Out
An old man exits the bath. Ice water trickles down his blue chest. “I’ll give each of you three hundred dollars”, he says, “who stays in longer than a minute.”
How Long?
“For how long did you stay?” asks a child. “Forty-five minutes,” he says, “Also, you who stays in the longest after a minute will receive an hundred dollar bonus. Fathom that.” The children three look at one another, then at the blue skin wet, and – finally – their eyes rest on the bath.
“How cold?” asks another.
Cold
He lets them touch his hands, and tells thems not wade in. This a plunge. One brave child, the third, the only one yet to speak, volunteers.
The children had been swimming nearby, and were each dressed in swimsuits.
The old man smiles, and hoists Clay under the arms and lowers him into the bath.
At first, the boy is quiet. The others, too, await surrender. In a breathless tone, the boy begins to issuse reports of the sensation. A news ticker, of sorts, he calls out monosyllables, like “ho!”, and “ah!”.
Entrepenuer
Outside the bath, a boy in the audience replies.
“Clay, if you get out now, I’ll give you fifty bucks!”
Inside, the boy is grateful for an occurence other than the assault on his internal temperature on which to fixate.
“No,” he says, “I want the prize!”
“But you’re not even halfway there,” says Austin, the other boy. “Get out now, and you’ll still be warm, and I’ll give you fifty!”
Clay doesn’t like to stay still. Out he gets.
The Market Bath
The old man thought boys would not care so much for money.
“I’m next!”, says Devin, and tries to climb in.
The man hoists him in before the whole thing can tip.
“Ooh, ahh!”, says Devin, in an attempt to act as if he were enjoying a good soak, like a lady in the bubble bath. But the pluge is so cold that he can’t pretend, and begins to shut down on the verbal front.
“Devin, fifty bucks!”, says Austin, “you’ve been in less time than Clay, so its an even better deal!”
“An hundred!”, says Devin.
“Hm, let me think about it…”, says Austin. “Sixty.”
Devin climbs out.