Author’s Note: Written for the April 12th, 2022 Anniversary Challenge at CABB ~ New Chambers.
Vincent and Catherine receive a very special anniversary gift this year – twenty-four hours together in the world Above “safe from hate and harm.”

Nothing about Vincent’s appearance has changed, yet no one will look twice.

* * *

Dedication: Without my bold and brave friend’s recounting of her own experience,
this story could not be. RL, you stand for me in the world.

* * * * *

As terrible as it is exhilarating …
But you did it.
~ RL

“The coldest waters are at Malin Head in County Donegal. You’ll be surprising me if you’ve been in icier, Devin.”

Vincent chuffed, garnering a look from his brother before he could camouflage his merriment with a cough behind his fist.

Without knowing why, Catherine couldn’t help but grin. A story there, she was sure.

“Oh, I guarantee we’ve got colder down here.” Devin ambled over to the sideboard, bringing back the half-finished bottle of of Domaine Tollot-Beaut. He topped off Catherine’s crystal goblet with a flourish, offered more to Vincent, who first declined, his open hand over his nearly empty glass, but relented when his hovering server wouldn’t budge. Before he upended the bottle over his own vessel, Devin streamed – slowly, slowly – the rich red burgundy into Brigit’s.

“Beautiful, sensitive, wild, and delicate,” he whispered, almost for her ears only. “The wine,” he clarified with a roguish expression.

Brigit blushed.

Catherine glanced at Vincent and they shared a sigh. Of contentment, she believed, of gladness … but of anticipation as well. Devin on his own was – as Vincent put it – unscripted. Devin and Brigit together were creatures with wings.

“Why, the pools you’ve shown me practically steam!” Brigit went on.

Now the glance she shared with Vincent was one of mirth.

“Don’t they!” Catherine agreed with raised brows and a tilt of her head.

Brigit’s blush deepened.

“So …” Vincent interposed, settling back against the button-tufted, brown leather Chesterfield sofa in Devin’s new chamber. He held out his arm and Catherine scooted closer. “Your next adventure … Will you go to Malin Head? Test the waters against ours?”

Devin scratched at his end-of-day stubble. “We, ummm, haven’t, uhhh …”

Brigit reached for his hand. “I’ve a meeting with my publisher coming up, you know. O’Brien’s is in Dublin, but ’tis only a half-day’s drive from there. If you can take the time … we could go. Maybe even come back down the western shore?

“The Wild Atlantic Way? I’ve always wanted to see that.” He brought their threaded fingers to his lips. “I’m in,” Devin replied.

“Totally and completely in,” Vincent murmured, his lips moving at her temple.

Catherine resisted calling for a toast, but only for a moment.

She drained her wine, set the glass on the flat marble outcrop that served as an immovable coffee table. Delicious and luxurious … but potent.

Intoxicating, she realized, just a touch too late.

“Speaking of things you’ve – well – I’ve always wanted to do …” she began.

Everyone turned to her.

“The Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day … Coney Island?”

Now Vincent’s brows went up. “Catherine … that’s … You know the water can be almost literally freezing. One year it was reportedly 37 degrees! Far too cold.”

“We’ve done 38,” Devin pointed out, ignoring Vincent’s glare. “What’s one more degree?”

“You’re in and out, from what I’ve heard,” Catherine went on, wondering as she spoke who was uttering such bold words. “Hundreds do it every year, thousands, maybe. Every New Yorker should at least once, don’t you think?” With longing, she eyed her empty glass, the spent bottle, and plunged on.

Plunged on, hahaha. I’m so funny sometimes!

“Brigit, when do you leave for Ireland?”

“Not until Saturday, but someone needs to fill me in on what I think I’m soon to be agreeing to.”

Vincent was ready with the history, of course, but reluctant with it, Catherine thought.

“The Coney Island Polar Bear Club – the oldest winter swimming association in the country – was founded in 1903 by a physical culturist–”

“A what?” Brigit questioned.

“A health advocate, I think would be descriptive. He was, for instance, particularly opposed to white bread.”

“Like the Old Man was,” Devin put in.

“And still is,” Vincent supplied.

“Tell us more,” Catherine urged with as straight a face as she could muster.

“Well … where was I … The founder’s name Bernarr Macfadden. Born Bernard, but he thought Bernarr sounded like the roar of a lion and so he changed it.”

Devin propped one foot on the stone table before him, his elbows on his chair’s arms, his hands clasped – the very definition of innocent attentiveness, save for the deep-throated chuckle he couldn’t contain.

Vincent went on without fluster. “He established a publishing empire that included True Detective magazine, True Romances, Amazing Stories, Sport. Contributed, himself, to many articles and books such as The Milk Diet and Fasting For Health.

“Ouch,” Catherine commented.

“Also to The Virile Powers of Superb Manhood,” Vincent added with the straightening of his shoulders and just the glimmer of a grin.

“Ouch, indeed,” Devin echoed.

“Launched the country’s first physical fitness magazine, opened a chain of 1-cent vegetarian restaurants in the city in 1902, established what he called healthatoriums in several states, campaigned for a diet, exercise, and lifestyle approach to health as opposed to taking prescription drugs.”

“So a step ahead of his time,” Brigit noted.

“In some ways, yes. He was also, as I’ve read, a loose cannon with controversial, even bizarre ideas. He advocated roaring at the top of one’s lungs and mooing like a cow, believed walking on all-fours would strengthen the spine. Particularly difficult to live with, too, so says his ex-wife’s memoirs. An unusual man, good and bad …”

“Nutty and prescient.”

“Fascinating and off-putting.”

“All that,” Brigit concluded, “and the founder of this swim club that sponsors this, ummm, outing.”

“Yes,” Vincent said. “In 1903.”

“So ours will be the 89th,” Catherine stated. In the recesses of her more sober mind, a clock started ticking down the hours between the lark of an idea and the specter of a full-bodied ice-cream headache, the worst ever. “If we’re arriving as a team. And we are a team, right?”

She leaned forward, raised her arm, held out her hand palm-down.

Brigit followed fast, then Devin.

Vincent sighed and shook his head, quickly – and wisely, Catherine thought – reversing to a nod. His broad hand covered theirs.

“Huzzah!!”

Not long after, the pipes sounded the countdown: ten, nine, eight … and Happy New Year wishes and hugs were shared around. They bid a still-embracing Devin and Brigit a good, but sure to be short night, given they were to meet in less than a handful of hours for the trek to Brooklyn.

“You know I will warm you … afterward,” Vincent whispered in her ear, once they were alone in the corridor. “Though perhaps we might get a bit of an early start?”

“A jump on things, you mean?” Heh-heh! Still funny!

“Mmmmmm,” he murmured.

The fire he kindled in her – always – flamed. She picked up the pace for home.

* * *

New Year’s Day dawned, a day of firsts.

She’d always imagined walking across Brooklyn Bridge, Brigit told them when they left the junction together heading south, and today they would.

Registration for the plunge would begin at 10:00 AM, the first group entering the water at 11:00. Best to arrive early, they’d all agreed, energized but not out of gas, as Devin phrased it. The bridge traverse would, however, require an extra hour on foot. And so, instead of setting off on their initially-planned warm-up walk beneath Broadway to a southerly station where they’d catch the train, they boarded the subway at 57th Street. Not alone on the early morning train, they were the most awake … save for two fellow-travelers wearing Santa hats trading plunge stories with the woman in a Statue of Liberty crown and a stocking-capped man in a white fur coat – and giant white gloves with black claws – shining up his trumpet.

“Let’s get off at Canal Street and go below,” Catherine suggested and Vincent nodded. She didn’t have to clarify.

__

Down two levels, through a service corridor rumbling with the city’s awakenings, then down again to the tunnel-world’s uppermost level … along a passageway accessed by a secret, sliding door … ascending again at a spiral metal staircase … around a corner to a hatch-like door with a locking wheel and through. At Devin’s urging, a telescoping ladder rattled down and they hauled themselves up, hand over hand, to emerge in the looping curve beyond the abandoned City Hall Station, the timing of their arrival allowing a lingering before the next train pulled through.

A ghost of itself, still, the station’s glory days seemed more than a memory. Vaulted, glass-tiled ceilings in shades of greens and golds, herringboned and stacked-offset, wrought iron chandeliers, brass fixtures, the grand bronze plaque … The dinginess and disrepair disappeared in the radiance of Brigit’s smile and the force of her imagination. One day, perhaps soon, Catherine believed, they would read a story of hers set … just … here.

Though broken and the panes remaining covered still in the tar applied as blackout during World War II, the leaded glass skylights let in a magical glance of light.

“It means it’s sunny up-top,” Devin remarked with more than a degree of hopefulness in his assessment.

__

It was a cloudless day … but a skiff of new-fallen snow covered the pedestrian walkway, so dry in the sub-freezing temperature it swirled and eddied in the wind over the East River. The bridge’s guy-wires were rimed with frost, the bricks of its arches dusted with white. The buildings of downtown Brooklyn glinted in the morning sun. The bright was disorienting until Devin stopped at a makeshift stand – a young entrepreneur, his bike, his backpack, a cardboard sign advertising his wares – handing around, then, the flimsy but welcome sunglasses one received at the optometrist’s. Vincent donned his pair and Catherine wailed at the lack of a camera.

Brigit had one, though.

A man in a horse costume – complete with a hat somehow fashioned like a horse’s head – trotted by, stopping to offer to take a photograph of the four of them. “Over here,” he said, pulling off one hoof-shaped glove and pointing. “Let’s get Lower Manhattan in the picture too.”

There was, Catherine thought as they ambled on, great warmth in numbers. Not too far ahead on the bridge someone waved a Swim Club flag with dramatic exuberance and their fellow hikers welcomed them into a growing pack advancing on Brooklyn from Manhattan.

“Seems we’re not the only ones unable to put our arms down,” Brigit said with a tooth-chattering laugh. “I’m nearly waddling under all these layers, for which I am and will be extra truly grateful. ’Tis a far cry from our first walk in the park, Vincent. Remember? That brisk fall evening when you offered up your cloak?”

Brigit eyed it now … Vincent’s cloak … with a playful longing, Catherine noticed. She couldn’t blame her – it did have magical warming qualities. Under her own boxy orange coat and muffler, she wore loose, fleece-lined jeans over all the thermals she could manage and still walk. Vincent’s concession to the cold was hardly more than a single extra sweater over a rainbow-striped turtleneck she didn’t remember him ever wearing.

Someone passed her, nearly jogging, wearing a blue, ear-flapped, felted-wool skier’s hat identical to hers, but theirs had a jaunty knitted blue jay as a top knot.

Maybe next year …

__

By the time they’d crossed the river, they were part of a herd rushing for the train to Coney Island. The discussion around them was high-pitched, escalating with excitement or trepidation or both. Did the D or the N, the F or the Q offer the best view? The Jay Street station would be packed; it was a hike to the next one. More than one voice expressed doubt about the whole endeavor and wondered where the best breakfast place might be instead.

“Follow me,” Vincent said.

“Express lane to the Q-line,” Devin explained, once they’d veered from the crowd. They hustled to Henry Street, made a turn on to Poplar. Halfway down, in a protected niche … an iron gate to a narrow alley between two buildings.

“Do you remember the code, Devin?”

“Third cross-bar from the ground, two twists to the left, then to the right all the way around?”

The gateway opened. At the alley’s end, what appeared a cellar door was a way down. And a shortcut to the station.

__

They wouldn’t be first in line to register – the elevated train was packed – but they found seats together, which was all that mattered. Brigit never turned from the view.

“Ach!” she crowed at the looming sight of the wintry amusement park. “Summer’s a dream frozen away!” The Wonder Wheel was motionless, the Cyclone lonely and still. The arcades were boarded-up. The kiddie rides were quiet. But stepping off the train on to the raised platform, the roar of the crowd was heated.

Invigorating, she tried to believe.

No, nerve-racking. But Vincent was smiling down at her, his eyes as blue as the sky, his promise of warmth … after worth everything. Wasn’t it?

There was no room to waffle. The herd urged them forward to registration.

A donation was made. A volunteer snapped on wristbands coded to their time to rush the beach. A waiver was signed by each of them. Yes, they had to acknowledge, they understood the dangers of hypothermia … and worse. Yes, they all agreed, no more than two minutes in the water, given the temperature. After all, there was a tatted lace of snow on the sand, though it was being quickly trampled away.

“Remember,” Vincent said when they were about to part at the restrooms where they would strip down to their swim wear. “Take the time to fold your clothes and stack them carefully in reverse order. You’ll want to get them back on fast, I promise you.”

__

Cranked up so high, the heat inside the dressing rooms was nearly smothering, and there was hardly room to maneuver. Taking off her clothes meant a dozen “I’m sorrys” for the elbows she threw. But they took their time disrobing, letting the tips the seasoned plungers offered other first-timers sink in along with what she hoped was abiding warmth.

“Don’t wade in,” advised a woman wearing a headband of smiling starfish deely-bobbers. They danced above her head with animated joy. “When the water hits your ankles, you gotta keep going. Ignore the bite; ignore the burn. You gotta dive, girlfriends. Won’t count otherwise.”

Ready.

She stood for a moment, hand in hand with Brigit. They each took a stuttering breath of steamy air.

“Showtime?” Catherine questioned, mentally shouldering open a last-minute escape hatch.

“Argh,” Brigit responded. “I’ll not be branded a weenie. Nor will you, my friend. Remember the pact?”

Catherine chuckled. “Huzzah?”

“Louder!” Brigit urged.

__

Amidst the still-dry ramblers on the boardwalk, Vincent was waiting, head and shoulders above the multitudes, glorious in the sun. Catherine could hardly tear her gaze away. In his form-fitting swim trunks – trunks she’d seen before, the ones he wore during the children’s swim classes – he was … statuesque. A Michelangelo, a Rodin come to life.

The best of what it means to be … well, a hunk.

Every plunger, male and female, costumed and not, must have found him equally stunning. The cameras were click-click-clicking, although she couldn’t swear his face made it into the pictures. And then Devin popped out from behind him wearing flashy white boxing shorts trimmed with a wide gold belt and a swim cap fitted with a towering Elvis pompadour … which Vincent attempted to ruffle but for Devin’s artful dodging.

“Where on earth,” she asked him. “And how on such short notice?”

The community clothing chambers had certainly delivered.

But soon enough a group of elderly mer-people took center stage, dressed … or rather … undressed to a degree just short of naked. Posing with them was a coveted thing, clearly, and the beach police who might otherwise cite them for indecent exposure found something more interesting to deal with … elsewhere.

The energy in the entry area rose. Young and old danced and jigged, bounced up and down, arms over their heads, shouting out joys, shouting down fears. A fit octogenarian led the group in jumping jacks. They inched forward in the chute toward the release point. They were soon – so soon – next.

Vincent reached for her hand. “You have the courage,” he reminded her.

Devin whooped as he and Brigit took off for the ocean. “Run! Just run! Don’t thiiiiiii-nnn-kkk!”

Oh! OH!!!

She might never think again!

__

They surfaced together, joined hands in a bouncing circle not just with Devin and Brigit but with a dozen others grateful to be alive, screaming with equal parts agony and euphoria.

Vincent’s grin was so wide, she could see every ivory tooth, and diamond droplets streamed from his hair. Devin’s Elvis-hairdo was askew and dripping, and he seemed to be grappling underwater for what she assumed were his errant swim shorts, but he, too, seemed ecstatic and not at all gasping or numbed. Brigit chattered out phrases in Irish, whether prayers or curses, Catherine wasn’t sure.

“I’m reborn!” one of their compatriots yelled, a little bluer in the face than Catherine thought might be advisable …

But she had to agree. She felt … everything … as if for the first time. Joy, gratitude, love.

Here begins a new life.

Now, get out and get to it!

In both the wink of an eye and what seemed a century, their two minutes passed. With the crowd, still shrieking, they ran for the restrooms, dry clothes, and the blissful heat that was now only a pinpoint of memory.

She was colder now than she’d been in the water. How can this be? And shaking.

Vincent pulled her closer, closer … the reversing crowd streaming around them, and to her silvered vision color returned, the first being his golds, his bronzes, his sky-blue eyes.

And then Devin handed her a foil-wrapped knish, hot from the vendor who’d set up on the beach: flat, roundish, soft-crusted, the peppered potatoes inside both creamy and perfectly lumpy … a smear of mustard across the top, a hit of coarse salt … Heaven in her hand.

__

“Where to?” Vincent asked, once they’d regrouped. The party couldn’t be over; they wouldn’t let it be.

The boardwalk beckoned.

“Ice skating? The rink is just ahead.”

But it was indoors, and the day was too glorious to trade for even an hour of artificial light.

“Besides,” Brigit said, “I don’t really want to change my clothes again, even if ‘tis only my shoes.”

“Out to Steeplechase Pier? There’s an incredible view of the island. Or all the way to Brighton Beach? To Little Odessa? One of our Helpers has a cafe there. The vodka’s sure to warm you.”

“Not a good idea, Vincent,” Catherine decreed. The buzz she still experienced shouldn’t be dulled with liquor. “Some hot chocolate maybe?”

“Let’s go to Nathan’s,” Devin suggested. “Brigit should experience the original before she leaves.”

That felt right.

They struck out for the corner of Surf and Stillwell, following the crowd just as Nathan’s Famous, Inc’s signage instructed. Almost every neon letter glowed: Seafood, Delicatessen, Buffet, Catering … Frankfurters. The red sausage-man in the chef’s hat was just as jaunty Catherine remembered – such a friendly face.

And luck was with them once more. They made their way through swinging doors to the coziest corner of the little dining room in the back. Only ten tables, but a four-top was empty next to one of the porthole windows. They ordered a round of chili dogs and cheese fries, and by the time they were downed, Catherine’s icy bones had warmed at the marrow.

Dessert was a large cup of hot, hot chocolate, then a stroll along the boardwalk, members now of a rare society. At the edge of the pier, they were caught up in a “what’s next” conversation. A jolly crew was headed to the train, their destination the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village.

“Come along,” they invited. “We’ll finish out the day together.”

Plunging together made them friends now, even family.

But they had their own ideas.

__

They boarded the F-line, disembarked at the southern edge of the Park, parted company, for now, near the Great Falls …

They had their own steamy pools.

Private pools and more than one, each suitable just for two …

Huzzah!

_________

Title: David Whyte. Elderflower, from The House of Belonging. Many Rivers Press. 2002.

Opening Quotation: from my friend, R. L.