Seventeen Red Balloons and a Party No One Comes To was published in NYU's Comparative Literature Literary Journal, Brio.
Seventeen Red Balloons and a Party No One Comes To
It’s a sunny Saturday and I’m in a party shop called “L’Isola Magica” or “The Magic Island.” The shop is in one of the less-touristy areas of Florence that I haven’t visited before today. I’m here to buy balloons. I have a plan. I want to distribute 15 red balloons throughout Florence, with notes attached inviting their finders to have lunch with me. The idea is silly and whimsical, but will serve as an “artistic intervention” for a class assignment.
I ask the man behind the counter for sixteen red balloons. Fifteen for sending out with messages and one for me to hold at the meeting spot (in front of the Duomo, Sunday, 1:30) so the strangers will recognize their lunch date.
“Okay, seventeen red balloons,” the man says.
“No, sixteen, please,” but he doesn’t answer. In fact, he doesn’t say another word to me while he blows up the seventeen red balloons with helium. I decide not to argue, just to let it be.
“Good?” he asks when he’s finished.
“Perfect.”
Then, he charges me thirty euros. I only came with twenty, so he tells me where the nearest ATM is, in Piazza delle Cure. I run there. People have told me, when I mention this project, that the price of helium is rising these days. Someone even said the world was running out of helium, and sometimes in the next few decades, before I die if I don’t die young, the world will entirely run out. No more helium. No more balloons, except the dopey droopy ones you blow up with regular air that sag around pointlessly. I come back with the money a little flustered and embarrassed, but once I’m out the door with my enormous bundle of balloons, I feel immediately better.
Some high school students sitting outside the café next to the balloon store yell “Happy birthday!” I can’t tell if they’re being genuine or making fun of me.
Before I’d bought my balloon bundle, my social interactions were normal – or normal for Florence: mostly silence from passing strangers, besides the honking of car horns and creepy, unwelcome “Ciao bella”s from predatory Italian men. The balloons change everything. Suddenly, everyone comes alive – children, their parents, old people, everyone.
“Mama, look! Balloons!” little ones cry out. They look at me and smile.
An old lady on her balcony shouts down to me, “Where are you going with those lovely balloons? Are they for a party?”
“They’re for a school project!” I explain in my flat American accent. She understands and looks pleased.
When an old man on a bench calls out for my attention, I’m startled because normally such men can be creepy and frightening, but he isn’t. “Such beautiful balloons! And I think if you had just a few more, you might float away!”
Early the next morning, I’ve tied my notes to the balloons and I venture into the city. My plan is to let ten of them float away and go where the wind takes them. The other five I will tie to things, because I worry the flying ones might not come down soon enough.
People react differently when there are notes attached to the balloons. They won’t meet my eyes. They’re distrusting. They don’t know what I’m up to. Only one lady, in Piazza San Marco, dares to speak to me. “Is this for a protest?” She sounds grumpy and severe, like if the balloons were in fact for a protest of some sort, she might try to stop me.
“No. School project.” I say. She lifts her eyebrows disapprovingly and turns away.
I decide to let go of one balloon at a time, one in each big piazza I come to.
There’s something sort of fantastic about letting a balloon go. When you hold balloons, they pull upwards. They tug. They beg you for it. So releasing them almost feels like a good deed, a favor. Then, head tilted back, you watch it go. It gets smaller and smaller, farther and farther away until it is a tiny colored dot in the blue or it disappears over a rooftop.
The feeling is even better when you know there’s a message attached. Who will find it? Where will it land? Until the message finds someone, it’s a secret between you and the sky.
When I’ve only got five balloons left, I go in search of good place to hide them. Out of the way, but not too hidden to be found.
In Piazza della Signorina, a man with a fanny pack stops me to take my picture. Other people see him, and I get my picture taken by a huge flock of tourists. More and more of them keep coming up. It’s flattering but strange. I’m the girl with the red balloons. After two or three minutes of posing, I politely tell them I have to go. I can’t stand here all day.
I tie my remaining balloons to handrails and grates. I tie one to Jesus’ thumb on a statue down an alley. Soon they’re all gone from me.
One thirty pm. I’m waiting and no one comes. I wait half an hour with my single red balloon. Nobody comes. I go to lunch with some friends instead and have a fabulous time, but can’t help wondering what’s happened to all my red balloons.
Later, though, I go look at the place where I tied one of the balloons. All that’s left is a piece of red string.