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

PREVIOUSLY ON:

It is highly recommended that you be up to date with the current Mana Farms & Brazen Fields storyline.

A man, June considered as she traced a slender finger along the side of one, is a collection of angles. Triangles. Rectangles. Broad lines here tapering down to a narrow there. Designed and built for strength and balance. They are long lines with sharp corners the intensity of which suggests almost everything about what lies beneath and everything that drives the machine within.

Jockeys, in particular, are impressive specimens if one is studying angles. They are so lean, so defined, the human brain automatically and correctly gleans their athletic status, and also their obsessive appetites for self destruction. Ribs puckering the skin stretched across them in regular waves, rivers of veins bubbling across tanned forearms, barren bedrock uncloaked to the explorer by a history of erosion. They are expanses of wild landscape stricken by decades of drought. Peculiarly beautiful and also tragic.

The first time Laurence embraced her without his silks and vest, she was unexpectedly winded by his strength and impressed by his control of it. Then as every bone in his arms, collar and torso folded around her, pressing her into the cool white skin stretched like a drum across those bones, she became incongruously alarmed by how brittle he also felt. Now five months later she could honestly answer that it still troubled her...the paradox of strength and vulnerability discovered only when a jockey chooses to embrace you.

“Laurence?” she whispered. Her head was resting against his chest and she listened to his heart. He had been troubled for weeks and she was aware. It was that damn “L”. She traced his collarbone with her finger and waited for his reply.

He didn’t reply. Whatever he was listening to at this moment it had taken priority over her voice. He was at peace, holding her against his chest, his head resting against her shoulder drinking in the warm Florida sun as it swaddled them.

June watched as a group of horses rolled by on the track beside them, the last few stragglers of morning jogs. They trotted by and whistled at the couple, but Laurence continued to ignore them...and her.

“Laurence,” she murmured again and this time she disrobed his arms from her and stepped back so he could regard her with renewed curiosity.

“It’s March twenty.”

He cracked a smile, “I am aware. Tomorrow...de Imp and I, we show dem something good. Altissima is waiting for a reply from de East. Gotta show up!” He caught her exhibition of contempt at his mention of the Imp and he stopped talking. When he realized the dark look on her face was not because of the Imp but because of his mention of Altissima, his smile faded completely.

“Quoi?” he replied to her frown, exchanging his ruffled curiosity for mild irritation.

She stared at him, studied those angles on his face. The down turned eyes said guilt, the high rising line of his set jaw said I don’t have to listen or obey. She felt her own jawline tighten and she shifted her center of balance to send him the geometric symbol for offense.

“What is this?” she asked, raising her hand and folding it into an “L”. She fixed him with an unrelenting stare and watched as he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away to the track for redemption. When his beloved track failed to rescue him, he sighed.

“Is just a rivalry,” he mumbled to the rail.

“What does it mean?”

He shrugged, his eyes wide, “I don know, she started it, I don know what it means or dat it means anything...is just...,” he searched for the words, his eyes roaming every shape near him but hers. Finally, he looked at her and attempted a light-hearted smile, “It’s fun.”

June scowled at him, her eyes glowing. “You are flirting with her.”

Laurence stiffened, his eyes seeking an outlet, any outlet, muttering swears under his breath. They’d had this conversation before, a month ago, in a hallway. "S'il te plaît, tu m'embêtes, June. What do you want from me? What more? I am making so many changes for you, non? Is just a rivalry. Rivalries are good for our sport. Dey make de fans watch, make dem come, and...c'est très amusant."

“Is this special rivalry of yours worth us having this conversation?” she retorted, “Again?”

“Peut-être,” he growled.

“Why? It’s not the rivalry, Laurence, don’t pretend that I’m just being an emotionally insecure woman because that makes it easier for you to dismiss my concerns. What I meant to infer earlier is that it’s March. You and I have been together for almost half of an entire year. You have an ongoing flirtatious rivalry with another woman you barely know, and I, who have been your girlfriend for months, haven’t even been inside your home. I haven’t met your family. I haven’t even stepped inside your rental condo....what? Why?”

“Why my home? Do we have a need for privacy now, ma chérie?”

By his immediate unguarded reaction, June gauged that she had struck emotional gold, but his response was not what she expected. He glared at her quite suddenly, his posture one of defense, but the words that hissed out as he stepped back further from her were sharp and cut her deeply. June gaped at him as he struggled to meet her eyes after he realized what he’d said, his suggestion stinging at her cheeks. She could see from those softening angles in his face that he immediately regretted his complaint, but she was going to hold him to it. She had him right where he deserved to be. “So it’s about sex. That’s it? Really, Laurence? I had thought so much more of you than that.”

His expression and posture contorted apologetically, “June, I did not mean it like dat.”

“Yes, you did,” she concluded as he finally slipped into defeat, and as she observed it, she noted out of the corner of her eye an entirely different profile. A man in a suit had come to the rail to observe the last of the morning jogs, he was leaning against the outside rail, and he was contemplating them.

June felt a smile begin to twitch at the corners of her mouth.

The angles of a businessman are very different from that of a jockey. The suits they don have been designed with the power of suggestion in mind, especially in the shoulders, where long straight lines and right angles exaggerate or enhance the indication of competence. There are right angles in all of the right places. June felt a little flutter as she always did in the presence of power. Right angles are angles of persuasion. The cleanliness of the design a reflection of the cogency of the wearer. June stood up straighter and Laurence followed her gaze.

“Randy Harada,” she breathed.

Laurence saw the Suit and he narrowed his eyes. “He’s here for de Florida Derby most likely. Câlisse, maudit espèce de con hostie de tabarnac. Crisse.”

June cast her boyfriend a sideways glance and unleashed her next move before her brain could censor it. “Ne soyez pas jaloux, mon cher, il n'est qu'un rival,” June teased with sweet sarcasm. She realized a second too late that her desire to hurt him with the irony of his emotion meant she’d matched him in his own tongue, almost word for word, at a level that betrayed her carefully embroidered screen. With a shrug and a loose smile, she left him for the other man before he could even reply to her fluent retort.

Randy Harada watched her as she approached with those intelligent black eyes that took in everything all at once with astounding perception. She could see him calculating and interpreting behind his veil of dark hair, and she couldn’t hold back her smile to see this evil little man’s lips curl up with hers.

“Randy,” she purred.

“June,” he replied, “It has been a long time. How are Richard and Jane? I take it they are well?” He offered her his arm, and she took it.

June enjoyed moments like this. Moments where a man like Randy Harada who already well knew how her family fared was still required to inquire anyway because her family was a family of political power, enough that even he, even he had to feign politeness. She played his game with him as he led her up the stairs to the most the inner of rings in the elite clubhouse. He offered her a chair at his table and she sat.

“Your French is still as graceful as ever,” Randy noted in a low soft voice. He shot her a Machiavellian gloat, “Comme celui-là.”

“Force de frappe, Mr. Harada. The better to upset their territorial pride,” she harmonized.

“It is a cruel thing this game you play with Laurence LeClerc,” Randy mentioned as casually as though they were discussing the weather, “What are we writing now that could so heavily involve a simple jockey from Woodbine?” He held up his glass, and waited for it to be filled.

June returned his Cheshire smile, and held up her glass with him as the waiter stopped by and refilled them both. In this game, with this man, there was no need to pretend to be something she was not. No need for a press badge, no need for pencils and paper and tape recorders and cameras. No need for a sparkling voice or twinkling eyes. Only face to face analysis of angles. She felt, strangely, at home.

“You have a most interesting sport, Harada-san. When I learned what you were up to now I simply had to investigate. And you?” she challenged, “Not granting Ramon Fernandez citizenship? I, personally, am pleased as we could do with a few less Mexicans in our uni-lingual Republic, but then again, I know a Jap like you wouldn’t be doing such a favor simply to please my parents and their friends in Washington.”

“No I would not. I remain, as ever, an arbitrator, Miss Jonassen, a disinterested party concerning the state of Missouri.”

“Control then?” she goaded.

“Is there any other reason?”

“None.” June sat there and studied the man whose power and influence had driven her mad on the New Zealand fleet. “You, with all your talent and good intentions, are still a waste,” June decided, looking over her glass at him, swirling the rose colored wine.

He raised a single eyebrow behind his own glass.

“Arbitrators. All of you. Cowards hiding behind the myth of fair objectives. Mururoa and Fangataufa were unregulated high level radioactive waste dumps for the French nuclear program in the Pacific. It had to stop.”

“Agreed.”

“As I recall you did very little to stop it.”

“I resolved it. They finished testing in 1996 when you were just a bud on your parent’s tree and I have kept it that way.”

“You have done no such thing, not even close.”

Randy shrugged, “Maybe not enough to satisfy my little Rainbow Warrior, but...I am paid to remain impartial.”

“I have enough politics in my blood, Randy, to know that there is no true nonpartisanship. Even you have turned to lobbying in your age.”

Randy smiled, “You are still as gratingly naive as I remember. If France was still conducting nuclear tests, even underground, I would know.”

“That doesn’t mean you’d stop it.”

“True, but then again it was never my business to do so. I do not lobby for them.”

“And the whaling operations by Japan?”

“Legal.”

“That, for a fact, I know to be a lobby. You made that loophole.”

“The Japanese discovered the loophole on their own, I was merely obligated to acknowledge it and include it in my proceedings. Why are you doing this? I was content to ignore you in November, but here you are, violating our nonverbal agreement.”

June smiled and countered as deftly as a dueling violinist, “Why are you plotting against the entire population of the Kingdom of Tonga?”

Randy’s expression grew dangerous.

“It’s so very hard to stay impartial...isn’t it?” June spiked. With his dark eyes on her, she smiled and took a sip of her wine. Her heart was pounding to be this close to him, to be having a conversation as private as this one with the man who had made all her progress come to a standstill, but it also aroused her...like learning to speak a language she’d long forgotten she knew and remembering it in time to slap her boyfriend in the face with it. “What can I say? I like your sport, Harada. It’s as savage and exciting a game as you are.”

“I may be equitable when it comes to international business, Miss Jonassen, but Mana Farms, this sport, it is my personal business and I have no reservations within it.”

“Duly noted,” June countered, “But I also understand that my father’s bid for Governor of Missouri makes me no small entity to you. On your sport we must simply agree to disagree.”

“You will behave yourself around my jock.”

“Your lesbian?” June snapped, “Keep her away from me, it’s that simple.”

“You will behave yourself, Miss Jonassen,” he repeated, his voice so low and so stern, June found herself shivering a little. It was thrilling.

“I always have,” she replied sweetly. She stood to leave when his eyes flashed up from underneath his hood of black hair. The warning in them froze her in place.

“You are a provocateur, Miss Jonassen,” Randy announced, “and an amateur. And I will watch you unravel.”

“You have me shivering, Harada-san, but then again, you always have,” she sighed, “I thank you for the drink.”

As she left the Clubhouse many things coursed through her mind, not the least of which was his admission at the end, and his cryptic promise to see the collapse of her tapestry. She had wondered over the long winter months, as she toyed with many in the man’s beloved industry, just when the Jap would rear his beautiful head, when her old rival from the Pacific who had undermined all of her would-be achievements against gross abuses by the governments and people of France and Japan and Australia, would decide she was worth his attention again.

She let out a long exhale and felt better than she had when the Saint herself had damned her own industry, and she began jogging again, jogging in the direction of the man who would inspire her to write so much more. Randy Harada had done his part, if not as he intended, by stoking the political fire in her blood, reminding her just how these games were supposed to be played. It was about angles, and had always been she realized. Not the magnanimous but distressed sharp points and edges and corners of a jockey, but the right, straight, formidable angles of potent men who took no prisoners, made no reservations, and slept, in alarming aplomb, with the enemy.

She found Laurence waiting for her, huddled at the foot of the stairs to the Clubhouse, looking quite apologetic and hurt. She pressed her finger to his lips before he could argue with her again, before he could question her understanding of his own language, and her longtime derision of it. She took his hand, led him baffled and alarmed through the quiet hallways which fed into Gulfstream’s private boxes high in the upper levels of the grandstand. And there she found an empty and unlocked room, pulled him in, and watched his smile spread, relief washing over every angle in his face and body, as she pulled her shirt over her head and locked the door.

NEXT ON:

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

PREVIOUSLY ON:

It is highly recommended that you be up to date with the current Mana Farms & Brazen Fields storyline.

A man, June considered as she traced a slender finger along the side of one, is a collection of angles. Triangles. Rectangles. Broad lines here tapering down to a narrow there. Designed and built for strength and balance. They are long lines with sharp corners the intensity of which suggests almost everything about what lies beneath and everything that drives the machine within.

Jockeys, in particular, are impressive specimens if one is studying angles. They are so lean, so defined, the human brain automatically and correctly gleans their athletic status, and also their obsessive appetites for self destruction. Ribs puckering the skin stretched across them in regular waves, rivers of veins bubbling across tanned forearms, barren bedrock uncloaked to the explorer by a history of erosion. They are expanses of wild landscape stricken by decades of drought. Peculiarly beautiful and also tragic.

The first time Laurence embraced her without his silks and vest, she was unexpectedly winded by his strength and impressed by his control of it. Then as every bone in his arms, collar and torso folded around her, pressing her into the cool white skin stretched like a drum across those bones, she became incongruously alarmed by how brittle he also felt. Now five months later she could honestly answer that it still troubled her...the paradox of strength and vulnerability discovered only when a jockey chooses to embrace you.

“Laurence?” she whispered. Her head was resting against his chest and she listened to his heart. He had been troubled for weeks and she was aware. It was that damn “L”. She traced his collarbone with her finger and waited for his reply.

He didn’t reply. Whatever he was listening to at this moment it had taken priority over her voice. He was at peace, holding her against his chest, his head resting against her shoulder drinking in the warm Florida sun as it swaddled them.

June watched as a group of horses rolled by on the track beside them, the last few stragglers of morning jogs. They trotted by and whistled at the couple, but Laurence continued to ignore them...and her.

“Laurence,” she murmured again and this time she disrobed his arms from her and stepped back so he could regard her with renewed curiosity.

“It’s March twenty.”

He cracked a smile, “I am aware. Tomorrow...de Imp and I, we show dem something good. Altissima is waiting for a reply from de East. Gotta show up!” He caught her exhibition of contempt at his mention of the Imp and he stopped talking. When he realized the dark look on her face was not because of the Imp but because of his mention of Altissima, his smile faded completely.

“Quoi?” he replied to her frown, exchanging his ruffled curiosity for mild irritation.

She stared at him, studied those angles on his face. The down turned eyes said guilt, the high rising line of his set jaw said I don’t have to listen or obey. She felt her own jawline tighten and she shifted her center of balance to send him the geometric symbol for offense.

“What is this?” she asked, raising her hand and folding it into an “L”. She fixed him with an unrelenting stare and watched as he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away to the track for redemption. When his beloved track failed to rescue him, he sighed.

“Is just a rivalry,” he mumbled to the rail.

“What does it mean?”

He shrugged, his eyes wide, “I don know, she started it, I don know what it means or dat it means anything...is just...,” he searched for the words, his eyes roaming every shape near him but hers. Finally, he looked at her and attempted a light-hearted smile, “It’s fun.”

June scowled at him, her eyes glowing. “You are flirting with her.”

Laurence stiffened, his eyes seeking an outlet, any outlet, muttering swears under his breath. They’d had this conversation before, a month ago, in a hallway. "S'il te plaît, tu m'embêtes, June. What do you want from me? What more? I am making so many changes for you, non? Is just a rivalry. Rivalries are good for our sport. Dey make de fans watch, make dem come, and...c'est très amusant."

“Is this special rivalry of yours worth us having this conversation?” she retorted, “Again?”

“Peut-être,” he growled.

“Why? It’s not the rivalry, Laurence, don’t pretend that I’m just being an emotionally insecure woman because that makes it easier for you to dismiss my concerns. What I meant to infer earlier is that it’s March. You and I have been together for almost half of an entire year. You have an ongoing flirtatious rivalry with another woman you barely know, and I, who have been your girlfriend for months, haven’t even been inside your home. I haven’t met your family. I haven’t even stepped inside your rental condo....what? Why?”

“Why my home? Do we have a need for privacy now, ma chérie?”

By his immediate unguarded reaction, June gauged that she had struck emotional gold, but his response was not what she expected. He glared at her quite suddenly, his posture one of defense, but the words that hissed out as he stepped back further from her were sharp and cut her deeply. June gaped at him as he struggled to meet her eyes after he realized what he’d said, his suggestion stinging at her cheeks. She could see from those softening angles in his face that he immediately regretted his complaint, but she was going to hold him to it. She had him right where he deserved to be. “So it’s about sex. That’s it? Really, Laurence? I had thought so much more of you than that.”

His expression and posture contorted apologetically, “June, I did not mean it like dat.”

“Yes, you did,” she concluded as he finally slipped into defeat, and as she observed it, she noted out of the corner of her eye an entirely different profile. A man in a suit had come to the rail to observe the last of the morning jogs, he was leaning against the outside rail, and he was contemplating them.

June felt a smile begin to twitch at the corners of her mouth.

The angles of a businessman are very different from that of a jockey. The suits they don have been designed with the power of suggestion in mind, especially in the shoulders, where long straight lines and right angles exaggerate or enhance the indication of competence. There are right angles in all of the right places. June felt a little flutter as she always did in the presence of power. Right angles are angles of persuasion. The cleanliness of the design a reflection of the cogency of the wearer. June stood up straighter and Laurence followed her gaze.

“Randy Harada,” she breathed.

Laurence saw the Suit and he narrowed his eyes. “He’s here for de Florida Derby most likely. Câlisse, maudit espèce de con hostie de tabarnac. Crisse.”

June cast her boyfriend a sideways glance and unleashed her next move before her brain could censor it. “Ne soyez pas jaloux, mon cher, il n'est qu'un rival,” June teased with sweet sarcasm. She realized a second too late that her desire to hurt him with the irony of his emotion meant she’d matched him in his own tongue, almost word for word, at a level that betrayed her carefully embroidered screen. With a shrug and a loose smile, she left him for the other man before he could even reply to her fluent retort.

Randy Harada watched her as she approached with those intelligent black eyes that took in everything all at once with astounding perception. She could see him calculating and interpreting behind his veil of dark hair, and she couldn’t hold back her smile to see this evil little man’s lips curl up with hers.

“Randy,” she purred.

“June,” he replied, “It has been a long time. How are Richard and Jane? I take it they are well?” He offered her his arm, and she took it.

June enjoyed moments like this. Moments where a man like Randy Harada who already well knew how her family fared was still required to inquire anyway because her family was a family of political power, enough that even he, even he had to feign politeness. She played his game with him as he led her up the stairs to the most the inner of rings in the elite clubhouse. He offered her a chair at his table and she sat.

“Your French is still as graceful as ever,” Randy noted in a low soft voice. He shot her a Machiavellian gloat, “Comme celui-là.”

“Force de frappe, Mr. Harada. The better to upset their territorial pride,” she harmonized.

“It is a cruel thing this game you play with Laurence LeClerc,” Randy mentioned as casually as though they were discussing the weather, “What are we writing now that could so heavily involve a simple jockey from Woodbine?” He held up his glass, and waited for it to be filled.

June returned his Cheshire smile, and held up her glass with him as the waiter stopped by and refilled them both. In this game, with this man, there was no need to pretend to be something she was not. No need for a press badge, no need for pencils and paper and tape recorders and cameras. No need for a sparkling voice or twinkling eyes. Only face to face analysis of angles. She felt, strangely, at home.

“You have a most interesting sport, Harada-san. When I learned what you were up to now I simply had to investigate. And you?” she challenged, “Not granting Ramon Fernandez citizenship? I, personally, am pleased as we could do with a few less Mexicans in our uni-lingual Republic, but then again, I know a Jap like you wouldn’t be doing such a favor simply to please my parents and their friends in Washington.”

“No I would not. I remain, as ever, an arbitrator, Miss Jonassen, a disinterested party concerning the state of Missouri.”

“Control then?” she goaded.

“Is there any other reason?”

“None.” June sat there and studied the man whose power and influence had driven her mad on the New Zealand fleet. “You, with all your talent and good intentions, are still a waste,” June decided, looking over her glass at him, swirling the rose colored wine.

He raised a single eyebrow behind his own glass.

“Arbitrators. All of you. Cowards hiding behind the myth of fair objectives. Mururoa and Fangataufa were unregulated high level radioactive waste dumps for the French nuclear program in the Pacific. It had to stop.”

“Agreed.”

“As I recall you did very little to stop it.”

“I resolved it. They finished testing in 1996 when you were just a bud on your parent’s tree and I have kept it that way.”

“You have done no such thing, not even close.”

Randy shrugged, “Maybe not enough to satisfy my little Rainbow Warrior, but...I am paid to remain impartial.”

“I have enough politics in my blood, Randy, to know that there is no true nonpartisanship. Even you have turned to lobbying in your age.”

Randy smiled, “You are still as gratingly naive as I remember. If France was still conducting nuclear tests, even underground, I would know.”

“That doesn’t mean you’d stop it.”

“True, but then again it was never my business to do so. I do not lobby for them.”

“And the whaling operations by Japan?”

“Legal.”

“That, for a fact, I know to be a lobby. You made that loophole.”

“The Japanese discovered the loophole on their own, I was merely obligated to acknowledge it and include it in my proceedings. Why are you doing this? I was content to ignore you in November, but here you are, violating our nonverbal agreement.”

June smiled and countered as deftly as a dueling violinist, “Why are you plotting against the entire population of the Kingdom of Tonga?”

Randy’s expression grew dangerous.

“It’s so very hard to stay impartial...isn’t it?” June spiked. With his dark eyes on her, she smiled and took a sip of her wine. Her heart was pounding to be this close to him, to be having a conversation as private as this one with the man who had made all her progress come to a standstill, but it also aroused her...like learning to speak a language she’d long forgotten she knew and remembering it in time to slap her boyfriend in the face with it. “What can I say? I like your sport, Harada. It’s as savage and exciting a game as you are.”

“I may be equitable when it comes to international business, Miss Jonassen, but Mana Farms, this sport, it is my personal business and I have no reservations within it.”

“Duly noted,” June countered, “But I also understand that my father’s bid for Governor of Missouri makes me no small entity to you. On your sport we must simply agree to disagree.”

“You will behave yourself around my jock.”

“Your lesbian?” June snapped, “Keep her away from me, it’s that simple.”

“You will behave yourself, Miss Jonassen,” he repeated, his voice so low and so stern, June found herself shivering a little. It was thrilling.

“I always have,” she replied sweetly. She stood to leave when his eyes flashed up from underneath his hood of black hair. The warning in them froze her in place.

“You are a provocateur, Miss Jonassen,” Randy announced, “and an amateur. And I will watch you unravel.”

“You have me shivering, Harada-san, but then again, you always have,” she sighed, “I thank you for the drink.”

As she left the Clubhouse many things coursed through her mind, not the least of which was his admission at the end, and his cryptic promise to see the collapse of her tapestry. She had wondered over the long winter months, as she toyed with many in the man’s beloved industry, just when the Jap would rear his beautiful head, when her old rival from the Pacific who had undermined all of her would-be achievements against gross abuses by the governments and people of France and Japan and Australia, would decide she was worth his attention again.

She let out a long exhale and felt better than she had when the Saint herself had damned her own industry, and she began jogging again, jogging in the direction of the man who would inspire her to write so much more. Randy Harada had done his part, if not as he intended, by stoking the political fire in her blood, reminding her just how these games were supposed to be played. It was about angles, and had always been she realized. Not the magnanimous but distressed sharp points and edges and corners of a jockey, but the right, straight, formidable angles of potent men who took no prisoners, made no reservations, and slept, in alarming aplomb, with the enemy.

She found Laurence waiting for her, huddled at the foot of the stairs to the Clubhouse, looking quite apologetic and hurt. She pressed her finger to his lips before he could argue with her again, before he could question her understanding of his own language, and her longtime derision of it. She took his hand, led him baffled and alarmed through the quiet hallways which fed into Gulfstream’s private boxes high in the upper levels of the grandstand. And there she found an empty and unlocked room, pulled him in, and watched his smile spread, relief washing over every angle in his face and body, as she pulled her shirt over her head and locked the door.

NEXT ON: