FOUR GUYS GOSPELS

CHAPTER 1 CRAZY YOHANAN Offices of Four Guys Gospels Mark Berkowitz looked over the top of his scroll at his chuckling associate, “By you, this is funny?” Matthew Goldfarb jiggled his silent laughter and unrolled the scroll he kept as a ledger, “By me, picking a god like you’re picking a winner on Mesopotamian Idol is definitely not funny.” The two-story stone office building housing the offices of Four Guys Gospels had rough-cut mashrabaya screens covering its rectangular windows. The Egyptian latticework of turned interlaced dowels cut down on any direct sunlight while channeling the city’s meager, dust-filled breezes into the office. Roughhewn wooden bookshelves packed with scrolls and papyrus covered with writings, drawings and symbols filled the spaces between office windows. The channeled aromas of hot city air mixed with the odor of old papyrus and rotting scrolls gave the air in the office the quality of the air beneath a camel-driver’s caftan. Luke Abadi wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He stretched his lanky six-foot frame to catch any breeze seeping through the wooden window screens. “I’m shvitzing like a Hasid running the hundred in here.” “Nice alliteration, but aren’t you the one who insisted on an office downtown where the action was?” Mark smirked at his partner. “In the middle of a desert you expected breezes?” “Hills we don’t have here? Hills shouldn’t have breezes?” Luke whined as his eyes scanned the loft. “Breezes you want?” Mark jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “Go on the road with Yohanan.” Luke waved away Mark’s suggestion. “Any breeze that approaches Yohanan will die when it comes up against his hot air.” “But Yohanan’s hot air can breathe life into legends like you wouldn’t believe. On his hot air, folk tales rise to the level of holy writ.” “Any of Yohanan’s hot air drift this way yet? CHAPTER 2 THE BREEZE, THE HOT AIR AND THE MISHAGOSS “John, he wants we should call him now.” Matthew squinted to read the papyrus he held in his hands, “And yeah, John says they got a guy for us.” “Really?” Mark’s bushy black eyebrows rose. “So Yohanan . . . sorry . . . John wants we should use that hard Greek ‘J’?” Matthew nodded, “John figures between Aramaic, Hebrew, the Greek the Syrians made us learn and the other Greek the Romans teach in their No Roman Left Behind program . . .” “The one where everyone gets left behind?” Matthew nodded, “Someone, somewhere will adopt that sound and he’ll be ahead of the curve.” “So did John say who this guy is or who our clients are?” Luke looked up from studying the fingers he’d pressed against the underside of his wrist. “I feel a bumping just under my skin here.” He frowned, “You think I’m okay?” “You’re a Syrian doctor and you have to ask?” Matthew sighed and returned to the subject, “As to who the guy is and who our clients are? I don’t know and John didn’t say. What I can tell you is that if our clients are Yehudim—Jews is what we will call them now, they’re not mainstream Jews.” “Why not mainstream Jews?” “Why my goyisha doctor?” Matthew pressed his lips together and assumed an elder statesman’s persona, “Because mainstream Jews, though they would complain like you never heard about our Roman guests, would not try to push a new rebel leader so soon after our Zealots, you should excuse the expression, got the zeal kicked out of them.” “So if they’re not mainstream Jews, who then?” “Meshugge Jews. Meshugge Jews we got plenty.” Matthew raised a finger, “Sadducees we got who are meshugge Jews. These go strictly by the book. Rigid as the papyrus they’re written on.” He raised a second finger, “Pharisees we got who are meshugge Jews. Pharisees do for arrogance what Moses did for hiking.” He raised a third finger, “And finally, Essenes we got who are meshugge Jews. Essenes do for mysticism what Noah did for boating.” Luke felt the pulse in the side of his neck. “Goyim can’t be meshugge, too?” “Of course . . . sure . . . No question.” Mathew waved away the question, “Can Greeks be meshugge? Could Medea hold a grudge? Romans? Did Sybil need make-up?” He gestured to the scrolls lining the office walls, “From them we got even documented meshugge. Torah translations we got here like you wouldn’t believe. I never imagined Aramaic and Hebrew could be made to mean such things.” “So you think our clients are nuts?” “We got more mixed nuts in Jerusalem than a Bedouin trail mix.” Matthew chuckled. “We learn what our clients want us to do with who they picked, we’ll know what kind of nuts we got.” Luke sighed, “Certainly took long enough for our clients to come up with their new candidate.” “They think their new boy will survive the same mishegoss their last one went though?” Matthew fought not to remember. “What does this new one have that the old one didn’t have?” CHAPTER 3 BAPTISM BY . . . WELL . . . WATER “Us.” The rough wooden door slammed against the wall punctuating John Schtarker’s sentence. “Four Guys Gospels. Now with research resources from the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire at our fingertips and clients with a bankroll that could choke my Aunt Rose.” “The bankroll we could use . . . your Aunt Rose, not so much.” Matthew sighed, “But, tell me Mister Dramatic Entrance, exactly who did these momzers pick for us to push this time?” John stood in the doorway grinning an I-gotcha-grin, “The same guy they picked last time.” “Oy.” Mark Berkowitz moaned the all-purpose expletive and snuck a look at Matthew.