One Breath

by Adam Skolnick

  “It was a bubble. It was blissful. It was family,” said Akia, “and Nick was a huge part of that. His place was our home.”

  The show was staged at Under St. Marks in the East Village, an old black box theater with a time-nibbled marquee and tagged concrete walls. The tile in the lobby was peeling, the rafters were dusted with cobwebs. It was grungy and lived-in. Nick loved the place, and they were sold out every night, thanks to favorable reviews.

  “Mevoli is terrific as the skittish cabbie,” Tom Penketh wrote in Backstage.

  “Mevoli, onstage for virtually the entire play, is superb as the cabbie, creating a very human, very sympathetic character whose travails authentically engage us,” wrote Martin Denton on NYTheatre.com.

  “He was having his moment,” Akia said, “but he was so, so humble and was always about the group.” After the Friday shows, half the crew would spend the night in a heap on the floor of his apartment. The next morning they’d wake up, Nick would fire up his espresso bubbler, and they’d all make breakfast, then head back to the theater as a unit. They were living their Brooklyn bohemian dream together.

  Toward the end of the run, Larry Mevoli made the trek to New York City to see his son on stage. He came to the show with his stepson, the one who sold Larry that life insurance policy. It was closing night, and Larry brought a load of bananas with him, handing them out to others in the crowd. After the curtain fell, when Nick and the rest of the cast came to the front of the stage to bow, Larry pelted Nick with bananas, and soon everyone in the audience was pelting the actors with mushy fruit. In Larry’s eyes it was a sign of respect, and a time-honored theater tradition. It didn’t matter that nobody else had ever heard of it or that, in Elizabethan theater tradition, the throwing of flowers was the way you honored a terrific performance.

  To those who loved Nick, it was just another strange move from a narcissistic father who managed to make the closing night of his son’s best performance about himself. Nick took it in stride. He never said a bad word about his father to any of his New York friends, but the banana stunt cost Larry an invitation to the wrap party.

  That night, the entire Hell Cab cast and all their closest friends decamped to Nick’s to get high, drink Red Stripe, play music, and dance all night long. Even Saha showed up. He sipped, he grooved, and Nick made sure he kissed every girl in the place. Saha’s smile bloomed ear to ear. Akia had stocked the fridge with a bottle of fine bubbly to be opened on closing night. As Nick popped the cork and passed the bottle, someone suggested they figure out how many people could fit in his tiny shower. One by one they squeezed in, face to armpit, ass to crotch, until there were seventeen people crammed together in a tile phone booth. Pancaked to soap scum, Akia, Saha and Nick laughed themselves breathless, tangled in a giddy, sweaty knot of humanity.

  On day three of the Caribbean Cup, the defending men’s champ, Will Trubridge, floated between the yellow ropes that attached the dive platform to the catamaran and delineated the competition zone. He looked serene, his hands folded over his navel, the slosh of the surface current rocking him deeper within. Will was starting to look more comfortable, more in tune. His opening dive, that 72-meter no-fins tribute to Nick, threw him more than expected, so he followed that with another nice and easy one, a Free Immersion dive to 111 meters. Only Will, and maybe Alexey, would consider 111 meters on one breath to be a foregone conclusion.

  The surface was whitecapped thanks to a stiff wind that day, and at depth the current was roaring. Will took his position as always, resting and hanging between two safety sausages, as the whitecaps sprayed his face and jostled his body, and a speedboat bore down on the competition zone at high speed. Tournament officials waved their arms, urging the captain to change course and slow down. The captain did veer inside, but he didn’t ease the throttle and with a minute to go before his dive, Will was tossed about in the boat’s wake. He didn’t flinch.

  The dive itself wasn’t so easy. As he dove past the 80-meter mark, the sonar faded and there was no way to track Will from the surface, but he blipped back on his way up and surfaced with a wobble, lost in a hypoxic haze. It looked like he was about to black out, but Carla’s shrill voice blasted through the fog, and she guided him home. Although he’d booked another white card, he didn’t look in top form.

  The following day Will wore a monofin and was headed back down to 111 meters, this time in Alexey’s best discipline. Once again, the dive felt more like a placeholder than an attempt to push the envelope, but if he rocked it, he would have all three major disciplines on his scorecard, with three dives left to improve his position. More important, a white card would put him in first place overall and secure his position on the podium by the end of the competition.

  With ten seconds to go before his top time, the announcer counted off the seconds and Will packed his lungs, one gulp of air at a time. After forty packs, he turned, folded forward, and began dolphin kicking to depth. Though conditions were ideal, the sonar feed was iffy again, and Will faded from the screen after crossing the 20-meter mark. Ren adjusted by organizing his safety team to drop based on Will’s estimated dive time of 3:15.

  “We’re going on time,” he said. “First safety at 2:30.” By then Will was back on the feed at 40 meters and climbing. The safeties met him at 25 meters and followed him as he rocketed to the surface looking strong, far better than the days before. There was no need for Carla to bring him back from the foggy ethers this time. He was clear as a bell, and only slightly breathless. When the white card came, Will was in first place, with a long way to go.

  Walid Boudhiaf was next in the zone. After his riveting 102-meter dive on opening day, Walid had taken a day off to replenish before looking to hit 106 meters in Free Immersion, extending his personal best and national record. Like Will, Walid prepared to dive on his back. His left hand gripped the line as the time ticked down, and he packed air with deep gulps and small sips. When it was time, rather than turn over, he pulled himself down with a gentle backbend.

  Pull, glide, pull, glide, he hit 20 meters, began freefalling, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the ride. Sonar was lost somewhere after 80 meters, and he became impossible to track, so nobody knew the drama that awaited him at depth. Walid had no idea what was coming either. He was focused on equalizing and listening for his alarm, which would chime as he closed in on 106 meters.

  Despite his success on day one, he knew the dive had taken too long, so he increased his neck weight—a horseshoe-like collar made from a bicycle inner tube filled with lead shot and wrapped in duct tape. It worked too well. His freefall was so swift that when the chime came he’d already passed the bottom plate. His lanyard yanked him hard and flipped him upright. He was surprised but stayed calm as that gnawing throb of narcosis reverberated in his brain. He grabbed the Velcro tag, secured it in the hood of his wetsuit, and reached for the line to climb back to depth, but when he pulled, he didn’t budge. He tried again. No luck.

  He dropped down another meter and was horrified to find his lanyard looped in a knot around the tennis ball, which dangled as a float below the bottom plate. The throb of nitrogen narcosis, a buildup of nitrogen in the blood that can distort perception, grew louder. The bogeymen began invading his thoughts. He was 106 meters away from life and nobody knew what the hell had happened. There was no live video feed, and he knew sonar was iffy at depth. “For the first time, I felt scared,” he said later. “The only thing I was thinking of was to tell the people up there to release the counterweight system.”

  For a moment he thought he might die, and was so narced that he didn’t even think about trying to unhook his carabiner from the line instead of wrestling with the knot beneath the plate. If he had, he could have started his ascent sooner, but it was also possible that due to the physical and emotional stress from spending extra time below 100 meters, he might become hypoxic too soon, black out at a level beyond the reach of the safety team, and drift away from the line. If that happened and he was unhooked, the counterbalanc
e wouldn’t help, and there would be no saving him.

  As narcosis grew and his mind blared with urgency and fear, Walid managed to untie the knot and head toward the surface, still fastened to the line. His contractions came early. His nervous system was on high alert, demanding oxygen, and his intercostal muscles rocked and shuddered, begging for it while he was still at 90 meters. That didn’t typically happen to Walid until around 40 meters and he considered it an ominous sign, but when he reached Ren at 30 meters, he was still conscious. Ren, who had been hanging at 30 meters for nearly twenty seconds looking for a sign of life, was relieved to see him. He’d been poised to shake the line, signaling the release of the counterballast, when Walid appeared.

  At the surface, Kimmo watched Walid ascend without assistance. He flashed the okay sign, then backed away, clearing space for him to rise. After a dive of 4:05, he came to the surface having already removed his goggles and nose clip. He said the magic words and flashed the okay sign, but he couldn’t hold it. After seven seconds his body began to quake. That’s what divers refer to as a loss of motor control, or samba. Sometimes athletes emerge from a samba without losing consciousness. Walid blacked out, and fell into the arms of an alert safety team. He was out for only a few seconds, but he came to coughing a river of pink, frothy fluid. Edema. Walid was squeezed. Blood and plasma filled his mouth, larynx, and lungs.

  By nature, the mammalian dive reflex sends excess blood and plasma into the lung’s blood vessels. On a normal dive, that fluid will recede back to the extremities without leaking into the lungs, but in Walid’s case his blood vessels became so engorged, and the extra stress and movement was so intense, he’d suffered a hemorrhage that filled his pulmonary system with edema. When he coughed it all came spewing out.

  “That’s evidence of a significant lung injury,” Kerry said, and it immediately brought back memories of Nick. However, Walid produced much more fluid than Nick had when he died. Kerry placed a continuous positive air pressure mask on Walid to push the fluid out and within an hour, his lungs sounded normal.

  Meanwhile, the competition was still on, and Alexey was in the zone, hoping to grab a new national record with a dive to 96 meters without fins. As he moved into position, upright on the line, Esteban Darhanpe was giddy. “Alexey is going to 96 meters, that’s just 5 meters from a world record. If everything goes okay, and he feels good in the next two days, maybe we can expect him to attempt a world record here?”

  Will was skeptical. “Alexey is 9 meters behind me in no fins,” he said, “and the difference between 90 and 100 meters is a lot, but we’ll see.”

  Alexey certainly allowed for the possibility, and he credited his early-season good form to hitting the weights like never before. When he started out in freediving he’d focused on yoga, so he could become more flexible and better relaxed at depth, but the deeper he went he found that weight training provided much-needed power and speed on long swims against negative buoyancy, and that if he maintained a strong pace, he would be less hypoxic at the surface and less dependent on longer breath holds.

  Will doesn’t carry much muscle mass. At six feet one and 160 pounds, his core is strong, and his long legs and arms well defined, but he’s not bulky. He keeps his brown hair cropped, and his diet is nearly vegan, though he supplements his plate with protein he spears himself in the Bahamian reefs.

  Alexey is six feet tall and 180 pounds, with the legs of a velodrome cyclist and a ripped upper body. In Roatan, his sandy blond hair was shaggy and receding, and his demeanor placid as a perfect day at sea. He shies away from carbs, but eats all manner of protein, topping off his daily calories by slurping smoothies made from musclehead protein powder, which is always within reach, whether he’s home in Moscow, training in Dahab, or competing in Roatan.

  In freediving, every gift can be a detriment, and all weaknesses can become strengths. Those with enormous lung volume, like Ashley Chapman, are also more buoyant, which affects oxygen efficiency because they have to work harder to get down. Those with smaller lung capacity drop faster but have less available oxygen to call on during a long dive. In the same way, added bulk translates to higher oxygen demand. Alexey mitigated that with aggressive pool workouts to condition his muscles to withstand hypoxia, so he could rely on his tremendous strength to get to the surface before his oxygen well ran dry. It’s all about finding the balance. Will preferred to stay lean and efficient. In 2014, Alexey opted for power, and the prevailing opinion at the Caribbean Cup was that power would soon overcome, and it was only a matter of time before Alexey would eclipse Will in all disciplines.

  The countdown began and at t-minus ten seconds, Alexey began packing air. He pursed his lips and sucked it in as if slurping a spaghetti noodle of oxygen molecules he’d need to burn from both ends on a dive he estimated would take 3:45. Packed for the journey, he flipped, resting for a beat on the surface before duck diving and carving the water with his powerful, angular breaststroke. In four strokes he hit 10 meters; after eight he faded from view just below 20 meters and began to freefall.

  “Touchdown!” The announcement came at 1:55, and the gallery cheered. The sonar didn’t lose him this time and the announcer updated his progress every 10 meters. The hard work had now begun, and though he had made depth, he was running behind time. If he had his monofin, Alexey could expect to ascend at a rate of 1.2 meters per second. With no fins the rate was closer to .8 meters per second. He knew this because his dive computer tracked and graphed every dive, and like Will and other elite divers, those small details enabled Alexey to make the incremental tweaks necessary to squeeze out a few more meters.

  Alexey must have been aware of the time crunch because he picked up speed, and at 3:45 he was already at 10 meters. He surfaced just ten seconds late at 3:55, but the hard swim had sapped his reserves. He hooked the line in the wrong direction, away from the judges and toward the dry boat. “Vichy!” Marina yelled. “Alosha, vichy!” She was telling him to breathe in Russian, and he tried to take his nourishing hook breaths, but on his second inhale, he lost consciousness, falling backward into the water. The judges backed away and the safety team moved in, but they didn’t grab him. Sometimes an athlete isn’t all the way gone, and can snap back to life without their assistance; as long as an athlete’s airway doesn’t dip beneath the surface, they are allowed to attempt to complete the protocol in less than fifteen seconds, and earn a white card.

  But Alexey was blacked out all the way, and as soon as his face dipped, Ren cradled his head, keeping his airway above the surface. Marina kept yelling, “Alosha, vichy!” When an athlete blacks out at the surface, it’s as if they are in a shallow sleep, and can often be brought back with words of encouragement as well as a sharp breeze across the eyes. Ren removed Alexey’s nose clip and blew while Marina urged him to breathe. In less than ten seconds he was awake and breathing normally.

  As Alexey swam over to see the doctor, Will slipped off the platform. Leaning on his monofin, he side-stroked to the dry boat, his record still 9 meters out of Alexey’s reach, while the gallery murmured, mulling the latest twist in the competition between two underwater gods.

  “I think he’s done that depth in training,” said Will, grinding one of his homemade vegan protein bars, “but it’s a big jump to do it in competition. In no fins there is an exponential curve. In the space of four to five meters it can go from easy to very difficult. It could also just be a bad day. Seeing a blackout can affect you.”

  Alexey didn’t think Walid’s problems affected his own performance. He was more concerned about his speed. “Of course, it would be better to have a white card, but all these little problems, they fine-tune your preparation. Every red card gives you valuable information.” Still, he’d already taken one comp day off, and now the red card. He had only three dives left and still needed to score in Free Immersion and Constant Weight. Would he move on from no fins, content to have pushed his needle just one meter? “I will rest and see tomorrow,” he said, “I don’t care a
bout winning the overall. There’s not much prize here. If there was a proper cash prize or a car, then maybe, but otherwise I’ll just use this comp for training.”

  Alexey was referencing a famous Static Apnea competition held annually in Dubai in which the winner gets a Range Rover and the runner-up, a Nissan Versa. In the last three years he’d won one Range and two Versas, which he sold in Dubai for over 150,000 euros combined. The Russian was nothing if not pragmatic. He’d dedicated 2013 to extending his Constant Weight record, which he’d set with an infamous dive in Kalamata, Greece, at the AIDA Individual Depth World Championship. 2014 would be the year of Constant No Fins, and one blackout wasn’t going to alter his game plan.

  That night, Will and Alexey had dinner together. They spoke about training and tactics, and of the rumored medical reforms AIDA was considering in the wake of Nick’s death. At the top of a sport or industry, often the only peers available are competitors, so it’s natural to eventually become friends.

  Their rivalry had not always been so chummy. The most significant flare-up occurred the year before in Kalamata, when Alexey broke the Constant Weight world record with a dive to 128 meters, a mark that brought him a gold medal and made him competitive freediving’s deepest man of all time. Much controversy surrounded that dive, but what irked Will was the surface protocol. He and another close rival, Guillaume Néry of France, claimed Alexey flashed the okay sign twice after he’d removed his nose clip. Clearing the face of all equipment signifies the beginning of the safety protocol, and a “double okay” after that is grounds for a red card. On video, he does seem to flash the okay sign once with his left hand and then again with his right, but the judges didn’t see it that way. If they had, Will would have won Constant Weight gold. He confronted Alexey, and told him he and Néry were filing a protest.