Story #15: Charles Atlas

New York, 1965. A ninety-eight-pound weakling chases a yellow balloon five stories up.

Mid-sixties. I worked in an ad firm over on Madison. We weren’t the big boys. We were working out of a dime-store basement. Comic book ads, tricking kids out of postage stamps and a buck ninety-nine. “Be a man. Grow some muscles.” It worked. The whole operation ran through a post office box in Grand Central.

I was a string-bean out of high school who could draw comics. I wasn’t ever going to be good enough to draw Superman, but I could draw a weakling and a he-man, kick-the-sand-in-your-face bodybuilder stuff. A couple times these crooks paid me with return postage envelopes to keep me there. I still like to kid, “But what could I do? I’m a weakling, too.”

It was spring. We were Midtown on Lex. The 30s. This little girl with a yellow balloon was fastening the buckles on her red Mary Janes, getting down on one knee the way kids do. Her mother told her to be careful before she let the balloon go, and mom should have tied it off, because it slipped out of the kid’s hand and into an elm tree, right over the bench where I used to have lunch.

Funny thing, I don’t remember much about the girl. Her balloon was yellow, and her red shoes. It’s been sixty years. I remember everything in movie technicolor now. Green trees. Blue sky. Red shoes.

The elm was in front of a building site. The scaffolding and girders were halfway up. I used to sit where I could draw this redhead at her office window. She was a dream. What a bird! Of course, I didn’t stand a chance. Not in a million years. She used to lean out from that little cement window, smoking cigarettes, sassing the construction workers. It made me laugh. The more they gave, the more she returned. It was like she was eating sandwiches and hitting tennis balls right back at ‘em.

I used to hope she’d see Romeo down there drawing her, maybe ask to see herself if she bumped into me. I made her comic book perfect: a Lois Lane, but I gave her bright red hair. You’d think I’d have kept the pictures, but all I kept was this pigeon feather here.

Look at that.

Sixty years I kept it.

So, there was this guy who ends up chasing little miss’s balloon. What can I tell you? He’s a bowtie guy. That’s what the construction guys start calling him when he goes up anyway. “Bowtie.” This fella, if he didn’t wear glasses, then he should have wore glasses. If either of us one of my ninety-eight-pound weaklings, it was both of us.

So the girl’s balloon gets caught under an elm branch over my bench. It’s windy and the string is blowing all over. The mom looks at me to see if I’m going to be her hero and go get it, and I look at Bowtie hoping he’s going to get it. The two of us stand there looking up like two shmucks that can’t change a lightbulb.

Then the kid’s mother gets fed up with all this. She tells me to move over so she can stand on the bench herself. “Tellin’, not askin’.” Times were different then. I feel terrible, but, I guess, not terrible enough, and the guy and me, we’re looking right at each other. And every time the string blows near the mom’s fingers, she tries to get it, but she’s a little lady, and the girl is going, “Get it, mommy.”

Then, out of the blue, weakling number two, that’s him, says, “Alright, I’ll help you.” He said it like the two of them had been having an argument about it all morning, and he finally gave in, and nobody had said nothing.

So, Bowtie goes up. He holds on to the back of the park bench shakier than he’s getting into a rowboat. A real sight. I know at this point a couple people stop to watch this skinny guy in a suit and bowtie climbing Everest. The mother is thanking him before he even gets it, because he’s even standing on a bench in the first place.

And now I’m suddenly wishing it was me. You know that feeling when someone gets up first in the subway car to give a seat for an old man? It’s the worst feeling in the world cause it ain’t you. You beat yourself up a little, you know?

So, maybe Bowtie touches the string a few times for a second, but the thing is, I’m seeing him pushing up from the bench on his toes trying to get it. He’s not thinking about it, maybe, and I’m thinking, he’s getting a little braver. But the string is messing with him, like when somebody is about to give you something, then they snap it back right away. And then the balloon floats up and catches on a higher branch.

One of the construction guys on lunch break goes, “Oh, boy, you got a problem on your hands now, Bowtie.” Those fellas burst out laughing.

“Don’t even think about coming down till you climb up that tree.” Bowtie’s standing there staring at the balloon like a professor with the world’s hardest geometry problem.

So, Bowtie struggles to get down off the bench, and I reach up to give him a hand. I’m helping Bowtie. I didn’t help the girl. Now I’m helping him. But he doesn’t want any help: he’s on a mission. The construction guys start taking bets on whether he will get it. A hundred to one they know he won’t.

“A buck Bowtie can’t get up the tree.”

“A quarter he can’t get down off the bench.” And they’re all having a real hoot. And I’m on Bowtie’s side.

Bowtie has to hear them egging him on and betting against him. The balloon’s a good three or four branches up now, bobbing around this way and that.

“Anybody for a thousand?” They’re betting up, down, and sideways with the amounts. A dime. A hundred dollars, then they’re talking to me. I laugh like I’m in on it, hoping they’re not going to get going on me and my colored pencils.

I say, “Not in a million years.”

Right away, I wish I hadn’t said it.

Bowtie looks straight at me. That’s the one time the whole time he looks at me. Staring right at me. Like there’s him and there’s me in the whole entire universe, and I see it in his eyes. I know before everybody that he’s going up. Because they’re kicking sand in his face like Charles Atlas, and I am kicking him, too, a little bit, and right away I wish I hadn’t.

That’s when he takes his bowtie and jacket off and hands them to me like I work at Macy’s, and he starts climbing into the tree, scraping the bark off to get up there. He’s struggling to even get to the first branch. There’s not a muscle on him. The mother is telling him over and over he doesn’t need to. She tells her girl to thank him like it’s all over, but he’s not paying attention.

There’s him and there’s a yellow balloon.

“Let one of these men get it, if they’re so brave.” She’s looking over at the construction guys. She’s trying to make him feel better, but there’s not a guy in the world, wearing a bowtie or not, that wants to hear that from a woman.

But wouldn’t you know it, he’s smart.

He finds a way to get up to that first branch. Tells me to hand him his suitcase. Suddenly, he’s bossy. And that’s all he needed, a little extra height to stand on. Then he’s going, up, up, up. He is twenty feet up and finally gets to the branch with the balloon. But he freezes up for the first time when he’s trying to get all the way out to it.

He’s like a kitten in a tree when somebody has to call the fire department to get the cat down. And he’s moving so slowly, going towards it, then coming back, over and over. It gets hard to watch because of the way he’s bouncing around. Aie-yie-yie.

“Call the fire department,” somebody says.

“You stay out there, buddy. I’ve got a hundred on you.” They’re all laughing, but not so loud maybe. They’re not really bad guys. Lots of talk.

“All right, Bowtie, come on down. Don’t listen to these knuckleheads.” This is one of the older guys.

And now the redhead is at the window looking down, and she lights up one of her cigarettes and stares at the balloon like she’s studying geometry, too. She’s a glass of cool water with ice, watching him. At this point, she still hasn’t decided on him yet, but she’s deciding, all right. You can see it the way she’s smoking, real slow, like.

His problem is the branch is too skinny. There’s no way he’s getting out there. So, he’s cooked. But he goes for a branch near him—it’s nothing but a little sucker, nobody has any idea what he’s doing—and he’s twisting and twisting till it comes off. I’m getting dizzy watching. Then he sticks that branch out there, right into the string, and he turns the branch around like he’s spinning a marshmallow in a campfire. The string gets all tied up in the branch and pulls it in. Just like that. All wound up.

All the bowtie guys are smart. Paper smart, you know? You better be smart if you wear a bowtie. I was smart, never paper smart.

The construction guys, I know that shut them up for a minute because they sure didn’t think of it. So, you gotta hand it to him. And know the redhead is thinking this, too, because she’s always cigarette, cigarette, cigarette, but she’s stopping now.

He’s looking like a big hero, but when he’s unwinding it from the stick, he slips a bit and makes a little whelp, you know, like a puppy that got its tail stepped on, and everybody at the bottom, well, there’s a big “whoa,” too, like in a movie, and long story short, the balloon gets away from him again.

That’s when two beat cops show up, and they start yelling up at him like they have anything to do with anything. The construction guys start saying stuff to them now. “Why don’t you go up, Officer, if you’re so brave?”

The balloon blows right out of the tree, and it gets caught on one of the construction nets so a wrench doesn’t drop on your head, but the only thing that is going to drop smack on somebody’s head is Bowtie if he gets up there. And it’s over.

The balloon is probably three or four stories up, dead even with the redhead leaning out her window. She’s still not saying anything to him yet. She’s smoking and staring down at him in his tree.

I mean, Rita Hayworth.

“You’re killing me, Tarzan,” she says, but not too mean, you know and loud enough for the construction guys to hear it. After that, the construction guys start calling him Tarzan. I’m thinking maybe they’re a little jealous and look at that.

So, he gets right back down out of the tree, and the mom and everybody are congratulating him at the bottom for even trying, but he doesn’t care, the beat cops threatening him, “Never again,” they’re saying. He doesn’t listen, just walks straight past them into the construction site door, one of those blue doors. I’m thinking, “Where’s this going? He knows he’s not allowed in there.”

Then he’s gone, but a minute later, he gets out of a construction elevator. This is way up there, even with the girl. The balloon is way out there on a girder, and now he’s gotta walk out there to get to the balloon. It’s getting crazier and crazier.

Now he doesn’t walk across the girder. He’s not that brave, not yet anyway. He sits on it and scoots forward like he’s on a rocking horse. The cops are yelling up at him like they’re gonna spend the afternoon at the morgue filling out police reports.

By the time he gets up there, the balloon has blown over to the office building, where it’s caught under the top of the redhead’s cement window. She’s there, and the balloon is there, and if he doesn’t get it there, he’s never going to get it. Nobody knows whether they want him to stop or go, not even the cops. Midtown is frozen. She could have grabbed it herself just like that.

Then Tarzan looks down at all of us and stops cold. You know he’s deciding if he’s had enough. Nobody would fault him for it. Not in a million years. Hell, at this point, they might give him a standing O just for stopping.

Not me. I’m rooting for Bowtie to keep going. I want him to get it, right?

The redhead and him are saying something across the space. I don’t know what she’s saying, but they’re having a long, long conversation about he’s gonna get to her window, and you can see she wants him to do it. She’s smiling at him, and laughing like he’s the funniest guy in the world. One time in my life, just one time, I’d like to see a girl look at me like that. Beautiful. Pure beauty. She’s perfect.

So, he stands up on the girder. And this now is the first time he doesn’t look scared — the way he stands up, I mean. Whatever she said to him, she’s turned him into Tarzan for real.

Johnny Weissmuller.

Every secretary in that building is at her window. They’re like an army of girls pulling for him, going ooh and aah. The balloon is right there, bobbing on the redhead’s window ledge.

The redhead could have just grabbed it, but she doesn’t and he doesn’t ask her, and that’s the whole thing. Jane doesn’t help Tarzan in movies. He’s got his Tarzan business, and she’s got her Jane business.

And wouldn’t you know it, he must have wished she had, because this balloon, it won’t keep still. It bumps out from under her window frame, and the moment it looks like it’s going to fly away into blue yonder, the string catches on a flagpole that is poking out at an angle from the side of the building. It’s like the whole building has one big arm holding it out away from him. That’s how I’d draw it, if I ever wanted to draw it. There is nowhere left for that balloon to go but into Apollo orbit.

The construction guys pipe up again, but it’s different.

“Wrap it up. Give the girl a kiss and get in the window. That pole ain’t gonna hold you.” They’re not so bad, these guys. They’re just big mouths.

Tarzan gets himself out on the ledge, leaning carefully to step over to the building. Then he walks down the side. There’s a little ledge, and when he gets out to the flagpole, he shakes it to test how fastened it is. Even from the street, you can see it’s shaking. Maybe that’s just how I remember it, but I don’t think so.

This is the last straw, though. It must have been moving because people start yelling for him to stop now. Really yelling. “The party’s over.” This guy is gonna fall and be dead, and that’s the end of it. Tarzan just died. But I’m not saying anything. I want him to get it so bad.

Then the guy starts to take off his shirt, and it’s blowing around. Then he starts to wind it up like he’s squeezing water out of it. There’s not a muscle on him either. I’m thinking he really is Tarzan— a ninety-eight-pound Tarzan.

The cops are up there yelling out of a window at this point, and they’re pleading with him like he’s going to jump. Everybody in the city of New York, New York knows he shouldn’t be doing this. Pigeons are flying around like crazy everywhere up there.

And you know what Tarzan does?

He wraps this wound-up shirt around a drainpipe, then gathers up that twirled shirt and wraps the other end around his fist, so it’s tight — real tight, like rope. He takes a minute to test it, but then, get this, he leans all the way back from that drainpipe and reaches out, like he’s Singing in the Rain on a lamppost.

He’s the smartest Gene Kelly Tarzan of the Jungle you ever saw.

It feels like it’s going on forever with him hanging there, and I know he’s starting to enjoy it, and sure enough the string on the balloon blows back while he waits for it, and he stretches his fingers out and grabs it like the easiest thing in the world. I think maybe that’s the one time he looks down. Half an hour ago he could barely stand on a bench.

You can never understand people, what they can do, I mean, some of them, anyway. If I tried to draw it, I’d ruin it.

And I’m just staring up there holding the guy’s bowtie and his hat and his briefcase and every part of me is wishing it was me. If I drink too much, I start to think about it.

I’m kidding. Don’t take me too seriously.

But you wanted to know about the feather cause it’s the best part.

Gene Kelly puts that balloon string in his teeth again, pulls himself back in, and then disappears around the corner. Pigeons are flying everywhere from back there. We’ve got no idea what’s going on. And when he’s back, he’s tying something to the string, hunched down like he’s the one tying his Mary Jane’s. Then he’s holding out the balloon from the drainpipe and bobbing it up and down like he’s testing it somehow. Nobody has a clue what’s going on.

Then I’m telling you this is the smartest thing I ever saw.

You know what Gene Kelly does? What do you think he does?

He lets it go. He let’s the balloon go.

“Like, are you crazy?” We’re dying. You went up there like Tarzan, five stories up, you get the balloon, a girl falls in love with you, and you let it go?

That yellow balloon blows around for a bit. It’s going this way. It’s going that way. But then I’m telling you it starts to come down. It floats down, down, down, while we all watch. The redhead, too. She’s leaning out. We’re hypnotized by a yellow balloon. This thing is nothing. It’s a balloon.

I’ll tell you how he did it in a second, but while it’s making its way down, I see King Kong get off his ledge and go right in through the redhead’s window.

You know, the way she looked at him, it was better than the two of them necking at the top of the Empire State Building. Maybe she did kiss him. Felt like it. Then the cops were in there to take him away, but everybody was booing at them and cheering for the guy like he hit a grand slam at Yankee Stadium, and I went and got the balloon. I must have given the girl her balloon back.

But I was still holding his briefcase and bowtie, and I didn’t know what to do with them, but then I thought I’ll give them to the redhead, because there was no planet with or without Superman where he didn’t see her again after that.

A couple days later, I got up the courage to go up there to her office, and Lois Lane came out and she took his stuff from me. I asked her if she’s seeing him again, which I regretted the second it came out of my mouth. I was invisible. I was like her office boy.

Jimmy Olson, and that was that.

Anyway, you know what he’d done with the balloon?

He’d tied this feather to the end of the string. Just heavy enough to make it come down. He was a genius, this guy. Ninety-eight-pound Charles Atlas, but a genius.

Maybe on my best day, I’d have got as far as the tree, but I didn’t even get up on the bench. Not even the bench! You wouldn’t think you could be a hero over something as small as chasing a girl’s yellow balloon, but he was, Mr. Bowtie.

Tarzan.

Gene Kelly.

I kept it, you know?

Of course, I kept it.

A feather.

Hand it back now. You couldn’t take that feather away from me for all the return postage in the world.