It was a twenty-one-day shoot and on one of her first nights in his squat, Nick and Esther found themselves alone in his room discussing the new pages she’d written. After running lines they locked eyes, exhausted and exhilarated. The room was a wreck. It smelled of piss and stale nicotine. His sheets were filthy. Cigarette butts were extinguished on windowsills. None of it bothered her. She was too turned on. He kissed her quickly. She was hesitant at first. She had a strict rule against on-set hookups, and here she was breaking it. Their kisses grew softer and deeper. She slipped off her top and turned out the light.
A few days later the financier pulled out. Esther had been self-funding the shoot, waiting for the promised $300,000 to land in her bank account. Now she was both screwed financially and heartbroken to have to break the news to her cast and crew. She confided in Nick.
Hers was the first in a night of revelations. She told him about her difficult teenage years in South Carolina, and he told her everything too, tagging life-altering events with dates that sounded out of place. “Nick, how old are you?” she asked, her head on his bare chest, his finger twirling her red curls. It was a muggy July night. Their skin was slick with perspiration. “Your audition sheet said twenty-five.”
“Did it?”
“Oh my god,” she said, sitting up. “You’re a teenager, and I’m a cradle robber.”
“Chill out. I’m twenty. It’s perfectly legal.”
“Barely.” Esther was baffled. Nick was mature, thoughtful, capable, and hard working. He was a great cook—he had his own pots and pans, for god’s sake—and he was wonderful in bed. How could he be so young? Then she looked around the room. It was filthy. The roof leaked. The walls had holes so big even plywood couldn’t patch them. It was like something out of Fight Club, and unlike the rest of the cast and crew, he was living there before he got the gig. Only a kid could live that way without an end date. She lay back down and curled up close. “I just feel shitty about it is all.”
The production folded, and Nick brought her to Union Station to catch her train back to New York. On the way, he told her that he and Aaron were headed to Cuba, flouting the US travel ban by routing through the Bahamas. Nick had never been abroad and was thrilled. Esther was excited for him, but a little sad too. He told her he loved her, and she wanted to believe him.
He handed her a letter and asked her to open it on the train. They kissed goodbye and he watched as she found a seat near the window, waving as the Amtrak rattled away. As Philadelphia receded and the train emerged into the countryside, she opened the envelope. Inside was a Polaroid he’d shot of a sunflower growing out of a garbage heap. She’d told him about being sexually abused and raped. She’d shared more with him than with anybody she’d ever known. “You’ve been through a lot of shit,” he wrote, “but you are the flower that survived it.” When she arrived at her Williamsburg apartment she climbed onto the roof, stared over the East River toward the Twin Towers and the beautiful Manhattan skyline, and read it once more. That’s it, she thought, I’m in love. She had no idea when or if she’d see him again.
A little over a month later, Aaron and Nick were sitting in a patch of Cuban wetlands, on the edge of a limestone depression filled with clear freshwater. The scrub jungle that surrounded them seemed to sprout from a hollow crust, and beneath it was a network of caves that burrowed deep into the earth. Like on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, the Cuban cenotes were prime snorkeling and scuba diving habitat, and a handful of tourists were in the water, splashing, scuba diving, and playing. One of them swam over.
He was a lifeguard from Havana, was upbeat and friendly, spoke raspy rapid-fire Spanish, and challenged the guys to see how deep they could dive. Aaron had never seen Nick dive deep, and though they’d been in Cuba for three weeks by then, the majority of their time had been spent in cities. They’d strolled Havana’s magnificent malecón and spent vast tracts of time sitting in the shade, smoking cigars, people watching, and chatting with locals. They bought produce in local markets, prepared their own meals, hitch-hiked from town to town in open-bed sugarcane trucks then hopped a third-class train to Santiago, where they spent sweltering days strolling barrios and watching kids play stickball, and their nights in the palm-dappled plazas begging for a cool breeze. They drank coffee with viejos, flirted with beautiful chicas, and sipped Havana Club with local boys into the wee hours.
Thanks to Aaron’s language skills the trip had been a free flow. Each new face offered a unique taste of what life felt like in the friendliest outlaw country in the world. They left each bar, park, and casa particular (Cuban B&B) with a recommendation for the next stop, and fueled up on cheap rum, drowning their straight edge past in 80 proof sugarcane spirit. When they found a beach, Nick enjoyed long swims but also made it a priority to try and teach Aaron how to equalize so they could explore the coral reefs offshore. No luck. Didn’t matter, Nick was content to follow Aaron’s trail, happy to be hanging with one of his best friends on the gritty road. Then came the challenge from a Havana lifeguard, and the promise of a bottomless limestone pit.
“How deep is it, do you think?” Nick asked the lifeguard.
“Dios sabe. Mas que ciento metros, creo,” he said. Nick nodded, and grabbed his mask. He had enough Spanish to know what 100 meters sounded like. “Cuantos metros puede bucear.”
“Vamos a ver,” Nick said, hopping in the water. He’d never actually measured how deep he could go, but he took stock of the guy and felt good about his chances. Lifeguard or no.
“Loser buys rum,” said the lifeguard, flashing his English with a sly smile.
“Bueno,” said Nick.
Aaron counted down from ten, the competitors took their deepest breath, and then they were gone. Aaron peered over the limestone ledge, checked his watch and his wallet. They were traveling on a shoestring budget—$20 per day. Could Nick really beat a lifeguard on his home turf? In about thirty seconds he had his answer. The lifeguard was already shooting back to the surface.
“Tu amigo donde está?” he asked, breathless. Aaron shrugged. The lifeguard put his face back in the water, concerned. Nick had disappeared, he said. He just kept going farther and farther down until the lifeguard couldn’t see him anymore. Aaron checked his watch. Nick had been underwater for a minute. In fact, he’d just passed a crew of scuba divers who’d materialized from a cavern and couldn’t believe their eyes.
Just before the two-minute mark Nick materialized from the watery shadows, dolphin kicking through the blue. When he surfaced, Aaron offered a hand and pulled him up onto the limestone ledge. “All right,” he said, only slightly breathless, “let’s go drink some rum.”
The lifeguard bought their bottle of blanco in the nearby village of Playa Guiones. They drank it out of small plastic cups on a powdery beach kissed by Bahia de Cochinos, aka the Bay of Pigs. Buzzed, Nick and the lifeguard took turns behind the wheel of his vintage Volvo, which thumped with distorted techno remixes of Nirvana, on the long drive back to Havana.
Rural Cuba unfurled as an analog dream. Horse carts pulled timber wagons. Fishing ports were crowded with colorful wooden canoes. They slalomed around jalopy trucks hauling sugarcane and tobacco, and putt-putting tractors on their way home from the fields. The lifeguard was passed out, sitting shotgun, when Nick and Aaron stopped on the side of the road to take a leak in the golden sun. “Dude, I knew you were good in the water, but I had no idea you were superhuman.” Aaron said.
“I’m not,” Nick said, “it’s just kind of natural for me.”
“That was not natural, man. That was amazing.”
—
HER PHONE RANG a little after 9 a.m. on September 11, 2001. Esther’s bohemian friends typically didn’t wake until after ten and they rarely called before noon, so she assumed it was family and ignored it. It kept ringing. When she finally answered and got the news she placed the phone on the cradle without a word, stumbled to the stairs, and climbed to the roof of her building, barefoot. Still in her pajamas, she saw
fire blaze near the top of Tower One and black smoke curl into the sky. It wasn’t long before the second plane slammed into Tower Two, and within two hours both structures had folded in on themselves. She hadn’t moved a muscle.
Aaron and Nick were supposed to fly home, via the Bahamas, the next day and when they reached the airport they still hadn’t heard the news. By then US airspace was closed and a fellow passenger told them why as they boarded their flight. When they landed in Freeport, they learned that they’d be stranded on Grand Bahama Island in a mega casino resort for three days.
Esther didn’t leave her apartment for nearly a week. To her and many New Yorkers, it felt like the world was falling apart, so she decided to hunker down and wait out the next big blow. She was sitting at her desk overlooking Berry Street on the afternoon of September 16 when she saw a U-Haul pull up to her building. She stepped to the windows to get a better view of whoever was about to emerge from the cab. Probably yet another hipster newcomer, she thought. Perhaps a Manhattan refugee shell-shocked from 9/11.
Nick hopped out of the truck instead. He squinted at a folded-over piece of notebook paper, hand-scrawled with Esther’s address. In his other arm he cradled a sewing machine. He looked up and saw her staring down from her open window. “There you are!” he shouted, flashing his contagious smile.
“What’s with the U-Haul?!”
“I’m moving, of course!”
“Moving where?!”
“Right up there!” he yelled. Her heart flip-flopped. Her lips curled toward the powder-blue Brooklyn sky. She wiped her left eye. A stray droplet trickled down her right cheek. He’d called her as soon as he got back on US soil, but never said he was coming to see her, much less move in. Wasn’t that something people discussed?
“I love you,” she whispered.
“What?!” he shouted.
“I said, I love you!”
West Bay’s gifts were shining on day two of the Caribbean Cup while Ashley Chapman was in the competition zone. Onshore, the golden sun was high, the suntan brigade lay out in tiny bikinis on powder-white sand, and the piña coladas were flowing. Offshore, visibility was magnificent, and the blue world looked like heaven. Ashley hooked the line with her fingertips as she floated on her back, decked out in her silver hooded wetsuit, fluid goggles, a nose clip, and a monofin. As the spectators murmured, she visualized a fluid dolphin kick down to 20 meters, a streamlined freefall to the bottom plate at 75 meters, then a graceful yet powerful kick back toward the light.
Day one hadn’t gone as planned for Ashley or for Christina Saenz de Santamaria, her chief rival, as both earned red cards. It’s not uncommon for the best divers to start slow, but nobody wants to start a comp with two disqualifications. That would leave only four remaining dives to score three times. On day two, both needed to dive clean.
Christina wasn’t the only athlete on Ashley’s radar. Sophie Jacquin would be a handful as well. While Christina and Ashley were both tall and slender, with long arms and legs—all of which are ideal for freediving—Sophie was in the best shape of all. Born in France but based in Guadeloupe, a French Caribbean isle, she didn’t have the height of her competitors but made up for it with lean yet strong arms, muscular legs, and a six-pack. On the first day of the competition, Sophie swam to 53 meters without fins. And just before Ashley got in the water, she rocked a 73-meter Free Immersion dive, pulling herself down to depth and back, setting a national record. When the white card was flashed, she screamed and pounded the surface in glee. Two dives, two white cards. Sophie was in charge.
Ashley didn’t live in the tropics like Sophie or Christina, who lived on Ko Tao, Thailand, but she was born for the sport she loved. The average woman sports a 4.2-liter lung capacity. Ashley’s is an incredible 9 liters. That’s a larger lung volume than both Will Trubridge and Alexey Molchanov, who come in at 7 and 7.5 liters, respectively. Yet despite her athletic build, Ashley didn’t play sports growing up and wasn’t on the swim team. She was raised more beauty queen than killer athlete in the small town of Richlands, North Carolina. Less than a thousand people lived there and few of them imagined a life traveling the world or even aspired to college. Ashley wanted both. She studied environmental engineering near the beach at UNC-Wilmington, where she got into Ultimate Frisbee, a physically demanding game that is part rugby, part soccer, and has an extreme geek quotient. It says something about a person’s quirk level when their first competitive sports experience involves a Frisbee. Ashley had always been quirky. She was also a badass, and it was her speed and athletic grace that caught Ren’s eye on the Frisbee field.
Ren was a born competitor, and Ashley’s skills were endearing to him. When she blew out her cleat in a big game, Ren bonded it with epoxy and duct tape. Ren was handy, sweet, fit, had a killer smile and two labradors, one chocolate and one black, that accompanied him everywhere. To work, to dinner, to Frisbee practice. She dug all three of them immediately. One afternoon after practice, she got in his F250 and told him she was a few weeks away from heading abroad with the Peace Corps. His heart flinched. He didn’t. He told her about his job building playgrounds for schools and day care centers, and he invited her on a boat ride with him and his dogs.
They drove out to his house, a cute clapboard number on the Intracoastal Waterway, overlooking a spectacular estuary and less than two miles to the beach. Tied up to a boat ramp out front was a little runabout. The dogs bounded aboard. Ashley and Ren followed. They motored up the estuary, spotting herons and sea eagles, and watched the sunset ignite the western sky. She never did join the Peace Corps. She was too busy falling in love.
Ren’s father had been a biologist, scuba instructor, and the head of water safety at UNC-Wilmington since the mid-1970s, and he had Ren scuba diving by the time he was six years old. Baseball and college life got between Ren and the ocean for a short while, but as soon as he graduated and started his business, he felt a deeper pull toward nature. He’d get his fix in the marsh, the nearby woods, and deep underwater. In 2007 he got into spearfishing and took a course with Performance Freediving International.
Ashley moved in with Ren, got into freediving too, and the couple soon dedicated themselves to their sport. They became instructors with PFI and began teaching courses from their sailboat, Nila Girl. They sailed the Caribbean and the Florida Keys, teaching, cruising, and training, and Ashley was a fixture on the competitive circuit. From 2010 to 2012 she competed around the globe, became captain of the US national team, earned five American records (two in the pool and all three depth records), and broke a world record. Ren was both her coach and a professional safety diver through it all. They even found time to get married.
When the countdown hit zero, Ashley sipped air until her lungs were fully inflated, and said a final prayer. Then she turned and disappeared. She breached the surface again in under 2:30, hooked the line, faced the judges, removed her nose clip and her goggles with ease, and flashed the okay sign, but she hadn’t said those three magic words. Her lips were blue. She needed oxygen. She kept breathing as the seconds ticked away. “Say I’m okay!” Carla Hanson shrieked. “Say it!”
“I’m okay,” Ashley said, revealing the tag, proving she’d made depth at 75 meters. When the white card came, she hugged Carla and rolled her eyes in relief.
Next it was Christina’s turn. Her 78-meter dive the day before had been a bit too ambitious, so she downshifted to 76 meters. Not a big difference to mere mortals, but those who push their limits know that it becomes increasingly difficult to equalize with each meter, and if she could pull down to 76 meters and back up again, she would still be the deepest woman in the tournament thus far, one click deeper than Ashley.
Christina stayed vertical as she breathed up. Dressed in an all-black wetsuit, her husband and coach Eusebio Saenz de Santamaria was right next to her, whispering instruction and encouragement as she began sipping and then gulping air. Over the past ten years Christina had scored eight national records, including the Australian record of
85 meters in Constant Weight and 80 meters in Free Immersion. Like 100 meters for men, 80 meters is a serious number for women, and Christina is one of the deepest women in the world. Like Ashley and Sophie, she nailed her dive, and when the white card came, Eusebio grabbed her and kissed her on the mouth.
“I felt good today,” she said as she toweled off on the catamaran, but insisted no matter who’s in the field, the ultimate competition lies within. “In the end you are only competing against yourself.”
Ashley saw it differently. “This is exactly what I needed,” she said, nuzzling her baby, Ani, and nodding toward Christina from their patch of shade on the boat deck. “Points on the board.”
“Ashley, you know all of our cell phones are infested with Ani’s picture,” Iru Balic said as she bent down to give mother and baby a hug. The freediving community is so well connected on Facebook, every Ani picture had become an online event. Ashley laughed and nodded, guilty as charged.
At five feet one, Iru, the defending champion, lacked size but made up for it in determination. Then just twenty-eight years old, she had overcome both family tragedy and political upheaval to build her freediving career. The top woman in Venezuela and a multiple national record holder, Iru grew up posh. Her father owned a commercial fishing business, and they had everything they ever wanted: a modern home by the sea, a chauffeur who could take them to flamenco dance class, even a luxury apartment in Caracas. “We were spoiled girls,” she said.
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