A lady with a military ring nestled into plump fingers flicks me a coin. It’s a dollar, she’s American; so I stand to attention and salute. In returning the gesture she demonstrates a precision and a speed that belies her weight and I smile at her effort. Her saluting arm shadows her eyes from the Roman sun but it fails to hide the tears that begin to glisten, then pool, precariously hover, and then inevitably drop to the bridge of her nose. One of those tears just hangs there, the other trickles down a nasal curve and collects on her lips, but she doesn’t lick it away. She holds my eye. I stop smiling and straighten my back to try to reflect her pride, and I wonder about her family and where they are. I wink at her, without theatrics, and my American patron swallows hard.
She snaps her hand to her side and we nod to each other, and then she moves on, wiping her eye with the sleeve of her green Hollister jacket.

I watch her walk away before I resume the act for which I am most famous and return to stroking the purple bunch of fresh grapes that hangs from my behind as I mime the daring battles of my invented gladiator ‘Heamerroidus Massivus’, a warrior afflicted with piles who fights the starved lions of the Barbarians for the pleasure of the Caesar. I dramatically wince as I thrust and squeal like a rusted hinge as I lunge and the coins clink to the cape that adorns the cobbles at my feet. Some people are clapping as they laugh and then a guide blows a whistle and disperses my audience to their respective tour tribes, leaving me to play to a theatre that is now walking away.
I continue to perform, if just to myself, because I am Bibo of the Collesseo, and this is how I earn my way.

I find myself standing alone, and then, as if waiting for his moment, a black T Shirt with muscles comes from the shadow of the Collosseum’s arches and drops me a zloty. He’s a Pole, and I grimace as I interrupt my script and lift dumb-bells and pump out the veins in my neck to mimic his stature. He looks younger when he smiles, just like I knew he would, and he swells up his torso as he strides away from the Areo di Tito to catch up to the rest of his tour of contoured Slavic’s. He winks back at me as he rubs a similarly shaped friend on the shoulder and then he and his group walk towards the Via Del Fagutale. I am noticing how he moves his hand down his friends back when I see another open top tour bus sidle up beside them and stop to a kerbed idle. I let my gaze wander to its windows as I check out its occupants and grade their generosity against their attire. The muscled Pole turns to check that I’m still watching him and as we make eye contact he bumps into a girl with a head of fire who has walked across the street from behind the bus.
But he fails to notice.
The girl staggers as her sandal comes off and I momentarily lose sight of her despite her flame red hair and pistachio cardigan. The throngs of newly arrived tourists, enthusiastically disembarking from their bus, swallow and collect her as if a souvenir and she becomes lost in a quicksand of pot bellies and yellow and white shopping bags adorned with the Vatican keys. As I still find myself with no audience to please, other than the muscled Pole who now resumes his look of aggressive sadness and continues on his way, I am compelled to divert my attention to seeking out this girl and I stop my act.

Despite her coloring marking her as different to the darkness of the local Mediterranean’s, and her age being decades younger than the pilgrims that have engulfed her, she is too small to spot amongst the heads of activity and even though she is walking against the tide I can discern no ripple amongst the crowd. I jump to the black iron bollard beside me that allows a chain to hang as a pedestrian affront to invading Lancia’s, and I balance on one leg as I crane my neck to find her.
An old lady standing close by claps my acrobatics presuming it to be part of my act, and I cannot help but perform a one legged bow with hands outstretched like a ballerina. I thank her for her coin and then from the corner of my eye I see a large man at the periphery of the tour bus crowd touch his baseball cap and I know it to be an ‘excuse me’ and then, as I suspected he would, stand aside so the girl can reappear, breaking free from the edge of the density as if exiting a field of full grown corn.

The sun seems to follow her as if attracted to her hair, shining more brightly upon her as if it is a spotlight of the Gods and there is a pleasure in their creation. She stops to adjust her pistachio cardigan and the leather satchel she clings to. She says something that I cannot read and smiles to herself as she looks behind her at the bustle. She blows air down on to her neck locket and flicks a strand of hair from her eyes. She is different, she is standing apart from the others and as she turns around and my eyes lock on to her full beauty, I forget that I am Bibo, and for a long instant, I am lost for mimes.
But I recover quickly and jump back to the cobbles putting my hands to my face in mock shock and horror at her human pin-balling. I pretend to run to her assistance, my red painted lips making a large circle in the white of my face and my black Plimsolls running slowly and silently on a single cobblestone without moving across the piazza. She smiles as she notices me, joining the natural dots of her freckled face, but stopping it short of her eyes. She puts a hand into the pocket of her white linen trousers and the sun flares a reflection from her silver bangle as she tosses me a euro, keeping her country a guarded secret. It loops in the air but instead of letting it land on my cape, I catch it on the instep of my plimsolled foot and clap myself silently. She blinks her appreciation and as she begins to walk on, I bend a knee to mime an operatic ‘thank you’ and I tip my beret and realise I want to see her laugh. But the flame haired girl doesn’t slow, she just waves her little finger from the hand that’s thumb hooked on to her pocket and leaves me watching as she enters the cacophony of another flock of eclectic holidaymakers. She disappears from my view, alone, but yet not seeming to be.
I take advantage of being in between applause and bend down to gather up some earnings of the day, retrieving the coins that have rolled from my cape to the cobbles of the blood history I use to entertain. It is only then, as my attention wanders to the sculpted calf of a ‘signorina’ walking in front of my hand, that I notice a dark line of occasional sparkle travel across the piazza. It begins beyond the road where the tour buses are hovering and the guides are barking, and continues to the edge of the crowd where the flame haired girl re-entered the fray. I smile with enthusiastic curiosity at this unexpected event and without hesitation I see this line as an invitation to accept. Because it dawns on me excitedly that the flame haired girl is leaving a trail of sand behind her, and I have no choice but to follow.

I quickly gather the coins with one hand as my other wipes the white make up from my face in practiced moves learned when running from the Carabinieri. I fold my cape into the bag it becomes and as I remove my beret and toss the sweat from my hair, I signal my early departure to Bergamasco who is across the Piazza fanning the feathers of his Centurions costume as two Asian women stand beneath his armpits and snap pictures. I whistle to get his attention. I point my fingers to my eyes and then back at the ground. Bergamasco looks at me curiously, no doubt wondering why I am leaving at the height of the tourist day with the possibility of more money to be made. He nods his agreement. There are other mime artists who would try to impersonate Bibo of the Collesea, just as there are other Centurions, but Bergamaso will protect my patch, as I would for him.
With the accoutrements of my trade gathered and tethered into my cape that now hangs like a knapsack on my hip, I run to the place where I last saw her pistachio cardigan. There, I pick up the trail of the silver sand that is sparkling in the Italian sun. Feet have breached its line in places but I can see that it leads to Via Aria di Settimio and I presume her to be heading to the Campidaglio. My flame haired girl is travelling the streets less common, where the Romans outnumber the tourists and the coffee is better, displaying a knowledge of Rome that endears her to me more.
I dodge a Lambretta and admire its rider as I take a short cut through a side alley that not even the Caribinieri know of. It travels beneath the balconies that echo the canned laughter of sitcoms and the jingles of TV game shows and snakes on through the stacked boxes of rot that occupy the restaurant rears. Here I break into a trot to race the flies and to avoid the yells of arrogant chefs that keep a bucket of slop beside their open doors to throw at vagrants and pigeons. Leaping a railing and traversing an ‘orti semplici’ I pluck a pepper from its stake and pick an onion from the bed. I leave a coin in the soil for the owner and exit over a wall as quietly as I entered, ducking through a clothes line of the white hanging shirts of a waiter or a bus driver. With a sheen of sweat on my face I finally arrive in the shadow of Cicero and press against his cold marble to cool my skin. I slow my breath and as I begin to wait for the flame haired girl to appear, I filter through my collected earnings for pocket junk and useless coins, the kind that makes a ‘clink’ when flicked on to my cape but costs little or nothing to the donator.

Amongst the omnipresent bottle tops, religious medals and metalic buttons I find some Cambodian Riel and Danish Krone. A North Korean won note is wrapped around a wizened apple butt and some seeds; there is some Albanian Lek, a gold ring shaped like the sole of a foot, and a toy metal Indian with it’s tomahawk raised in cheer. I keep the ring and the Indian in case a worried girlfriend or a crying child returns to my patch seeking their lost treasures. I throw the won wrapped apple butt and seeds back over the wall to the vegetable garden I pilfered as a gift that may surprise come spring, and I put the international currencies into my cape for depositing into my ‘World Jars’, my twenty two glass tumblers with snap on seals that collect the non euro currencies, the first to fill being the next country I holiday to. The American dollars are currently ahead of the Japanese yen and I am comparing Nebraska to Nagano in the Lonely Planet. The twenty seven Euro and fifty five cent from my mornings work is installed into my beret and the rest of the junk, in a continuance of the Roman circle of cost free donations, I give to Cicero, and his marble accepts it graciously as I wait.

It is not long before I hear the flap flap of her summer sandals and I see her exit the shadows into the bleaching sun of the Campidaglio’s piazza. She is drinking from a water bottle and some of it spills on to her chest as she walks. She pulls her damp lace top from her skin and fans the air as she stops and puts her leather satchel to the ground. She removes her cardigan and exposes the milkness of her arms and I see her move her lips again and smile. She throws her cardigan across her leather satchel and thumbs the strap to her shoulder as she resumes her walk across the square towards Cicero, where I continue to hide in plain view. I smell a heady mixture of apple shampoo and coconut sun block as she walks by and I again catch the glint of the narrow trickle of sand that is falling from the corner of her leather satchel. My flame haired girl is walking towards the Pantheon and I fall in behind, walking astride the line that meanders after her.
And I find myself looking at her shadow.

The Pantheon is as it always is, a hive of silence with worker bee hawkers buzzing around its periphery. I watch her politely refuse the sellers of watches and icons, leather bracelets and court jester masks and I notice she places her hand over the corner of her satchel, pinching the leather and stopping the flow of sand. She stops suddenly, and without an available edifice to hide behind I am forced to walk past her into the Pantheon. She is now behind me and I hear her take a deep breath as she continues beneath the Corinthian columns and enters the Rotunda to the temple that was built for all of the Gods.

The sun is shafting a tunnel of light through the oculus of the Pantheon’s large domed ceiling, the one they call the Great Eye as it opens to the sky to seek the benevolence of Apollo, the Roman God of the Sun. The cooler air is being enjoyed by tourists and pick pockets alike as they travel along the walls, sitting beneath the various graves and shrines and snapping pictures of the artwork and dipping into pockets with a deft of touch. A screaming child runs across the marble floor and slides to his knees with a giggle. I can see his father berating the mother as he turns his back and walks away from the embarrassment, leaving her to chastise the playful child. They speak French and I listen to her scold with her words but not her voice. She wipes the dust from his bare knees and kisses the nape of his neck. The flame haired girl walks by me, watching them too, and I see tears in her eyes. We look at each other for a moment but I am faceless without my make up and she does not recognise me. She turns away and walks to the tunnel of light that the oculus beams through and I retreat to the refreshment of the cool stone walls, where I sit to watch her from the comfort of my cape bag.

She walks to, and then stops, in the middle of the Pantheon sun and releases her pinch on the leather satchel allowing the sand begin to flow again. She looks around her as if gauging her space and throws her pistachio cardigan to the floor. And then she does something that in all of my predictions of behavior, I did not see coming; my flame haired girl begins to twirl.

Slowly she begins her circle, the sand forming an arc on the marbled floor as she revolves on the toes of her sandaled feet. The dust particles of her sand begin to take to the air and fly like baby butterflies around her head as she twists her feet and increases speed. She smiles and her bare milky white arms extend to improve her balance and her leather satchel elevates to spread its load in ever increasing circles. I watch grains float in the air as they spin with the airflow as if in a Pantheon tornado, and the temple falls silent at the sound of the twirling flame haired girl who is now laughing.
I stand up as a ‘guardia giurata’ walks through the Rotunda. I know him, as I do most of the security guards that work the city, he is Benedito and I nod that the flame haired girl is with me. He shakes his head and gesticulates at her antics until I rub my thumb and forefinger together in a promise of payment. Benedito turns and disperses the crowd that has gathered in the entrance, leaving those already inside to absorb the initial shock of seeing a twirling girl appear beneath the Pantheon’s oculus and to begin, in various dialects, to chatter of madness and drugs.
All but the pickpockets begin to move away from the strange sad joy that is twirling in front of them and I step forward as if to protect her. But then as quickly as it had begun, the sand suddenly ceases flowing and the flame haired girl stops her twirl. She is out of breath, her hair is covering her eyes and sweat coats her skin. I continue to step towards her, I want to take her outside, away from the eyes that stare and judge and the hands that may touch, but she pulls the hair from her face and I see her talking, and I fear I might be interrupting her, so I stop and return to the wall, hunkering down to rest my chin on my knees.
I see and hear the murmur of tourists begin again, and following a momentary awkwardness, they return to their digital cameras and pamphlet paper guides and under the eagle eyes of the Roman thieves, they immediately forget about the flame haired girl and her strange dance to the Gods. Unlike me, for I cannot takes my eyes from her.
She picks up her cardigan and walks to where I’m hunkered. She sits beside me, her leather satchel a barrier between us, but yet she is close enough for it to be intentional. She opens her satchel and removes a metal canister, placing it in front of me, allowing to me see inside and thereby solving the problem of the trailing sand.
I turn to look at her but she is staring into the beam of the Pantheon’s dusted light and I now wonder was my decision to follow the trail of her sand a trespass on her soul. I remain still and wait for her invitation to engage, because I feel I have intruded, and now she feels alone.
I try to become invisible and I wait.
And I wait.
And I wait some more.

Many of the tourists have departed and the sun has left the Pantheon and travelled into the evening sky before she finally speaks.

‘Do you know what I miss most about him?’ she whispers as her voice cracks.

She looks at me and surprises me by reaching over her satchel and wiping some white make up from my eyebrow. I know from her accent that she Irish and I know from her eyes that she wants me to answer, but her familiar touch has left me speechless.

‘Ballando Con Liu, – Dancing with him?’, I finally offer

She smiles and nods slightly and then puts her hands to her face, cupping her chin.

‘Footbeards’ she replies

I nod as if I understand and stare back to the metal canister, juggling her words in my brain so I can glean their meaning. I wonder is my English flawed. The last of the tourists leave the Pantheon and I nod to Benedito, who has returned to close up, to leave us a moment longer.
She continues to talk.

‘He used to rub scented aftershave balm on to the soles of my feet and then rest his freshly shaven face against them. He said the soles of my feet were the exact contour of his face. It was proof that the Gods had made us for each other’.

Benedito is rattling his keys and I know his shift at DaVincenzo’s is beginning soon but I don’t want to interrupt her moment. I smile as I look at her feet. Her toenails are painted with glitter and a small tattoo of a strawberry hides beneath her sandal strap. I imagine his footbeard and the tenderness of their sharing.
She sighs and gets up abruptly and offers me her hand as a signal we have to move. I covet her touch and allow her to assist me unneccessarily, leaving the metal canister where it is, as it is not mine to touch. She hands me her leather satchel and picking up the metal canister she holds it out to me and says,

‘He loved Rome. Will you use this for your coins?’

I hesitate and look at the urn. She senses my unease and waits.
I rub my hands against my black trousers, wiping away the nervous sweat and any semblance of make up before I touch it. I feel a bump in my pocket and remember what I saved from Cicero. I put my hand inside and feel the coins, and the gold ring and, the Indian with his tomahawk raised in cheer.
She touches my forearm and puts the urn into my other hand before receiving my answer.

‘Thank you’ she says as she kisses my cheek.

Benedito appears with a face like thunder and ushers us out through the oak doors of the closing Rotunda. I know I am flushed from the kiss of her lips and I feel myself falling inappropriately in love with my flame haired girl. I curse and welcome his interruption in equal measure as we leave. Outside the diluted evening sun tries to soften the streets and the mood, and as Benedito locks the door and we silently walk from the Pantheon, back through the route we arrived from, my flame haired girl takes her satchel from me and puts her pistachio cardigan across her shoulders. I awkwardly put the urn into my cape bag and wonder about my feelings, about what I should say. I know I am concerned at my intrusion and the jealousy I have for the lover, the man she has lost. I also know I want to hug her, take away her loss, replace it, but my selfish indulgent thoughts are abruptly shortened as we reach Cicero, and putting her hand on my arm, she stops us both and turns to me.

‘Why did you follow me?’, she says, her head slightly tilted and her eyes now bright with a sudden curiosity.

I look at her beauty, her freckles, her sorrow and her love. Behind her, Cicero, as if he was her father, is looking down on her and I can hear the muted laughter of a TV show from a nearby balcony. A couple walk by hand in hand and a pigeon flutters to our feet. She is standing before me, stripped bare and vulnerable and without further hesitationI put my hand in my pocket and retrieve the gold ring that is shaped like the sole of a foot. I hand it to her and say,

‘Because I didn’t think you were alone’.

My flame haired girl takes the ring and rubs her finger along its sole. She looks at me and holds it to her face and soothes it against her cheek. And in the shadow of Cicero her tears begin to glisten, then pool, precariously hover, and then inevitably drop to the bridge of her nose. One of those tears just hangs there, the other trickles down a nasal curve and collects on the sole of her lovers foot.

I step back and put my hand back in my pocket and finger the Indian with its tomahawk raised in cheer.

And I see my American patron walk by in her green Hollister jacket.