The Curious Case of Sidd Finch by George Plimpton

Author:George Plimpton [Plimpton, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-09-10T10:37:00+00:00

I heard the tap on the door-soft, somewhat tentative.

I was awake-as usual, trying with an unsuccessful series of mental exercises to calm my mind's busy meanderings sufficiently to drift off.

Debbie Sue came in and sat on the end of the bed. In the vague light I could see she was wearing one of my button-down shirts.

"Do you mind talking?"

I made a move to get up. "No, don't budge." Her hand drifted out and she grabbed at the mound where my feet pushed up the blanket.

"I'm thinking of leaving Sidd." Her voice was throaty; I could tell she was close to tears. "It's no use. It's not going to work."

I asked her what the problem was.

"It was all right when things were simple. But now it's different. He's going to pitch. Crowds. He's going to become a celebrity. And besides, I don't see much point in being in love with a man who's interested more in The Void. Right? He's tried to help me reach The Void. Empty the mind, he tells me, and he says to think of the wake of a submarine disappearing into the deep. Count to a hundred. I sit in the lotus position and I try. My mind just doesn't work that way.... His skin smells a little bit like pepper? Have I told you that? I'm hopeless."

Absentmindedly she began massaging my toes through the thickness of the blanket.

"Do you know what he said to me once? He said, 'Debbie Sue, you are a very unlikely candidate for achieving bodhicitta'-that's what everyone strives for."

"What did you say?"

"I said, `Well, fry my ass.' It just came out. He didn't seem to mind. I don't think it makes much difference to him."

I asked, "Do you have arguments with him?"

"Oh, no. But Owl, being in love with a Buddhist monk isn't easy. But what am I doing this for? I don't see him settling down, do you? Monks don't. They're in love with something else. They're in love with the idea of being monks, at least that's what I think. I wish it were all different. I love to hear him talk about the trains in the ballroom of that house in London. I love to hear him play his horn. I love it when we swim naked in the Bay at night. But it's all going to change."

"Maybe baseball will change him," I suggested. "Baseball will be his expression of bodhicitta."

"I'm too selfish," she said. "I don't want anything else to have him."

She sat for a while in the darkness. "Tell me something, Debbie Sue," I said. "How did it start? What happened there in the dunes when you came ashore that day on your Windsurfer?"

?„ "Why?„

"Well, Sidd's ... ah," I said awkwardly, "not exactly a prize catch-at least not on the beaches around here."

"What about love at first sight?"

I shrugged. I could sense her smiling in the darkness at the foot of the bed.

"I know what you think, Owl. You think I was sent by someone. That's

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