7. Antonio
— ? —
Antonio
The fever starts as a tickle at the back of my throat.
I notice it between setups on Monday morning - a faint scratchiness that I wash down with coffee and ignore.
By lunch it’s become a dull ache behind my eyes, the kind that makes the lights feel too bright and the voices too loud. By the time we break for dinner, my skin feels like it belongs to someone else, stretched too tight over bones that have started to hum with heat.
“You look like death,” Gianni observes, appearing at my elbow with a clipboard and his perpetual worried expression. “Actual death. The kind they put in horror films.”
“Thank you for that vivid assessment.”
“I’m serious, Antonio. You’re pale. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine.” The words come out automatic, the same response I’ve been giving for days whenever anyone asks about anything. Fine. Everything’s fine. The marriage is fine, the shoot is fine, I’m fine. “Just tired. Long week.”
Gianni doesn’t look convinced, but he’s got a schedule to keep and I’m the lead actor on a film that’s already three days behind. He can’t afford to send me home, and I can’t afford to go.
Besides, going home means facing Cassandra. Means looking at her across our empty breakfast table and remembering the way she reached for me in bed last week, the way we finally connected after months of distance, and the way I left before dawn anyway because the set called and I answered.
I texted her an apology. I’ve texted her several apologies since then, each one feeling more hollow than the last.
She’s stopped responding.
“We need you in the east corridor in twenty,” Gianni says. “The documentary crew wants some behind-the-scenes footage of the blocking.”
“Documentary crew?”
“The production company hired them. They’ve been filming all week - didn’t you notice?”
I hadn’t noticed. I’ve been so focused on getting through each scene, each day, each hour without falling apart that I’ve stopped paying attention to anything outside my immediate eyeline.
There could be a marching band in the corridors and I probably wouldn’t register it.
My world has narrowed to the next mark, the next line, the next take - anything to keep from thinking about the silence waiting for me at home.
“Twenty minutes,” I repeat. “Got it.”
I head for my dressing room to splash water on my face and pretend I’m not running a temperature.
The corridor is busy with crew members hauling equipment and calling to each other, the controlled chaos that’s become the background noise of my life.
A woman with a camera on her shoulder films two grips arguing about a lighting rig, and I realize Gianni wasn’t kidding - there really is a documentary crew following the production around, capturing all the glamorous reality of filmmaking.
They’ll get hours of footage showing people moving lights and adjusting marks and waiting, endless waiting, for everything to be ready. The magic of cinema.
In my dressing room, I lean against the sink and stare at myself in the mirror.
Gianni was right. I look terrible. The shadows under my eyes have deepened into bruises, and there’s a gray undertone to my skin that makeup is going to struggle to cover.
My forehead is hot when I press my palm against it - not dangerously hot, not hospital hot, but definitely not normal.
I should tell someone. I should let the production know I’m getting sick so they can adjust the schedule, maybe push my scenes until I’m functional again. That’s what a responsible professional would do.
Instead I dry my face, straighten my shirt, and head back to the corridor.
Because responsible professionals don’t let their personal disasters affect the shoot, and because if I stop moving long enough to feel how sick I actually am, I might have to feel everything else too.
The documentary crew is set up near the east wing, their cameras pointed at a stretch of hallway that’s been dressed to look like a Venetian palazzo.
Fake marble, fake columns, fake everything - we’re all professionals at pretending here. I spot Bianca already on her mark, talking to the director about something I can’t hear. She looks up when I approach and her face cycles through concern.
“Antonio.” She crosses to meet me, her hand finding my arm. “You look awful. Are you sick?”
“Just tired.”
“You keep saying that. But you’ve been ‘just tired’ for days, and you’re getting worse, not better.” She presses the back of her hand to my forehead, and the gesture is so motherly, so unexpectedly tender, that I don’t pull away. “You’re burning up.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You have a fever.”
“I have a scene to shoot.”
“The scene can wait.”
“The schedule can’t.” I step back from her touch, trying to create professional distance. “I’ll be fine, Bianca. I just need to get through today.”
She looks at me for a long moment, something unreadable in her expression. Then she nods, once, and returns to her mark without another word.
I watch her go and feel a flicker of something that might be gratitude.
She’s been attentive lately - bringing water when I forget to hydrate, knowing my call times before I do, appearing with aspirin at exactly the moment my headache becomes visible.
It’s the kind of attention I should be getting from my wife, except my wife has stopped answering my texts and I’ve stopped deserving answers.
The blocking takes longer than expected.
The director wants a specific quality of movement through the corridor, something that captures the tension between Marco and Sofia without being too obvious, and we run through it again and again while the documentary cameras roll in the background.
Every take feels harder than the last. The lights are too hot.
The air is too thick. My character is supposed to be conflicted, torn between duty and desire, and I don’t have to reach very far to find that feeling.
I just have to think about the woman waiting for me in Rome and the distance I keep choosing.
By the sixth run-through, I’m gripping the wall for balance and hoping no one notices.
“Cut!” The director’s voice echoes off the fake marble. “That’s good. Let’s take fifteen and reset for coverage.”
I make it to a chair before my knees give out entirely.
“Here.” Bianca appears with a bottle of water, pressing it into my hands. “Drink this. Small sips.”
“You don’t have to…”
“Just drink it.”
I drink. The water is cool against my raw throat, and I close my eyes and try to remember the last time I felt normal.
Before the anniversary. Before the hallway and the overheard call and the look on Cassandra’s face when I tried to explain what she’d heard.
Before I started drowning in a grief I don’t know how to name - for the babies we couldn’t have, for the marriage I’m watching die, for the man I used to be before I forgot how to be present.
“You need to go home,” Bianca says quietly.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Because home is where Cassandra is waiting for me to be the husband I promised to be.
Because every day I don’t go home is another day I don’t have to face how badly I’ve failed her.
Because work is the only place left where I know who I’m supposed to be, where the script tells me exactly what to say and the director tells me exactly where to stand and no one expects me to figure out my own life.
“The schedule,” I say instead. “We’re already behind.”
“The schedule will survive. You won’t, not at this rate.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine in weeks.” She crouches down beside my chair, her voice low enough that only I can hear. “I’m worried about you, Antonio. We all are. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard, and whatever’s going on at home…”
“Nothing’s going on at home.”
“-whatever’s going on,” she continues, as if I hadn’t spoken, “you can talk to me about it. If you need to. That’s what colleagues are for.”
I don’t have an answer for that. The truth is, I feel like I’ve been collapsing for months - just slowly enough that no one noticed until now.
The marriage, the work, the weight of expectations I can’t seem to carry anymore.
Everything is falling apart, and I’m standing in the middle of the rubble pretending the house is still standing.
“Fifteen minutes,” I say. “Then I’ll be ready.”
Bianca studies me for a moment, her expression shifting through something I can’t quite read - concern, calculation, decision. Then she stands and walks away without another word.
***
The next two hours are a blur of takes and setups and trying not to pass out on camera.
I’m aware, dimly, that I’m not performing at my best.
The director keeps calling for one more, just one more, the energy isn’t quite there yet. Bianca carries our scenes with a generosity I don’t deserve, covering my missteps and feeding me lines when my brain stutters.
She adjusts her blocking to hide my unsteadiness, gives me something to lean against when the vertigo gets bad, plays Sofia’s concern for Marco with an intensity that feels almost too real.
By the time we finally wrap for the day, I’m running on nothing but caffeine and stubbornness.
“Antonio.” Gianni catches me as I’m heading for my dressing room. “I need to grab a number from your phone - the production coordinator from Milan. Do you have it?”
“Should be in my contacts. Phone’s in the dressing room - it’s unlocked.”
“I’ll get it. You look like you need to sit down.”
“I’m…”
“If you say fine one more time, I’m calling a medic.”
I shut my mouth.
Gianni disappears toward the dressing rooms, and I lower myself onto a folding chair in the corridor, closing my eyes against the fluorescent lights.
The documentary crew is still filming somewhere nearby - I can hear the low murmur of their commentary, the whir of their cameras. More footage of the glamorous life of a movie star.
They should come back when I’m huddled over a toilet at 3 a.m., or lying awake at four wondering if my wife still loves me. Really capture the magic.
A few minutes crawl past.