IT NEVER LEAVES

     He received the news in Syria through a 2 day old Facebook message from his brother. He had been covering a heart wrenching piece for Al Jazeera about a woman and her 13 year old daughter who had both witnessed the torture and beheadings of the woman's husband, his 2 brothers, and the couple's 3 sons, ages 9, 11, and 16. He took a few pictures of them in the kitchen of their small apartment where the floors and the walls were still stained heavy with blood. He had asked the woman about that, about how they could continue living and actually eating with such a terrible reminder all around them. The woman looked down at the white plastic table where she sat and she reached a hand out and traced the edge of a pinkish smear with her long crooked finger. She smiled a painful smile and she did not answer.
     There were no flights out of Damascus so he hired a driver to take him to the Turkish border. He had no problems crossing through and he immediately found another driver to drive him the rest of the way to Hatay. He flew from Hatay to Paris, then from Paris to JFK. He spent the night at an old girlfriend's apartment in Williamsburg, a spunky little shit with big eyes and pouty lips and the most astonishing ass he had ever seen. She had been a gymnast in college and was getting her masters in journalism from Columbia. They met at KGB Bar after he gave his first reading from his first collection of short stories. The book was called "It Never Leaves". The stories were dreamlike vignettes about his endless travels in and out of war zones and regions of famine and genocide. Her name was Valerie and she was sitting in the front row while he read, tears rolling down her cheeks. They only dated for a little over a year as she quickly realized she could not endure his ever worsening depression. She loved him deeply and she loved his work and the way he wrote and saw the world, but it was all too much for her. Though he had been nothing but kind to her, his presence made her feel ashamed of the simple things she enjoyed in her life, like watching Sex In The City for example, or wanting to go out dancing with her friends. These were hard things to justify in front of someone who had just returned from Afghanistan. Though she feared she would never find anyone she would love and respect as much as him, she made the decision and told him over coffee one morning that she wanted to just be friends.
     Valerie was in London, covering the Olympics for CNN. Many years had gone by and though they rarely saw each other, they remained close friends, keeping up with each other through texts and emails or Facebook. She was the one that actually convinced him to sell his apartment on Delancey Street. His plan was to start looking for a house to buy somewhere upstate, in the Hudson Valley maybe. As convenient as it was, he had grown tired of the city. She thought it would be a good change for him as well. But he simply hadn't gotten around to doing it. He was always traveling too much to give it any effort. He was able to reach her from Syria. He had forgotten that she was in London. He really wanted to see her. She told him how sorry she was and she made him promise that he would stay at her new apartment, that all he had to do was get the spare key from her neighbor, Bill. She said she would let Bill know he was coming. He buzzed Bill and got the key and went into the apartment. The apartment was nice, a true one bedroom with modern appliances. There was even a balcony. He went into her bedroom and put his backpack down on the floor by the bed. For a moment, he just stood there, breathing. He then walked over to her dresser and pulled open the top drawer which had a few pairs of her panties and socks and pantyhose. "God," he thought, "I would give anything to be able to fuck her right now! That's it, that's all I fucking want! I just want to fuck!" He put his hands on top of his head and he closed his eyes and he winced and sort of whimpered. "That fucking ass! Jesus Christ! I wouldn't even need to fuck her! Just to look at that ass!" The thought of it angered him and he slammed the drawer shut, knocking over a picture. He picked up the picture and pulled the little cardboard flap back open. He placed it back where he thought it went and he looked at the picture. It was a picture of her and her father standing in front of the Flatiron building with their arms around each other. He had met her father once. The two of them really hit it off. He was a warm, caring man, a veterinarian from Kentucky. The antithesis of his own father. In conversation, he would often look down while he listened, rubbing his arms and nodding. Valerie's mother had died when she was in High School. She died in a car wreck on her way to one of Valerie's gymnastic meets. She didn't actually die from the crash, her car overturned in a work zone and she drowned upside down, buried up to her waist in the deep sludge of a freshly dug ditch. Valerie told him the story that first night she came home with him after his reading. He opened a bottle of red wine and they sat on his floor talking. "I don't know how you do it?" she asked him at one point.
     "You mean the work I do?"
     "Yeah. I mean, I understand, but to keep doing it for so long, to keep seeing the things you see."
     "Well, now I can't not see it. It doesn't matter where I am, I always see it. We're all a part of it."
     He finally pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number. His mother quickly answered. "No," he said, "I'm just now in New York. I'll be there tomorrow."