Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, G2 leaders, likely new pals, meet this week at Sunnylands. Aptly named, although not simply “east of LA” (as some reports have it), this sprawling desert retreat, the former Annenberg estate, sits two hours away in Rancho Mirage. Deserts loom large in our literary minds, from the Bible to Paul Bowles, and oft suggest blank space for exploration of the soul. It is here that the leaders of the dominant and ascendant world powers will stroll, each getting of the other – to borrow from a past presidential aside – “a sense of his soul.”