Circles of Affection

In appearance, he's an aged Sandinista--a cigar, a soiled t-shirt, a defiant but wrinkled fist atop a flexed arm. (The teddy bear just seems to be along for the ride.)

His quotidian appearances are as regular as a rooster's crow. If you don't know better, you'll first assume nothing more than a weathered man making a U-turn on an old Italian street; but each evening, before the sidewalk diners, his little truck orbits through a dozen circles, and then it leaves the way it came.

It frustrates the stern, grandmotherly innkeeper. Hands on hips, she shakes her head and mutters, "He thinks he's my boyfriend..."