You can’t be a gypsy without a band, girl.

I saw a man at his craft, once, begging on the paving stones outside of Notre Dame on a stifling day in Paris. The cigarette smoke drifted heavily around the square, and the air felt ten days dead as we waited in a roped-off line to see the Cathedral. The gargoyles stared down on us like they’d seen it all before a thousand days, a thousand ways. Inside, a boys’ choir was singing.
The gypsy’s eyes were white and blank all the way across and the hand holding his full cup of coins was hesitant and frail. He trembled, a rusting leaf on a limb. And later, on the way out of those ancient doors I saw him through the crowd, through awe-filmed eyes, wondered at the strength of his voice over the multi-lingual babbling of the place. I stared at his eyes – normal and just as brown as yours are – and his now-empty paper cup.
And he was speaking to his sister or his cousin – someone with matching brown eyes who made his coins disappear wrapped in a purple kerchief before she melted away into the crowd of tourists. And the gypsy’s eyes were wiped blank as slates as he turned back to the line and his trembling picked up, worse than before.
In no time at all, his cup was approaching full again, and I knew if I watched long enough, his partner would show up again to collect his winnings. The square would empty, the paving stones desolate and littered, and the air would cool with the sunset. The smoke would be a memory when the cigarettes disappeared and the first of the evening’s breezes carried it away, and the gypsy would be gone just as surely. Back to his family and his apartment, to a shower and a clean pair of clothes. And I was positive he wouldn’t tremble once after dark.

So you see?
Even a gypsy must have someone to be strong for.
Even a gypsy can’t fool everyone.
Even a gypsy needs to be herself, sometimes.