several of Remy Daigle’s teeth and shattered his nose two weeks earlier.

“Worth what, Freddy?”

“Worth not having some hot stupid chiflado to swoon over on your birthday?”

Impressive. She liked this kid. He was honest, and he still had pride for her to rip from him slowly over the next few weeks during the Spring Meet. There were many ways of teaching a young man to mind his manners around a woman. Santa knew more than enough to level him if he dared. A wary glance in Santa’s direction followed the collective chuckle of the room.

“The best present I can ask for, puto, is not looking like you did in race number two. Ever.”

Freddy Sanchez cracked her a smile and backed down. Freddy had a pretty girl to take on a Valentines Day dinner, Santa knew, a girl he didn’t want to meet with a black eye, a bloody lip, or a smashed nose. All gifts she would happily give in her saintly generosity should he ask for them. As the room settled down he opened his locker and pulled his silks over his head. Santa did the same and as she did so she felt the eyes of the room on her again and could feel Solomon Rushton, that old Australian who had slowly grown on her, raise his eyebrows up and down playfully. She glanced back at her own expression in the mirror in the back of her locker, masses of her long brown hair plastered to her sweaty, dirt-streaked neck. Yeah, I’m a total bunny. She smiled at herself.

“I said no,” she announced in unapologetic deadpan.

A large groan erupted in the room. A few hundred dollar bills passed not a few hands. Those bastards. Those gambling pigs. She stifled her own laughter at their antics.

“Why not?” shouted a frisky Solomon Rushton. He winked at her. He was feeling very good considering the Boomstick had just annihilated his competitors in the Robert B. Lewis Stakes today by a staggering eight lengths to stamp himself as a serious Derby contender. And, Santa considered, while weighing that against how just a few weeks before Subversive had only barely scraped by a nose win in his Holy Bull Stakes...you could see why Solomon Rushton was an old man turned teenager again. From the looks of Solomon’s enthusiastic grin you’d think he won the Derby already.

As Santa grabbed her duffel bag from her locker and slammed the door shut, she poked her finger in his fifty year old chest. “Because I’m not selling a usted o usted o usted o usted,” she pointed to each jock in turn around the room, including a few grinning valets, “my girls for nine ninety five an issue! These are original limited edition las bad ass bubies.”

“Someone call Calvin and get him to change her mind!” Rafael Valdez sniggered from his dark little seedy corner.

Santa shot him a look. She hadn’t forgotten as he already had that he too had slammed into her at that awful start two weeks ago. “Calvin understands me,” Santa explained, her mind returning to his startling revelation over dinner a week earlier...when the magazines slammed her as a dangerous rider and a dangerous person...that he too had flown off the handle in front of a national audience, and that Playboy never asked to see his breasts afterward. Santa smiled again at the memory.

“Yeah, you’re both completely loco!” Freddy added, ducking away into the hall before she could throw something at him, which was just as well because she was standing close to the pool table and it wouldn’t have been too hard for her to grab one of those balls and lob it at his giant forehead.

Santa finished packing up her things and headed out to her car. She unlocked it, tossed her things into the backseat, sat down and dropped her head into her hands. Away from her track family, away from their playful but stinging banter, she pulled herself into the backseat of her car and shut the door. They didn’t know. They didn’t know how much it hurt to be called dangerous. Cold. Untouchable. And how necessary it was for her to be all of those things. Being anything less would mean going back to Colombia and she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

No jock, male or female, who attempted to stymie loneliness with the companionship of another managed it for very long. Eddie, Izzy, and many many others already understood this and didn’t go looking for long term orthodox varieties of commitment. Those who managed something substantial found it in fellow horsemen until it too slowly crumbled under the burden of stresses unique to their profession. Long hours, constant travel, punishing diets, and the constant threat of disability or death all weighed in on your relationship until one day it outweighed seeing your spouse in front, pointing their whip to you as you stood cheering in the stands. In short, horseracing was unforgiving to the traditional notion of a family.

Santa could never forgive herself for this one ridiculous flaw, but she would always love a jockey. An old friend of hers, Rocco Zarate, had once kidded to her that the worst person a jockey could love was another jockey, and he was right, but there was no one else she trusted to understand her. She pulled her phone out of her duffel bag and sat there folded up in the backseat of her car with her belongings. She listened to the phone ring as it chimed in her ear again and again.

Finally, after an agonizingly long pause, Eddie picked up. “Happy Birthday, woman!” he cheered. Santa felt a small stab in her heart as she realized she had called him first. On her own birthday. This was not the way they did it on Valentines Day. Why hadn’t he called her?

“Muchas gracias, Ed,” she answered. She could hear his hesitation on the other end. She wrapped her arms around her knees, smiling thoughtfully, her lips curled expectantly, waiting for him to begin the breakdown of all the nasty things he would do to her in the phone sex they would ultimately never have. This was their Valentines Day ritual. His annual birthday gift to her. Their way of saying fuck you to every person they knew...including each other. They’d stroke one another’s egos, they’d tease and taunt about the crazy sex they both knew would never happen but deserved to happen after so many years of loyal devotion and then they’d wake up to a disconnected line and go about their lonely lives. But today Eddie did not wish her breasts a happy birthday as she’d grown accustomed to in the last four years: “Welcome my lovelies to another year of precious existence in a world that is so very grateful for it.” Instead she heard: “So....what’s up?”

Santa blinked a couple of times. “I dunno. It’s Valentines Day,” she prompted, “I’m twenty-four now.”

“Yeah, you’re a old lady,” Eddie remarked.

Santa sat there, her mind completely blank. “Did I get you in the middle of a fuck or something?” she snapped.

“No.” Eddie replied.

“Then why the hell are you so damn quiet, cabrón? It’s Valentines Day...come on, ask me about my underwear for chrissake!”

Eddie didn’t reply immediately; she could sense him looking over his shoulder even though she couldn’t actually see him do it. She didn’t need him to explain much more... she could hear a girl trying to refrain from giggling on the other end. Her smile disappeared.

“Are you...” Santa began, “are you on a date?”

“Girl,” Eddie apologized, “it’s not a date. I’m just out.” He coughed, obviously uncomfortable with his next words, “Soul Patch and that little journalist were making everybody sick, so we just decided to, you know, girl, get out.”

Santa was quiet for a long time until the only thing she could think of in reply to that came out, “Fuck you. This my day. You owe me, Eddie. I only ask for your undivided attention once a fucking year. And in case you were wondering: I’m commando.”

“I bet the boys really loved looking at your ass today then, baby,” Eddie couldn’t resist remarking.

Santa snorted at him.

“Look I’m sorry, my woman, I forgot. Ellie and me couldn’t take all the fucking lovesick shit, so we’re taking the Lamborghini out.”

Santa’s mouth dropped open. She looked out the windows of her car as the sun set completely over the Pacific ocean in the distance. The roar of Interstate Five could be heard, beckoning her home. “The Lamborghini?”

“You think I can keep it in the garage when I’ve got a piece of ass willing to climb in?”

Santa sat up abruptly. “Ellie? As in Ellie Campbell?! Are you shitting me?! The French Canadians are going to murder you and dump you in the Atlantic.”

“Nah,” Eddie added with an edge of nervous hesitation, “LeClerc managed to pull his tongue out of June’s mouth long enough to bitch, but that was about it.”

Santa heard Ellie Campbell make a definite “bleh” remark on the other end and she refrained from joining the girl only because she was afraid of what she would really say if she opened her mouth just now. She breathed a moment to compose herself, and remembered. “And Ramon? What about Ramon, Ed?”

Eddie was quiet for a minute, “Uh, yeah, I don’t know he’s probably out partying or something. It’s Miami, girl.”

“Ed.”

Eddie sighed, “It’s not a date. He’ll understand. We just had to get out. This is Ellie, America’s Sweetheart. I’m not screwing around. I don’t enjoy getting assfucked in prison that much.”

“I know you have limits, Ed,” Santa retorted, “I just doubt your ability to stay within them.” Even though it is good too see you with someone your own age for once who doesn’t have as many condoms in their pocket as you do, She thought quietly to herself.

“This is different, girl,” Eddie whispered and Santa’s breath came out in a slow sigh.

“Okay,” Santa finally replied. She looked back out at the Los Angeles city lights blinking and waving at her from the parking lot. She wasn’t angry with him for being on a date. She wasn’t angry with him at all. She was just...disappointed. And worried. The worst person a jockey could love, she reminded herself, was another jockey. “Hey, Ed?”

“Yep?”

“Call me tomorrow.”

She waited for a few seconds until it registered with him. She’d made the same request a month and a half ago on New Year’s Day...both holidays in which lovestruck people made stupid spontaneous decisions. She didn’t need to wait. Eddie got it. “Oh yeah, I will. I’ll let you know if he asks her....anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Santa?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think he will, okay? So just....get some sleep. Or better yet,” he added after a pause, “pack and fly out here already. Go home. I’m buying you a plane ticket. Maggie can reimburse me laters and....we’ll hang out tomorrow night, okay? And we’ll kick ass next week. Happy fucking Birthday. Now may I please get back to appreciating this extremely choice piece of ass?” Santa heard Ellie squeal in delight on the other end. Womanizer.

Santa smiled and she hung up.


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