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Description
A quick little bit since I challenged myself to do one a day for the next week. Don't know if I'll be able since I now have a big project come Saturday to prep for, but ah well!

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.

The first book in the MANA series will be published in 2012. 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:

No one would know it, but there was Beethoven streaming through his ears. Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Spring II. Adagio Molto Espressivo. Some Japanese guy was at the bow and a Russian on the piano bench beside him. It was stupid, but he kept his thumb on his device ready to switch it over to metal if he had to. In the jock’s room, he’d change, music first, then clothes. Punk or rap or rock, someone screeching about sucking on their confidence or what not. But here, in the stall, beneath Martin’s short shifting black legs, in a nest of straw, Brett North let his nerves melt away into the fingers dancing between walls of black keys, and the gentle seesawing motion of bow to strings, like a human voice, each note a pearl sliding across a mahogany table as it swayed to and fro on a boat in the sea.

Marty dropped his head down between Brett’s knees and Brett reached up to stroke the long black forelock away from the colt’s eyes, ran a finger down the jagged white stripe all the way down his nose, cupped his muzzle in his hand, let the horse lip the tip of his fingers. “Now piano concerto number five,” he whispered to the horse, “in E flat major. You’ll like this one.” He pulled a solitary orange plug from his ear and held it in front of Marty’s right triangular one. The horse took a deep breath. Brett increased the volume slightly and Marty’s ear twitched. Brett gave out a soft laugh. They listened together for several minutes until a long sad sigh escaped out both of the horse’s nostrils. The jockey cocked his head to the side and his loose copper curls tumbled across his brow. “Yeah, it is a little sad isn’t it? I guess I can see your point of view.”

Outside of Marty’s warm cozy musical stall, the blood bay colt, Stygian, was glaring at them from over his own yellow mesh netting. His large brown eyes were flooded with perceptive jealousy and he declared it with an impatient whinny.

“Shut up, Styg, no one cares about your broken heart,” Brett shouted over the stall door from his nest of straw. There was a kick across the barn in reply.

Brett felt Marty’s legs stiffen in the bedding. He listened closely. “Symphony number seven in A major. Ah, the Allegretto.” He leaned closer to the black colt. “Beethoven thought it was his best. The first time it was played, they demanded it be encored immediately. They’ve called it the perfect symphony. I once took a girl on a date to hear it played and the energy swept around the entire building. Not too unlike a big race, Marty, or a big game. Shhh, listen you can hear the audience wanting to jump up with him. That’s the crowd Marty rising to their feet as we come around the turn....rahhhhh”

“You are one fucked up, dude.” A gravely voice punctuated the vision.

“Oh fuck you, Mills.”

The man was smirking at him from over the door. “Classical music? Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Exercising my secondary auditory cortex what do you think?”

“What?”

“Also my belt and parabelt areas, the left front cortex, the left parietal cortex, my right cerebellum, and the medial prefrontal cortex. Primary motor, basal ganglia, ventral thalamus, anterior insula--”

“Now you’re making shit up,” Wyatt complained. He didn’t like it when Brett rubbed his college education in. A lot of boys from the ice didn't. He was rubbing at his disfigured mandible again. “When did you start listening to that?”

“I’ve always listened to it, Miller.”

“Oh yeah, when? I never caught you listening to that in the room.”

“That’s because I never listened to it in the room. I listened to it on the bench.” Brett glanced up at him, watched the recognition dawn in his old friend’s eyes.

Wyatt pointed a finger at his chest from over the door. “Your dad didn’t give you that.”

“Nope,” Brett agreed, “All Tommy.”

“Tommy?!”

“And he got it from being a Harvard tweed, though I suspect he was infected earlier than that. Or else why Harvard?” Tomas North always in the front of the plane, cold beer in hand, reading a book on American history, while the rest of his team challenged each other on their portable gaming systems. Brett had been the type to hide in the back of the bus and laugh when Miller got shot in the back on his PSP. Jimmy always got him. He could see why Wyatt Miller didn’t recognize this skinny man in a pile of straw with Beethoven’s longing for romance shuddering like a lamb’s cry in his ear. “You need something? What time is it?”

“Almost noon. Almost time to go, huh?” Wyatt asked, he opened the stall door for Brett. “Plus, got some skirts nearby.”

This caught Brett’s attention, he turned off his music. Skirts came around often enough, owners and people owners hoped to impress. Tommy had said nothing earlier about visitors. “Can’t be Tommy’s folk. Are these tourists? Another barn?”

“I don’t know. I was going to ask you about them.” Wyatt was new security, still learning who was and was not permitted in the barn. Brett dusted the straw off his legs and patted Marty goodbye on the forehead. The colt shook his mane out and snorted at him for it. “They were asking about you,” Wyatt added.

“About me?” Brett shot him a look and saw a wide grin on the enforcer’s face. “What?” He glanced at Stygian who was done making frustrated circles in his stall and was now ready to stare down Brett with his accusatory eyes. “What?” he said to the horse as much as to the man grinning broadly at him.

Wyatt was rubbing at his jaw again. “Small world is all I’m saying. Do I let them in?”

“Who are they, Miller? If you know them, they’re hockey kith and kin and Tommy would have said something,” he argued as he walked the length of the barn and into the sunlight.

“Did Tommy tell you I was coming when I did?” Wyatt grunted in answer.

“No,” Brett mumbled but then he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Hi Brett.”

She was still all legs. Long, slender, tanned, thin as a blade of grass, calves delicately muscled and accentuated by heeled sandals. Each toe had been painted with meticulous care, a feminine summery rose colour. Each leg waxed and smooth. The pretty little floral summer dress ended mid thigh. It came in tight along the waist, she was all hourglass too, he realized. Low cut. Collarbone visible, long swan neck, long dark hair hidden underneath a broad rimmed sun hat. High cheek bones. Bright blue eyes. Brett knew a WAG when he saw one. She knew him, recognized him. And he knew and recognized her. “Meagan.”

Her lips parted into a bright smile, swayed her shoulders from side to side like a shy little girl. “You remember me.”

“Of course,” he sputtered. Of course. He picked a piece of straw off of his arm. “What, what are you doing here? Did Tommy tell you how to find me?”

“Tom? Your brother? Oh, is he here?” Her voice had that high tinkling sound, like buttercups. Brett had no idea why he associated her voice with flowers, maybe it was the Beethoven earlier. Like piano keys trilling along the right of the board, high and small and naturally feminine. Each syllable a little blue forget-me-not tumbling out of the sky. Wyatt Miller was smirking at him.

“Uh yeah, grandstand, maybe, likely, probably,” he stuttered. She blushed and smiled at him. “God, Meg, I haven’t seen you in years. What? What’s, um, the latest? You’re, you, still, you know, you and Andrei. Did he come with you?”

“Oh,” she gave an embarrassed little laugh, ran her fingers behind her ears as if tucking a stray hair behind them, “Andrei and I gave it up. Crazy huh? We would have married a few years back if it’d stuck it through with him, but we just never really clicked, you know. We tried.”

“Yeah, I mean no, but I get it, I do,” he stuttered again.

“I know,” she answered, “I totally get it too. It sucks, huh?” She ran her soft slender hand along his arm and gave him that sympathetic look that told Brett how the girls must have talked about what had happened between him and Jessica all those years ago. Whose side had she been on? Had she sat up with Jessica during those lonely weeks when the team was on the road and told her it was okay for her to fuck Gerry behind his back? You should follow your heart, Jess, that’s the honest thing to do.

“I’m really sorry, Brett, I hated it,” she replied.

Brett shot her a look. He should have taken a step back, made it clear he wasn’t in need of pity or sympathy from a pretty girl six years later, but then he smelled her perfume and remembered those dozens and dozens of nights spent walking past her in the hall, late after a game...her in her knee high leather boots and the short skirts and Jessica waiting beside her. Is Andy still in there? Yeah, he’s in the shower. He’ll be out in fifteen minutes. Okay, thanks, Brett. Goodnight Meagan. See ya guys later. So he said: “Thanks Meg, it really is good to see you again. I’ve been...oh out of the loop, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” she said in that soft lavender-like voice of hers.

Brett swallowed. “What are you doing in Saratoga?” he finally managed.

She was rolling her bare shoulders around again, in that shy feminine way they all seemed to know. “My friend Cami’s dad owns a big share in Aquavigor. You know that company?”

Brett glanced at this Cami. Tall, blonde, thin, sun dress, sun hat, chatting it up with Wyatt, (so that's what was distracting him) the kind who flirted with anything. He wondered if Cami knew Wyatt hadn’t ever made it to the NHL. Hadn’t even finished college. Would that change the intensity of red in her lips today? And Aquavigor. That vitamin water crap. If they only knew how many of the boys really put beer or water or watered down beer in their bottles on the bench instead of their sponsor’s shit.

“They own that horse ‘Mastery’ in the Travers,” Meagan continued. She was playing with the lace on the bodice of her sun dress. Brett reached out and fixed it for her.

“They own a lot of horses,” Brett replied. He knew about Mastery. Good horse. Big and brown and blueblooded. He knew about Aquavigor and their quest for a Breeder’s Cup win. And he knew that the lace he had touched hardly warranted a fondling fix at her breast. For some reason the Beethoven was playing in his mind’s ear louder than ever, Allegretto. A violin furiously singing above the streetwise dirty lyrics to lick her persuasion.

They were standing side by side now gazing down the barn at Stygian and MartinStLouis poking their long noses out over the doors to their stalls. For some reason, she looped her arm through his and he let her. If Wyatt noticed, he didn’t say anything, Cami was laughing loud and flirtatiously near him. “Are these yours?” Meagan ventured.

“Tommy’s, but I ride them for the most part.” Brett walked Meagan into the barn. They walked past an open bag of pink and green apples. He grabbed one, rolled it around the palm of his hand, up and over his knobby shoulder, and down into the soft open space between her breasts and stayed in place courtesy of her dress. She gasped down at the apple and laughed. “You’re still a magician, Brett. You were always a magician.” She pulled the apple from the cup of her dress and handed it to the black colt with the inquisitive look. Brett could feel Stygian’s eyes burning like two hot pokers in between his shoulder blades. “I can’t believe you’re a jockey now, Brett, that’s so weird, right?” she prompted. She was close enough again that Brett could smell the pomegranate and lemon grass in her hair.

“Oh totally,” Brett replied. He felt half asleep, like a horse stretched out in the grass underneath a warm comforting sun, but then, “Well, no, I mean, not really. No, it’s not too different.”

“Really?” she asked, her teeth white and straight as perfect as a stock photograph.

“Still a big oval. Still fast and dangerous and my thighs ache and every now and then I get punched in the face.” Laurence, Brett remembered, and Laurence had a sister.

Meagan laughed out loud and Stygian, the blood bay colt behind them, kicked at the back wall of his box again. Beethoven’s Sonata Fourteen murmured like a brook in Brett’s ears, soft as a whisper, romantic and yet feeling ever more and more like a lamentation, ghostly...pianissimo, Tommy had once described a student of Beethoven’s calling it. Brett ran his hands through his hair. Meagan caught the look in his eyes, “And what about you?”

“Huh?”

“Are you...”

“What? Oh,” he realized with a start, “Well, I, I...no?”

“I didn’t know if jockey’s wore rings, you know, the boys don’t.” They both winced together at the thought of the damage a ring could do under the glove given what happens in ice hockey on a regular basis. She was happily petting Martin’s nose. Stygian was glaring at them all. That empty vessel of a horse always permitting the eyes of his brother, or his mother or his father and now...someone else, to creep in and watch him and judge him and count his sins together with him. Meagan followed his eyes to the blood bay colt with the flat ears. “Is that one mean?”

“The Ferryman?” Brett met the horse’s eyes. “No, not mean, just...uh....perceptive.”

“What do you think he sees?”

Brett glanced back at her and Martin. “Apples,” he replied quickly. “Stygian sort of gets the short end of the stick around here, I mean, at least with me. Marty gets all the apples.”

“So it’s not that he doesn’t like you. It’s that you don’t like him?” Meagan smiled and grabbed another apple. “Poor horse, you’re so mean, Brett.” She offered it to the blood bay colt and he wrenched it from her hand with a fierce smack of his lips and teeth together. “Kinda feisty, though!”

“It’s a race day, he gets on edge on race days. He knows. He’ll settle down in the post parade though. It’s the waiting he doesn’t like.” It was a lie, but Meagan didn’t work here like him and Wyatt. Wouldn’t ever know Stygian’s inner workings or Brett’s. “You, uh, you gonna put money on Mastery then, huh? Because of Cami?”

Meagan shot him another brilliant smile, “Is this one running too?”

“Yeah,” Brett smiled in return, “and I’m riding him.”

“Oh gee, I don’t know,” she sing-songed, “It’d be hard to bet against a Flyer. And even harder when it’s Brett North. I remember you too well. I may have to put some money on the Ferryman and see what happens.”

Brett felt his chest expand in pride. Wyatt was calling from outside the barn, reminding him to get to the jock’s room. Already the grandstand was starting to fill and horses were being pulled from their stalls. “Well,” she sighed, “Goodbye.”

“Hey, Meg, wait,” he called, pulling his cellphone from his pocket. “What’s your number now?”

“Oh, here you go,” she replied cheerily, taking his cellphone from his hands and typing it in herself. She handed it back to him, waved, and left. Brett stood there for a few minutes.

“Oh my god, man, did you just bag a wag again?” Wyatt applauded. “Just like old times. You Norths have all the luck.”

That wasn’t true, Brett thought. I’m still surprised it worked. I’m always surprised it worked. I was surprised when Jessica agreed to date me. I was surprised when she agreed to marry me. What did pretty girls want with a North? Apparently nothing, he thought, considering what happened in the end. And yet, here was Meagan, all these years later.

“Man,” Wyatt continued, “If you got that one in bed, think of all the work you’d get.”

Brett grimaced, it was no secret that scouts and agents often assessed an athlete’s success and skill on the candy on his arm. The woman you took home at night was much a sign of your ability as the stats on your cards. Ugly girls didn’t work for hockey clubs. They just didn’t.

“She’s got good connections too,” Wyatt mused, watching her friend’s ass sway underneath the cotton of her sundress as they walked back to the clubhouse. “If the girls still want you, Brett, whose to say you have to stay here at the track, settling for french walkerhotters.”

“Hotwalkers, Miller. I’m not returning to the ice,” Brett growled, he went to grab his saddle and reins and glanced down at the cellphone still open in his hands.

Dinner 2nite? He closed his eyes.

“I know you go to a rink almost every night, Brett, your brother says so.” Wyatt called out as Brett took his saddle into his arms and started heading towards the jock’s room. “They may both be road games, but the schedule in winter is better isn’t it? And just think,” Wyatt shouted, “You could eat a steak again. A big fat juicy steak.” In his peripheral vision, Brett could see Wyatt Miller miming grabbing the ass of the young woman far ahead. That was his idea of steak. Brett put the Philadelphia orange buds back in his ears, reached into his pocket with his freehand and switched playlists.

“Shes all up in my head now, Got me thinking that it might good idea to take her with me,..., And that just ain't me,” He mumbled along to the R&B, Stygian’s whinny cutting through the row of barns all the way there.

NEXT ON:

Description
A quick little bit since I challenged myself to do one a day for the next week. Don't know if I'll be able since I now have a big project come Saturday to prep for, but ah well!

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.

The first book in the MANA series will be published in 2012. 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:

No one would know it, but there was Beethoven streaming through his ears. Violin Sonata No. 5 in F major, Spring II. Adagio Molto Espressivo. Some Japanese guy was at the bow and a Russian on the piano bench beside him. It was stupid, but he kept his thumb on his device ready to switch it over to metal if he had to. In the jock’s room, he’d change, music first, then clothes. Punk or rap or rock, someone screeching about sucking on their confidence or what not. But here, in the stall, beneath Martin’s short shifting black legs, in a nest of straw, Brett North let his nerves melt away into the fingers dancing between walls of black keys, and the gentle seesawing motion of bow to strings, like a human voice, each note a pearl sliding across a mahogany table as it swayed to and fro on a boat in the sea.

Marty dropped his head down between Brett’s knees and Brett reached up to stroke the long black forelock away from the colt’s eyes, ran a finger down the jagged white stripe all the way down his nose, cupped his muzzle in his hand, let the horse lip the tip of his fingers. “Now piano concerto number five,” he whispered to the horse, “in E flat major. You’ll like this one.” He pulled a solitary orange plug from his ear and held it in front of Marty’s right triangular one. The horse took a deep breath. Brett increased the volume slightly and Marty’s ear twitched. Brett gave out a soft laugh. They listened together for several minutes until a long sad sigh escaped out both of the horse’s nostrils. The jockey cocked his head to the side and his loose copper curls tumbled across his brow. “Yeah, it is a little sad isn’t it? I guess I can see your point of view.”

Outside of Marty’s warm cozy musical stall, the blood bay colt, Stygian, was glaring at them from over his own yellow mesh netting. His large brown eyes were flooded with perceptive jealousy and he declared it with an impatient whinny.

“Shut up, Styg, no one cares about your broken heart,” Brett shouted over the stall door from his nest of straw. There was a kick across the barn in reply.

Brett felt Marty’s legs stiffen in the bedding. He listened closely. “Symphony number seven in A major. Ah, the Allegretto.” He leaned closer to the black colt. “Beethoven thought it was his best. The first time it was played, they demanded it be encored immediately. They’ve called it the perfect symphony. I once took a girl on a date to hear it played and the energy swept around the entire building. Not too unlike a big race, Marty, or a big game. Shhh, listen you can hear the audience wanting to jump up with him. That’s the crowd Marty rising to their feet as we come around the turn....rahhhhh”

“You are one fucked up, dude.” A gravely voice punctuated the vision.

“Oh fuck you, Mills.”

The man was smirking at him from over the door. “Classical music? Seriously? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Exercising my secondary auditory cortex what do you think?”

“What?”

“Also my belt and parabelt areas, the left front cortex, the left parietal cortex, my right cerebellum, and the medial prefrontal cortex. Primary motor, basal ganglia, ventral thalamus, anterior insula--”

“Now you’re making shit up,” Wyatt complained. He didn’t like it when Brett rubbed his college education in. A lot of boys from the ice didn't. He was rubbing at his disfigured mandible again. “When did you start listening to that?”

“I’ve always listened to it, Miller.”

“Oh yeah, when? I never caught you listening to that in the room.”

“That’s because I never listened to it in the room. I listened to it on the bench.” Brett glanced up at him, watched the recognition dawn in his old friend’s eyes.

Wyatt pointed a finger at his chest from over the door. “Your dad didn’t give you that.”

“Nope,” Brett agreed, “All Tommy.”

“Tommy?!”

“And he got it from being a Harvard tweed, though I suspect he was infected earlier than that. Or else why Harvard?” Tomas North always in the front of the plane, cold beer in hand, reading a book on American history, while the rest of his team challenged each other on their portable gaming systems. Brett had been the type to hide in the back of the bus and laugh when Miller got shot in the back on his PSP. Jimmy always got him. He could see why Wyatt Miller didn’t recognize this skinny man in a pile of straw with Beethoven’s longing for romance shuddering like a lamb’s cry in his ear. “You need something? What time is it?”

“Almost noon. Almost time to go, huh?” Wyatt asked, he opened the stall door for Brett. “Plus, got some skirts nearby.”

This caught Brett’s attention, he turned off his music. Skirts came around often enough, owners and people owners hoped to impress. Tommy had said nothing earlier about visitors. “Can’t be Tommy’s folk. Are these tourists? Another barn?”

“I don’t know. I was going to ask you about them.” Wyatt was new security, still learning who was and was not permitted in the barn. Brett dusted the straw off his legs and patted Marty goodbye on the forehead. The colt shook his mane out and snorted at him for it. “They were asking about you,” Wyatt added.

“About me?” Brett shot him a look and saw a wide grin on the enforcer’s face. “What?” He glanced at Stygian who was done making frustrated circles in his stall and was now ready to stare down Brett with his accusatory eyes. “What?” he said to the horse as much as to the man grinning broadly at him.

Wyatt was rubbing at his jaw again. “Small world is all I’m saying. Do I let them in?”

“Who are they, Miller? If you know them, they’re hockey kith and kin and Tommy would have said something,” he argued as he walked the length of the barn and into the sunlight.

“Did Tommy tell you I was coming when I did?” Wyatt grunted in answer.

“No,” Brett mumbled but then he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Hi Brett.”

She was still all legs. Long, slender, tanned, thin as a blade of grass, calves delicately muscled and accentuated by heeled sandals. Each toe had been painted with meticulous care, a feminine summery rose colour. Each leg waxed and smooth. The pretty little floral summer dress ended mid thigh. It came in tight along the waist, she was all hourglass too, he realized. Low cut. Collarbone visible, long swan neck, long dark hair hidden underneath a broad rimmed sun hat. High cheek bones. Bright blue eyes. Brett knew a WAG when he saw one. She knew him, recognized him. And he knew and recognized her. “Meagan.”

Her lips parted into a bright smile, swayed her shoulders from side to side like a shy little girl. “You remember me.”

“Of course,” he sputtered. Of course. He picked a piece of straw off of his arm. “What, what are you doing here? Did Tommy tell you how to find me?”

“Tom? Your brother? Oh, is he here?” Her voice had that high tinkling sound, like buttercups. Brett had no idea why he associated her voice with flowers, maybe it was the Beethoven earlier. Like piano keys trilling along the right of the board, high and small and naturally feminine. Each syllable a little blue forget-me-not tumbling out of the sky. Wyatt Miller was smirking at him.

“Uh yeah, grandstand, maybe, likely, probably,” he stuttered. She blushed and smiled at him. “God, Meg, I haven’t seen you in years. What? What’s, um, the latest? You’re, you, still, you know, you and Andrei. Did he come with you?”

“Oh,” she gave an embarrassed little laugh, ran her fingers behind her ears as if tucking a stray hair behind them, “Andrei and I gave it up. Crazy huh? We would have married a few years back if it’d stuck it through with him, but we just never really clicked, you know. We tried.”

“Yeah, I mean no, but I get it, I do,” he stuttered again.

“I know,” she answered, “I totally get it too. It sucks, huh?” She ran her soft slender hand along his arm and gave him that sympathetic look that told Brett how the girls must have talked about what had happened between him and Jessica all those years ago. Whose side had she been on? Had she sat up with Jessica during those lonely weeks when the team was on the road and told her it was okay for her to fuck Gerry behind his back? You should follow your heart, Jess, that’s the honest thing to do.

“I’m really sorry, Brett, I hated it,” she replied.

Brett shot her a look. He should have taken a step back, made it clear he wasn’t in need of pity or sympathy from a pretty girl six years later, but then he smelled her perfume and remembered those dozens and dozens of nights spent walking past her in the hall, late after a game...her in her knee high leather boots and the short skirts and Jessica waiting beside her. Is Andy still in there? Yeah, he’s in the shower. He’ll be out in fifteen minutes. Okay, thanks, Brett. Goodnight Meagan. See ya guys later. So he said: “Thanks Meg, it really is good to see you again. I’ve been...oh out of the loop, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” she said in that soft lavender-like voice of hers.

Brett swallowed. “What are you doing in Saratoga?” he finally managed.

She was rolling her bare shoulders around again, in that shy feminine way they all seemed to know. “My friend Cami’s dad owns a big share in Aquavigor. You know that company?”

Brett glanced at this Cami. Tall, blonde, thin, sun dress, sun hat, chatting it up with Wyatt, (so that's what was distracting him) the kind who flirted with anything. He wondered if Cami knew Wyatt hadn’t ever made it to the NHL. Hadn’t even finished college. Would that change the intensity of red in her lips today? And Aquavigor. That vitamin water crap. If they only knew how many of the boys really put beer or water or watered down beer in their bottles on the bench instead of their sponsor’s shit.

“They own that horse ‘Mastery’ in the Travers,” Meagan continued. She was playing with the lace on the bodice of her sun dress. Brett reached out and fixed it for her.

“They own a lot of horses,” Brett replied. He knew about Mastery. Good horse. Big and brown and blueblooded. He knew about Aquavigor and their quest for a Breeder’s Cup win. And he knew that the lace he had touched hardly warranted a fondling fix at her breast. For some reason the Beethoven was playing in his mind’s ear louder than ever, Allegretto. A violin furiously singing above the streetwise dirty lyrics to lick her persuasion.

They were standing side by side now gazing down the barn at Stygian and MartinStLouis poking their long noses out over the doors to their stalls. For some reason, she looped her arm through his and he let her. If Wyatt noticed, he didn’t say anything, Cami was laughing loud and flirtatiously near him. “Are these yours?” Meagan ventured.

“Tommy’s, but I ride them for the most part.” Brett walked Meagan into the barn. They walked past an open bag of pink and green apples. He grabbed one, rolled it around the palm of his hand, up and over his knobby shoulder, and down into the soft open space between her breasts and stayed in place courtesy of her dress. She gasped down at the apple and laughed. “You’re still a magician, Brett. You were always a magician.” She pulled the apple from the cup of her dress and handed it to the black colt with the inquisitive look. Brett could feel Stygian’s eyes burning like two hot pokers in between his shoulder blades. “I can’t believe you’re a jockey now, Brett, that’s so weird, right?” she prompted. She was close enough again that Brett could smell the pomegranate and lemon grass in her hair.

“Oh totally,” Brett replied. He felt half asleep, like a horse stretched out in the grass underneath a warm comforting sun, but then, “Well, no, I mean, not really. No, it’s not too different.”

“Really?” she asked, her teeth white and straight as perfect as a stock photograph.

“Still a big oval. Still fast and dangerous and my thighs ache and every now and then I get punched in the face.” Laurence, Brett remembered, and Laurence had a sister.

Meagan laughed out loud and Stygian, the blood bay colt behind them, kicked at the back wall of his box again. Beethoven’s Sonata Fourteen murmured like a brook in Brett’s ears, soft as a whisper, romantic and yet feeling ever more and more like a lamentation, ghostly...pianissimo, Tommy had once described a student of Beethoven’s calling it. Brett ran his hands through his hair. Meagan caught the look in his eyes, “And what about you?”

“Huh?”

“Are you...”

“What? Oh,” he realized with a start, “Well, I, I...no?”

“I didn’t know if jockey’s wore rings, you know, the boys don’t.” They both winced together at the thought of the damage a ring could do under the glove given what happens in ice hockey on a regular basis. She was happily petting Martin’s nose. Stygian was glaring at them all. That empty vessel of a horse always permitting the eyes of his brother, or his mother or his father and now...someone else, to creep in and watch him and judge him and count his sins together with him. Meagan followed his eyes to the blood bay colt with the flat ears. “Is that one mean?”

“The Ferryman?” Brett met the horse’s eyes. “No, not mean, just...uh....perceptive.”

“What do you think he sees?”

Brett glanced back at her and Martin. “Apples,” he replied quickly. “Stygian sort of gets the short end of the stick around here, I mean, at least with me. Marty gets all the apples.”

“So it’s not that he doesn’t like you. It’s that you don’t like him?” Meagan smiled and grabbed another apple. “Poor horse, you’re so mean, Brett.” She offered it to the blood bay colt and he wrenched it from her hand with a fierce smack of his lips and teeth together. “Kinda feisty, though!”

“It’s a race day, he gets on edge on race days. He knows. He’ll settle down in the post parade though. It’s the waiting he doesn’t like.” It was a lie, but Meagan didn’t work here like him and Wyatt. Wouldn’t ever know Stygian’s inner workings or Brett’s. “You, uh, you gonna put money on Mastery then, huh? Because of Cami?”

Meagan shot him another brilliant smile, “Is this one running too?”

“Yeah,” Brett smiled in return, “and I’m riding him.”

“Oh gee, I don’t know,” she sing-songed, “It’d be hard to bet against a Flyer. And even harder when it’s Brett North. I remember you too well. I may have to put some money on the Ferryman and see what happens.”

Brett felt his chest expand in pride. Wyatt was calling from outside the barn, reminding him to get to the jock’s room. Already the grandstand was starting to fill and horses were being pulled from their stalls. “Well,” she sighed, “Goodbye.”

“Hey, Meg, wait,” he called, pulling his cellphone from his pocket. “What’s your number now?”

“Oh, here you go,” she replied cheerily, taking his cellphone from his hands and typing it in herself. She handed it back to him, waved, and left. Brett stood there for a few minutes.

“Oh my god, man, did you just bag a wag again?” Wyatt applauded. “Just like old times. You Norths have all the luck.”

That wasn’t true, Brett thought. I’m still surprised it worked. I’m always surprised it worked. I was surprised when Jessica agreed to date me. I was surprised when she agreed to marry me. What did pretty girls want with a North? Apparently nothing, he thought, considering what happened in the end. And yet, here was Meagan, all these years later.

“Man,” Wyatt continued, “If you got that one in bed, think of all the work you’d get.”

Brett grimaced, it was no secret that scouts and agents often assessed an athlete’s success and skill on the candy on his arm. The woman you took home at night was much a sign of your ability as the stats on your cards. Ugly girls didn’t work for hockey clubs. They just didn’t.

“She’s got good connections too,” Wyatt mused, watching her friend’s ass sway underneath the cotton of her sundress as they walked back to the clubhouse. “If the girls still want you, Brett, whose to say you have to stay here at the track, settling for french walkerhotters.”

“Hotwalkers, Miller. I’m not returning to the ice,” Brett growled, he went to grab his saddle and reins and glanced down at the cellphone still open in his hands.

Dinner 2nite? He closed his eyes.

“I know you go to a rink almost every night, Brett, your brother says so.” Wyatt called out as Brett took his saddle into his arms and started heading towards the jock’s room. “They may both be road games, but the schedule in winter is better isn’t it? And just think,” Wyatt shouted, “You could eat a steak again. A big fat juicy steak.” In his peripheral vision, Brett could see Wyatt Miller miming grabbing the ass of the young woman far ahead. That was his idea of steak. Brett put the Philadelphia orange buds back in his ears, reached into his pocket with his freehand and switched playlists.

“Shes all up in my head now, Got me thinking that it might good idea to take her with me,..., And that just ain't me,” He mumbled along to the R&B, Stygian’s whinny cutting through the row of barns all the way there.

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