One Breath

by Adam Skolnick

  In lieu of medals, trophies made of shells, carved by a local artist, were handed out. Carlos Coste, whose 100-meter dive on the final day of the competition earned him a place on the podium, won bronze. Will nabbed silver and Alexey took the top prize. Afterward the three giants of the sport took photos and signed a copy of the event poster, along with the winners from the women’s side.

  Will was as graceful as ever and there were smiles all around, but whether he acknowledged it or not, he was aware that observers within the sport, and almost all the athletes present, were certain they had witnessed a changing of the guard. With his victory, Alexey, for years Will’s heir apparent, had been declared the new king. Or so went the theory. By the bar, on the dance floor, in the barefoot shallows, and even later at a boozy nightclub on the hill, that’s what everyone was buzzing about. Will wasn’t so sure.

  By 2007, Nick had abandoned making it as a professional actor. He didn’t have it in him to endure casting calls, which felt more like cattle calls. Twenty versions of him, all waiting their turn to sound way too enthusiastic about Kraft mac ’n’ cheese, or whatever comely cougar he was to bed on One Life to Live. He’d still stage the odd play with Akia, but as much as he loved the city, he craved a life infused with much more passion and adventure. That thirst for change, the desire for a new way of living, grew louder with each day. Meanwhile, all around him the ground was literally shifting. Williamsburg was in the midst of metamorphosis.

  Real estate money had flooded the riverside. There would be new piers and sea walls. Crumbling factories and warehouses were repurposed and retrofitted into loft complexes. He especially hated the tasteless new build condos, which seemed to be spreading like bacteria. The waterfront, where Nick once roamed free, was fenced off.

  In came the dot-commers and lawyers, editors, artists, architects, and young families. The influx, 90 percent of it white, transformed the look and feel of Williamsburg. They came along with an explosion of new bars and restaurants and, gasp, doormen, and rents skyrocketed as high as $4,000 a month. Old heads could moan and groan all they wanted. Bedford Avenue was suddenly the hottest street in the city, and the new Williamsburg even had a soundtrack. Bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Animal Collective, Interpol, Fischerspooner, and of course, TV on the Radio, were all from Williamsburg, and they helped their neighborhood become a national phenomenon. Tourists flocked to the bar downstairs, which was now called The Levee.

  When Nick’s friends came through, they’d ask him for restaurant and nightlife recommendations. If Morgan was around, he’d laugh and take over. “Nick didn’t know where to go,” Morgan said. “He never went out!” Most of the time, Nick would sit in his avocado armchair, stay up late, and watch the world go by through his windows or from his rooftop, smoke cigarettes and spliffs, and listen to a fuzzy feed of NPR or the Yankees game. Or he’d listen to jazz records, write and draw in his journal, and try to figure out what to do next. One night his phone vibrated with a text from his sister at 1 a.m.

  Are you awake? Can you talk?

  By then Jen was a high-powered wedding planner at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando. Her husband, Joe, was a pharmaceutical salesman and made good money too. They dressed dapper, voted Republican, and had a nice house in the suburbs. In other words, Jen had become Nick’s polar opposite, but they were close, and when Nick answered his phone, Jen was sobbing.

  She’d been diagnosed with cervical cancer. The treatment would begin with a conization surgery to excise a piece of her cervix, so the bone could be biopsied. Then, depending on how many cancer cells they found, the second step was likely a hysterectomy. Joe had been oscillating from being a positive force of eternal loving support to crumbling from the sheer terror that the love of his life was dying. Even if she survived, they’d never have children.

  Not that she’d ever wanted them. She and Joe loved their life. They went out, they traveled, they had plenty of cash at all times, but now she found herself mourning children she’d never wanted. Joe tried to comfort her, but his words were hollow and there were too damn many of them. She continued to do business and tried to muscle through it. Not long before the diagnosis, however, Ritz-Carlton had begun to require their wedding and event planners to be certified sommeliers. Her exam was a week away, and had been booked before all hell broke loose in her cervix. Now that conization procedure was coming up too, so why the hell was she still studying?

  That night, at one in the morning, nothing made sense to her. What was the point of any of it? Joe certainly couldn’t figure it out. Her mother, Belinda, was busy projecting worst-case scenarios, and her dad was, well, Larry. He had his own problems. Specifically, his business was in a tailspin. He’d begun leveraging credit, taking out third and fourth mortgages on the house and the store’s property in the hopes of saving George’s Market. Which is how she ended up bawling into her flashcards, terrified and feeling more alone than ever until she called Nick. “He had this incredible gift,” she said. “He wouldn’t fill the space with words. He’d let me spill my guts and then he’d comfort me.”

  “Jen, I love you. You got this,” he said. He did not advocate throwing in the towel on the sommelier exam. He didn’t advocate any approach at all. He let Jen dictate terms, and asked what she needed from him. And what she needed was to study the damn flash cards. She went through all one hundred of them, dictating the questions and answers to Nick, who wrote them down, then asked them at random.

  What kind of grapes are grown in Bordeaux?

  (cabernet sauvignon, merlot and sauvignon blanc)

  What is maceration?

  (the period of time the grape juice spends in contact with the skins and the seeds)

  A kilderkin of beer has how many gallons?

  (18)

  In the Burgundy region of France, Pouilly-Fuissé has 100 percent of what grapes?

  (chardonnay)

  He quizzed her until the sun came up, while they joked and laughed about obscure wine trivia, about Larry, the new Williamsburg, and the tragicomedy that is life on earth. When they hung up she was at peace.

  A week later their youngest sister, Katie, a high school senior, performed in a marching band competition near Gainesville, Florida. Nick came down for it and Belinda asked Jen to drive up so they could all be together, and to take her mind off things. She’d just had the conization biopsy and the surgeon had determined the cancer was too invasive for caution. She was told a hysterectomy was the only safe course of action. Jen was cranky, in pain, and too uncomfortable to sit on the hard bleachers with her parents, so she and Joe drifted to the concession stand. They were standing in line when Nick turned up.

  “I ran to him, and he came towards me, and gave me the biggest hug of my life,” Jen said. “He just held me for like ten minutes, and told me I was going to be okay. The love and the support and whatever I needed that I couldn’t quite get from Joe at that time, he gave to me in that moment. And then we were watching Katie, and I was just standing there, and he put his arms around me from behind, and laid his head on my shoulder, and held me. There were no words. No words. But through his actions and his hug alone, it spoke a thousand words. He gave me that love and assurance. It was the most healing hug I’ve ever experienced in my life. It was this unconditional, amazing thing that helped me get through everything I had to get through. He was my rock.”

  What Jen had to go through was a slalom course of prognoses and second opinions, prayer circles, healing sessions, and perhaps, a medical miracle. She never did have her hysterectomy and was soon cancer free. Within two years, Jen and Joe welcomed a baby daughter named Elizabeth into the world, and Nick became an uncle.

  Around that time, Nick started attending services at a Catholic church two blocks from his apartment called Our Lady of Consolation. Lit by wrought-iron chandeliers crowned with candle-shaped lightbulbs, the room was filled with the melodic groan of a pipe organ, and perhaps twenty regulars seated among the thirty-odd rows of pews. Nick, the only young man in the nearly
empty historic church, dressed for mass in an ill-fitting suit and thrift-store tie, and prayed with great intensity. A nineteen-year-old, platinum blonde, Polish American girl couldn’t help but notice him. He noticed her, too, and often tried to get her attention with a nod and a smile when he stepped to the altar for the sacrament. She ignored him every time. Her life was falling apart and the last thing she needed was a new friend.

  For a while church became Nick’s antidote to a life that felt increasingly shallow and directionless. He’d begun working on Gossip Girl in 2009, another hit, but one he didn’t enjoy. Glamour and glitz still weren’t for him, and neither was the gathering hipster storm that engulfed Williamsburg. Nick’s apartment was his cave. His refuge.

  He’d made several trips to the Czech Republic in his twenties, and his love of old Europe permeated his apartment. He stocked his fridge with vodka, kielbasa, and slivovitz, and fed the birds with stale bread on his fire escape. The apartment itself fit the bill. The ceiling tiles were warped, the floors splintering. The stove wouldn’t ignite without a jiggle on the gas line. There were six different locks on the front door, each with its own key. One weekend when Sol and Aaron were visiting, they woke up on Sunday morning only to see Nick walk out the door in his oversized blue suit with a bible under his arm. In the context of the Williamsburg zeitgeist, Nick was still a rebel. This time, that meant going old world. He stopped dating. His moral ground was shifting. He was becoming an anarchist monk.

  And none of it helped. Work didn’t make him happy. Church didn’t fill the void completely. Lobster season was still on his radar, and he’d hang with the Bonzo crew every year, but it wasn’t enough. He needed a mission. Then late one night in the fall of 2011, four years after Jen’s cancer scare, he stumbled upon a Yahoo group called New York Area Freedivers. It was a forum for local spearfishermen and recreational freedivers, and to his delight he learned that they periodically went diving in an abandoned quarry in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

  Dutch Springs is a private half-mile-wide lake nestled along a green ribbon of low-lying hills, ancient oak trees, and historic wooden homes. Once a working quarry, in 1972 it was filled with water and became a mecca for scuba divers who came to explore a sunken chopper and Cessna, a school bus, an army truck, and other vintage manmade wrecks. New York Area Freedivers hit Dutch as well, and Nick asked if he could join them.

  The next weekend he caught a ride from an attractive, athletic Long Island schoolteacher named Kelly Russell. She pulled up to his corner and honked her horn. Nick waved and hustled her way. He was tall and lean, and now had shoulder-length hair. He was dressed in rolled up jeans and flip-flops and had an apple in his mouth. “He was beautiful,” Kelly said.

  Among the eight divers who would regularly join the group at Dutch was Meir Taub, an IT consultant in his late thirties who had been diving with the group since 2004. His interest in freediving was sparked by a friendly challenge to swim the length of a 25-yard pool underwater at a Vermont ski resort. He’d barely made 10 yards and couldn’t hold his breath for more than 30 seconds. When he got home he searched the web and found out about a guy named Martin Stepanek who held the world record in Static Apnea at the time at 8:06. Meir decided to take a course from Stepanek and his partner, Kirk Krack, in Florida. The whole experience was full of physiology, technique, and adventure and Meir was hooked.

  By the time Nick showed up at Dutch Springs, Meir was one of the longest-tenured divers in the group, and he took it upon himself to watch newcomers and gauge their sense of safety. Nick knew nothing of their golden rule: one up, one down (when a diver always has a buddy watching him on the surface). He’d come along to dive at his own pace.

  The group warmed up and started diving on a line attached to a buoy that went to a small depression in the lake—its deepest point, 32 meters below. Nick was bored waiting his turn, so he rocketed down to the muddy bottom and lay there looking up at the shimmering silver surface illuminated by the Indian summer sun, blowing bubble rings at Kelly, who was about to dive the line. He swam and popped up behind her and made her laugh, distracting her from her breathe up. She loved it, but it wasn’t exactly protocol. Meir watched from the corner of his eye, none too pleased.

  Soon they ditched the line and began exploring the lake together, but instead of diving safely and waiting for one another on the surface, Nick called out “Follow me! Follow me!” It was impossible for Kelly to resist, and not just because Nick was cute, but because she saw something in him she hadn’t seen in any of the other divers. She saw a palpable joy. “The others were very technical, but he was very natural,” Kelly said. “It was almost like he merged with the water. It was pure poetry. He was very, very fluid. It was just so intuitive with him. It was second nature. The others were working, and he wasn’t working at all.”

  Together they dove the chopper and the plane, soared over an old army truck, and lingered in the big yellow school bus, where Nick walked down the aisle pretending to be the driver and wagging his finger at imaginary kids. When the day was done, the divers gathered at nearby Wegman’s, a natural food store with a café and deli where they would refuel and talk diving. Nick’s antics had annoyed Meir, who saw them as reckless.

  “So Nick, how long have you been diving?” he asked.

  “My whole life, I guess,” he said.

  “Have you ever taken a freediving class?” Meir asked. Nick glanced at Kelly.

  “No. No class. I’ve just always been able to do it. It’s easy for me.”

  “Right. Well, you need some training.” Nick couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Nick hadn’t been too impressed by Meir’s dives, and it ticked him off that this guy, who couldn’t hold a candle to him underwater, had the nerve to suggest training. “I put my life in your hands and you put your life in my hands when we do this,” Meir continued. “You have to understand the seriousness of that and you need to get trained so you know how to react appropriately in the event of an emergency.”

  Meir suggested a course taught by a teacher in Fort Lauderdale named Ted Harty, an American record holder in Dynamic, a pool discipline. Nick researched the class online. He liked that Ted had a record and some impressive depth numbers, too. Then he read that students of his Level II class could dive to 100 feet and hold their breath for three minutes by the time they were through. Nick laughed. He could already do those things. Hell, he’d gotten his breath hold to over four minutes without any instruction at all.

  He stared out into the Brooklyn night from his armchair. The window leading to his fire escape was cracked, and a chill in the air announced coming change. It was already late October. Leaves were turning gold and red. Dutch Springs would soon be closed until April. The dive season was almost over, and he’d only just begun. If he took the class he could at least go deep again. Spearfishing and lobster diving were fun, but he’d enjoyed the feeling of diving for diving’s sake, and Meir didn’t seem like such a bad guy. He was a little conservative, but he wasn’t saying don’t come back, he was saying take this course and let’s keep diving together. Nick considered his schedule. He’d be in Florida for the holidays. Why not fit in a class?

  Born in Atlanta, Ted Harty was running a successful scuba shop on Marathon Key when he took his first freediving class in 2008. It ruined him for tanks. He’d always been competitive and the idea of measurable performances in freediving appealed to him. In his first class he held his breath for 2:45 and hit 75 feet, but, like Nick, he wanted more. After taking the course he also noticed for the first time how loud scuba divers were. He could hear their bubbles churning from around the corner, while he would glide down and hang with the fish before the bubbles scared them all away. When Kirk Krack offered Performance Freediving’s first-ever instructor program, Ted enrolled, and became one of PFI’s first certified instructors.

  Ted could see Nick’s obvious talent right away, but he also noticed inefficiencies in his technique. He wasn’t as relaxed as he could be on his pull-downs, and if he relaxed
his stomach and worked his kick cycles a bit better, he could conserve oxygen on his deep dives. Unfortunately, weather marred the course, so while they did the necessary pool work, and Nick managed to reach 30 meters (100 feet) on their only day of open-water training, the other two open-water days were canceled. Still, after being bored by it in Dutch Springs, Nick had become gripped by the challenge of line diving, and what he had learned in the classroom blew his mind. He never knew how dangerous he’d been. He was such a natural, he’d never calculated his surface and bottom times, and frequently dove alone. He hadn’t known about the mammalian dive reflex or how increased depth meant rising partial pressure of oxygen in the blood, or that it was possible to dive to 100 meters on one breath. That number stuck in his mind, from then on.

  Also embedded within the course were references to freediving competitions, specifically Deja Blue, organized by Kirk and scheduled for the following April in the Cayman Islands. Nick was intrigued. Before the comp there would be weeks of training and ample opportunity to push his personal best in all six freediving disciplines. Nick hadn’t competed since he’d left the BMX world, and he was hungry for it. He told Ted he was interested in coming to Deja Blue, and if possible, he’d love to get some tips so he could train while back in Brooklyn. Ted offered to coach him, for a fee.

  After the course Nick flew to Orlando to spend Christmas at Jen’s house, where her newborn Alexandra, Nick’s goddaughter, had lured their whole family south from Tallahassee. Inspired by his course, he cued up YouTube videos of freedivers while he rolled his famous gnocchi in the kitchen. His three sisters and stepfather, Fred, crowded around his laptop to watch. Belinda took a passing glance, poured herself a glass of wine, and retreated to the family room sofa. The videos were ethereal and thrilling, but Jen, Fred, and Belinda were concerned.