Harbinger Of Glory

The ceiling inside was high and white and rigged with lighting equipment that Leo recognised in concept but not in scale.

The rigs up there were considerably more serious than anything he had stood under for the Wigan team shoots, and visible all around was the chaos of a production that knew exactly what it was doing, even when it didn’t look like it.

He turned it over slowly with his eyes, taking it in, then lowered his gaze to the front of the space.

Ahead of him, Vittoria was standing with a photographer, a woman in her forties with close-cropped hair that looked like they could talk about lights and angles the whole time.

She was showing Vittoria something on the camera’s review screen, talking through it, and Vittoria was listening with her head slightly tilted and a focused look painted on her face.

Leo watched her for a moment.

There was something about seeing her in this context, in her element, that was different from every other version of her he had seen.

She had always been down to earth, though not so much when she was with him, but seeing her work was one of the most attractive things he’d ever seen.

Before his mind could conjure thoughts anymore, her eyes found his across the space, mainly because she had felt them approach and had just looked up to confirm it.

For a second, they just looked at each other, and then a smile came to her face, slow and a little too knowing, while the photographer continued talking beside her.

Vittoria nodded at whatever the photographer said without having heard a word of it.

After a while, she turned to the photographer and said, ”Can we take ten?”

The photographer looked at the setup, considered it briefly, and shrugged.

”Why not?”

She turned and announced the break to the room, and the energy shifted as various crew members found their phones, some seats or their coffees, all while Vittoria came across the floor toward them.

She reached Gianna first and hugged her properly.

Then she straightened and looked at Carlo.

”Carlo,” she said, with a single nod.

Carlo nodded back with equal brevity before Vittoria’s gaze moved to Leo and stayed there for a moment.

Then a second later, she looked past him as though he were part of the general scenery of the room.

Seeing that, Leo struggled but held his expression together.

He had expected something like this.

There were crew members and assistants and a photographer and various other people within earshot, so it wasn’t that hard to take in, but it still wasn’t the most pleasant of things to feel.

A moment later, one of the catering staff appeared beside them with a tray, offering drinks, mainly various coffees and a couple of other things.

Leo took one and was still looking at it when Vittoria reached across and redirected a cup toward him.

”Here,” she said. ”That one’s the cappuccino.”

Leo took it as Vittoria’s hand came back.

She then turned back to Gianna without a visible reaction, but there had been a fraction of a second where she had clearly registered what she had just done.

Leo brought the cup to his lips and said nothing.

The break lasted its ten minutes, and then Vittoria was back on the floor with the lighting rigs back up and the shoot resuming.

Leo and Carlo stood slightly behind Gianna and drank their coffees and watched, which was the most useful thing available to them.

The photographer was good.

Whatever she was drawing out of Vittoria, the expressions and the angles and the shifts between them, she communicated it in short, precise directions that Vittoria responded to with the fluency of someone who had been doing this long enough.

.

At one point, the photographer said something and adjusted slightly, and whatever she had suggested produced an expression on Vittoria’s face that was aimed, in terms of its general direction, somewhere toward where Leo was standing.

Leo looked at his cup.

The cup was not very interesting, but it was safer than the alternative.

Carlo glanced at him from the side, aiming to get a glance at what his friend was looking like, but Leo kept his head down and didn’t give Carlo the satisfaction,

Two hours went past without feeling like two hours, which Leo only understood when the photographer stepped back from the camera and said something to her assistant before the room began the particular process of winding down.

She crossed to Vittoria, and they spoke briefly.

The photographer laughed at something Vittoria said, and then she thanked her with a genuine and warm expression on her face, talking about how she enjoyed the work as Vittoria thanked her back.

Then Vittoria turned to the three of them.

”Wait for me outside,” she said.

”A black van should be waiting there.”

Gianna nodded before she turned around, beckoning Carlo and Leo to follow her.

Once outside, they saw the van, which was parked along the kerb.

The driver had the partition up and the air conditioning already running by the time the three of them settled inside, with Carlo and Gianna occupying one side while Leo sat on the other.

Gianna looked at the door, then at Leo or specifically how expectant he looked, before returning her gaze to Carlo, who was smiling at her silent mischief.

When it began to look like Vittoria might never come, the door to the van slid open.

She glanced at the people inside and then took a step inside the van, this time in a different set of clothing.

She scanned the interior, found the available space, and settled in beside Leo before she tapped a button on the interior beside her to close the door.

All while this happened, Gianna’s eyes moved between the two of them, scrutinising every little interaction between the two as Leo kept his eyes on his phone.

After she settled, the van pulled away from the kerb and moved out into the Milan afternoon.