My mom wondered what the sitarist was up to these days. I shrugged and said I thought he was in Italy or some other European country from his last post. She asked who he was with. I said no one. The sitarist is usually with no one except his sitarist buddies who all watched us stick our tongues down each other's throats the first night we met. These buddies never liked me after that even though I was the only person at any of their gigs who put money in their collection jar. Sometimes I’d even put a ten or twenty in there. They’d look me dead in the eyes as I got the cash out of my wallet and dropped it in without moving even one muscle on their face. No acknowledgment. Despite the fact their dinner was bought with whatever cents the jar collected. But he isn’t with these friends in Italy or wherever I can tell because a few of them commented how much they miss him. My mom says she wouldn’t expect him to be the kind of person to travel alone. Which makes sense given what she knows about him, crippling OCD, impotence, affliction for ghosting. But I tell her when I met him he had just gotten back from a two month solo trip to Paris.
The sitarist and I bonded over the OCD, he told me the first night we met. Sitting in his gold Toyota listening to old metal. He turned down The Accused to tell me about his diagnosis. I quickly followed with my own diagnosis. Three weeks later I was wiping my hands with hospital grade alcohol wipes in between putting my keys in my purse and touching his dick due to his compulsive fear of lead poisoning. Two weeks after that I slapped myself across the face five times while he picked up the shards of a wine glass I dropped off his bedroom floor.
My mom asks to see the post of the sitarist in the European country. I show her and she says his haircut makes his face look wider than it did when she met him. I agree. So did his sitarist buddies who didn’t so much as like or comment on the post before this one debuting the haircut. I ask what country she thinks he’s in and she answers Spain. Definitively. Recognizing the fountain in the background from her semester abroad.
I almost never talk about the sitarist. My friends don’t understand why I’m not angrier with him. When his name comes up it is followed by a chorus of shit talk which in good conscience I can’t join for two reasons. First being, I miss him more than I am mad at him. It’s been six months and I still cry whenever I hear The Accused. Second, I am a few peoples sitarist. Someone they one day never heard from again. I have spent weeks on end balding my scalp and eyelids with my own fingers in lieu of picking up anyone’s calls or responding to texts.
A waiter comes for our order, calamari for an appetizer and pasta to share, mom sips her merlot while I order. I ask for another glass of zin. When we’re alone again she says she thinks the sitarist is the only person I’ve ever been in love with.
We split the check and walk back to the car, taking the long way around the park rather than through the grass. A group on the corner plays old blues, there’s no sitar player but I drop five bucks in the empty open guitar case anyway.
