Your fair oasis

Jesus raised a crystal glass of scotch to the sea. Spotlit solely by
art deco desk lamp, it was silent, it was silent, and the light was
cheerless. The room was dim and hardly spoke at all, the law books were
listless and the hallway bare. Saying man gains trinkets treasures
heavens clock reverie.

"I've had enough," he said. "I've said my say."

"Surely not."

Manley poured the Chianti. Some of it tripped over the rim.

"Man is the only creature with the gift to rationalise beyond his
savage desires, and he saves it solely for conversation," said
Jesus.

Manley said, "Oh dear. That's a little cynical, isn't it?"

"The Sysiphysian pursuit of happiness through the accumulation of
material goods. The endless revenging and avenging. The maddening, the
maddening, why I send you all to hell. Balls! You only rationalise when
you want an excuse to think you're better than someone else. All of
you. Where's my cappuccino?"

"Coming."

"Coming's not good enough! They've been saying I've been coming for
years now, but when it comes down to it, Manley, coming doesn't cut it,
it's got to have come."

"Well, some might disagree with you there, Jesus."

Jesus tossed the rest of the wine away.

"Benedict and the wide variety of meats," he said. "Now there's
something you don't see every day. Bloody slaughtering and the ultimate
in absurd posturing - now it's saintly and tasty, isn't it?"

"Seems so."

"Mixed nuts. Probably bought for a cocktail party, never
served."

Jesus threw them over his shoulder. He opened a can, and discarded the
rest of his celery.

"We don't have a problem with vegetables, you understand."

"Of course. We just find them offensive."

"We should go travelling. Just the two of us. Concierge and desk
clerk. What do you say to that?"

"Sounds a fair idea, if morally disgusting and verging on fascist,
Jesus."

"Glad you agree. A neck for a neck makes no necks altogether and all
that."

Manley stepped on the remainder of an ice cream carton. Wrestling his
way into his evening wear, Jesus stepped out. From subterranean rooms
serving roasted game, and the brimming North Sea became a Louis XIV
chandelier, sparkling with the splinters of Christ's light. It was
almost holy, nearer rowanberry.

"The whole point about being good, Manley, is that it's hellish
difficult. It isn't a simple case of doing what you want. You can't do
what you want, and then claim it's good by some sophistrous strain of
reasoning. You can't do it in my name, damn you to hell, you should be
down on your knees fingering the road, undignified, ashamed and
forlorn, if you rationalise that it's good to do so."

Jesus picked at the boar. They came to the second floor, serving haute
cuisine on fine linen tablecloths, decanters, silverware and gilded
furniture. And they went swaying down the luna street, haggling at the
market.

"But this?this is what people do, I'm telling you," Jesus sucked on a
rose apple. "Instead of using their fingers to finger?"

"I know, I know. You don't need to tell me," said Manley.

"So what excuse do you have?"

"Well, how about this? I don't labour under the misapprehension that
I'm doing good. But if something good happens as the result of my
actions, then I'm glad about it."

"By something good, I hope you don't mean the defeat of your
enemies?"

Jesus had a mouthful of flesh and juice. His tongue was coated with
sugar.

"Well?" said Manley. "No. I give up."

"Ha! I knew it! Que bellisima!"

Manley ate the last fig from the tree, hungrily.

"You win again, Jesus."

They left themselves plenty of money for the Palio and stocking up on
honey. Some more scotch, single malt, the melting cubes chiming. Or at
the Toulleries, the Eiffel and the Louvre, seven hundred metres long -
the artwork at the Orsay failed to move Jesus sufficiently, and at
L'Orangerie they briefly engaged Renoir, but Jesus only told him that
it struck he, Jesus, that the recognised daddies of intellect were all
against behaving violently and vengefully, yet the dogs who claimed to
revere them still went on at it, tarting up the puck with Zen and
mish-mash splendour. Renoir didn't know what to make of it. Manley
sighed and considered warm apple tarts in a rich glaze. The cinnamon
delighted them both.

"Leather and marble," said Jesus. "Can't take the credit for those,
can you?"

"No," said Manley, uncertainly, "but we?" (his hands cupping at
invisible breasts,) "utilise them for different effects."

"Aren't you tired of being told what to feel, Manley?"

The fabulously creamy real limone gelato with fresh fruit and cream
glued up Jesus' mouth.

"I don't take much notice," said Manley, pausing between tomato bread
soups that were perhaps too rich.

"Man goes along takes what he wants, discards what he doesn't. Told
that isn't good enough, that he has to protest against what he thinks
is wrong, or maybe he does that anyway because he's been brought up
with some sense of duty. Man protests, is protested against for his
protests, and do you know what they call me for saying all this? They
say I'm some na?ve child - well, my advice was as good as any, wasn't
it?"

"You can't please everyone. Take no notice."

They still had time to lay into the rusticity of Tuscany, steal high
into Italy, and base themselves in Fisole, overlooking Florence. A
short bus ride to the Piazza De Signora, and they knocked back
espressos before they arrived. Hours were spent with brick oven-cooked
pizzas in the halls of Uffizi.

"You disgust me, Manley."

"You disgust me, Jesus. Thoroughly and truthfully."

They ordered bruschetta, pasta in truffle oil with fresh green olives,
and tried to speak among mouthfuls of porchini risotto.

"No, I was making a point. You might as well disgust me, because you
can bet your nylons you disgust a whole slice of the community, for one
reason or another in heaven and Christ almighty, it might as well be
me, mightn't it, hell?"

"Well, let's disgust each other and get it over with."

"I mean, will you look at us. We visit the Medici chapel, an opulent
overstatement, amble down the Arno, gouge ourselves on avocados for
guacamole?"

"Trample over all decency and good taste?"

"Yes, yes. And we, dry as the martinis at Nathan's, have the cash cow
to comment? No, no, say our superiors?Fed-Ex tresses! I sound like one
of them, don't I?"

Manley looked up over the genie mythos, and said, "Well. You have
taken on mortal flesh, Jesus. It's bound to come with certain
accoutrements."

"We should go find ourselves a shark of a woman, Manley. Let's take
the elevator."

Jesus had a preheated moneymaker litigator in the vista de
Michelangelo, kind of warm and glowing all over, while Manley waited
outside on the pier with a pungent lasagne and a bagel, two fingers up
at the satiny confection of his friend. He spent most evenings working
towards becoming a proficient seamstress, but found he hadn't got the
parts, so he planted a nice garden with rockeries and hose, and they
settled down for a while there.

"Culture and language are fair enough though," said Jesus. "Fisole
shall become our new home."

One evening they strode down the west bank and found a vendor. They
bought a couple of bottles of reasonably good champagne, then found a
manor on an acre on the outskirts of the town. Jesus fell in love with
its five hundred-year old plumbing, and their facilitator became a
Florentine baker.

"You're avoiding the subject, Manley."

"Me?"

Manley scoffed through his mocha's wreathing and devoured the last
cake. They had a look around the lanes of Tuscany.

"Yes! All this talk of women and elevators and new homes - you're
taking a sabbatical. I asked you quite plainly what you meant by that
last little jewel of yours."

Jesus looked haggard, and sunk into a melon, already thinking up their
next move. Find the Palio in Sienna, watch the horses, head for the
cascading Etruscan hills - pretty off-kilter, genie in a bottle, but
worth the fee.

"Let's head for Orvieto and catch some pageantry," he said. "We can
talk on the way, Corpus Christi."

They witnessed miracles in cathedrals and walked beneath the aqueduct,
towered over them like a ruined church. The sharp grass rose and wept
about their temple, and the effects of age and aneurysm worked hard
against their pounding. A mock salute, top flight, dogged them of
late.

"If you want to walk with the hounds, you've got to talk like a
hound," said Manley.

"You're a wise man," said Jesus. "And to think I came here to
teach."

"Can't teach something you don't know. That'd be like a blind chair
trying to paint a diffused sunrise through the fog of an eerie pink
caste."

They shared a burrito, and Jesus opined, "Things have changed a screw
or two. The downside to every pleasure manifests itself."

"I think, really, Jesus - in the end - isn't it the downside that
bitch you've got to?" (juggling imaginary lettuce,) "negotiate
with."
"Half a can of nuts, that's all you lot are," Jesus murdered a
cracker.

In the gaping valley, they set up a home and hearty beef potpie soup
in a bowl, a barbecued chicken, pate and radish. Cruising through the
Panama Canal with a salad in ranch dressing, they longed for banana
trees, chips and salsa.

"According to the Chinese traditional medical theory of "Jingluo"?"
said Manley.

"The ten fingers are connected to the heart. Heard that one. Doesn't
sound likely."

"Deplorable, barbaric and vile, but interesting nevertheless."

"Yes, interesting, Manley!" Jesus swiped at him with pepper. "If only
that was the only word with which we could describe unpleasant matters.
Interesting?"

The sea raised a hand to Christ. For all its wealth and success, it'd
end up dead as any other.

"Nice to stretch our legs. Let's head back, shall we?"

They hovered over the dark wood wainscoting, down the long hallway and
found their credentials easily. The grand old house, the one hundred
and fifty acres of wooded prime real estate. The windows and French
doors were abandoned to beauty and the perfect workout regime. Inside,
the dark bedroom eyes of the Lord and the nutmeg gloss of Manley made
for some old dark saying, and a stiff drink over ice in the breakfast
nook. The sultry complexion of the room in the meteor shower of night
completed the trifecta.

"All done before sunup," said Jesus, as if in some trance. "No more
bogus lawsuits blazing across the heavens. I scored two tickets to see
Domingo, by the way."

"Domingo?" Manley screwed up his concentration. "I don't like the
sound of that."

"Come the foggy morning then. I've had my day here, and none of their
arguments could sway me."

Certainly, his breathing was becoming less than rhythmic, and the
ground was wet and fragrant. The shell was seamless, unriveted. Manley
took Jesus' hand in his and crept in close to listen to the half buried
ozone whispers, breaking free from the morass and entangle of the
kitchen past.

"The next vibrant young man you encounter, Manley - the very next. I
hope he can find something more exquisite and pretty-frosted than I
have for you to wonder at, for heaven's sake. I regret that in all our
time together we seem to have found only restlessness and a scarred,
ugly surface, hell's balls."

"Never mind," said Manley.

The curtains leapt and struck out against the French doors. Manley
laid the head down to a concrete pillow beneath insulation. The comet
passed on and there was an endless pause through Dresden. Manley raised
a crystal glass of scotch to the sea.