Larger Than Life

Appearances are deceiving in this perceptive short story by Alison Carter

Grace loved her new life in America, but she sometimes wondered if it was everything it seemed . . .

EVERYTHING is just brighter,” Grace told her mother. “I can’t think of any other way to describe it.” “I suppose that’s Florida for you,” her mum said. “Sunshine all the way!”

Grace could hear her mother’s forced cheerfulness at the end of the phone. She missed her daughter.

Grace had tried to tell Mary how amazing things were – the new job, the new country, the new boyfriend – but maybe it was all too “new” for her parents.

“I searched online to find out what a video shader is,” Mary said. “I think I get it.”

“It’s incredible they gave me this traineeship, Mum. I think my British uni degree certificate dazzled them. It had a crest on it!”

“No, it’s not incredible. You have dual citizenship, you’re qualified, and that’s all there is to it.

“How is, er . . .?”

Mary was nervous of asking about Lars, Grace could tell. Mums were always funny about boyfriends in the early stages. It was natural.

But when Mary met Lars she would understand. He was astonishing.

He was the man that Grace and her friends had painted mental portraits of during sleepovers and detention sessions after school.

Lars was talented, charming, funny and handsome.

He had an accent that he told her was “just standard US”, but which was the smoothest, most film-starry she’d ever heard.

Although, Grace thought, that might have been because of the voice delivering it. Reedy, a little cracked, as though he were about to be overtaken by emotion at any moment.

That was another thing about Lars: he was emotionally open, not afraid to cry or tell his truth.

Grace gave a quick report to her mum on how brilliant things were with Lars, and said she had to go to work.

“Call again soon,” her mum said. “You sound on top of the world.”

Grace took the bus to the stadium.

She hugged the shallow curve of the building when she got there, making for the control room past the huge main entrance and side turnstiles.

On a flat grey door was a yellow sign.

Video Control, it read.

Authorised personnel only.

Grace loved that. She had never been authorised personnel before.

She was only twentythree, and her career so far had consisted of two temp jobs in corporate videomaking outfits in a Manchester suburb.

Five months ago she had decided, more or less on the spur of the moment, to travel.

Fate had brought her to Florida, a hostel, and a chance meeting in a diner with someone who worked in baseball.

Baseball! It was the last thing Grace had expected to work in; a sport she had never played, despite her father being from Philadelphia.

Inside, some of the team were already hard at work, all wearing headphones, and most already studying a bank of screens.

Grace was a trainee, but had already managed and manipulated the output that appeared on the 26-feet-high screen that hung in the stadium.

Rick, forty-eight, an experienced video shader and her line manager, was in charge of making the feed from the stadium cameras blend and balance as the technical director cut from one to the other.

It was a skilled job and Grace had been terrified to begin with.

“You’ve used other software,” Rick had said. “You’ve edited and made content, right?

“This is just another bit of video tech.” He grinned.

“But one that’s used at break-neck speed and broadcast on a JumboTron.”

Every baseball stadium worth its salt had a JumboTron – an enormous screen that flashed up the game in progress.

It also showed advertisements, player details and a host of other images and text.

Baseball wasn’t a busy game; Grace had quickly spotted the similarities with cricket.

She’d mentioned that and nobody at work had understood what she was talking about.

There were long gaps in baseball play and the crowd needed to be amused while they waited.

The video team in the darkened control room was there to amuse them.

“We make a game into a show,” one producer had told her, and Grace thought it had a certain magic to it.

Already her favourite thing was a birthday announcement in the crowd, when the overexcited face of a ten-yearold kid would fill the screen for several seconds.

Lars supported the Minnesota Twins and was dismissive about all Florida baseball teams, which made Grace laugh.

He was an executive at one of the big corporate companies that bought blocks of seats in the stadium, and they had met at an after-game party.

Lars stood out from the throng with his fair hair and his big laugh.

He had the perfect teeth that Grace was learning were not uncommon here. They fascinated her.

He had first noticed her because she had stared at his teeth.

“Have I got spinach?” he asked.

“Oh, absolutely not!” Grace said, mortified. “I am so sorry I was staring. We don’t have beautiful teeth where I come from.” He laughed.

“But you have a beautiful accent to make up for that. Hi, I’m Lars.”

He held out a hand, and that was it.

Grace was still learning about the JumboTron and absorbed in its features.

Each person on the giant screen was enormous, every detail of their face magnified.

A six-feet-tall baseball player was three times their size on the Tron.

When one of the cameras caught a person in the audience, the person never looked at the camera.

Instead, they gaped in amazement, laughed in delight and waved crazily, all facing the screen because they saw their own face on it.

It gave people an odd appearance because it meant that they always looked the wrong way, their attention off-centre as though they were greeting someone off to one side.

“The way they look elsewhere,” Grace said to Rick, “it makes them look sort of dopey.”

“But they all love the screen,” Rick replied, “because there is always a chance they’ll appear on it.”

A few days after her traineeship began, the chief producer suggested she go into the stadium seating to get a taste of the game.

She came back dazzled. Rick found it very funny. “Yeah, it’s overwhelming,” he said. “It’s a lot of colour, information, sound and statistics, all coming at you at once.”

The producer nodded. “That’s the goal.

“Now, Rick, get back to the game – there’s actual baseball about to happen.”

That night, when the game was over, Rick gave Grace a brief history of the JumboTron.

“I’m a Tron geek,” he admitted. “The first was made in 1980. It appeared for an MLB All-Star game at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.”

“MLB?”

“My, you are English!” He laughed. “Major League Baseball. The first Tron was barely two storeys tall and three wide.”

Grace shook her head. “That still seems big to me. We played football at my school with a scoreboard made of cardboard, propped against the fence.”

Rick laughed.

“The team at the time called it ‘the largest colour television in the world’, and I guess it was. At first it was just scores that they flashed up on it.”

Grace thought about the game that had just ended, and the bewildering array of material fed to the JumboTron – catering concession ads, drinks marketing, safety information, lost and found, crowd “moments”.

That was before any of the important stuff like team stats and – in the mix somewhere – the baseball itself. ****

Lars fetched her that evening in a new convertible he’d leased, and they cruised through west Miami to an art gallery a friend of his owned.

“Cocktails,” Lars said. “They are going to love you.”

He turned to her, the wind catching his hair.

“I forgot to tell you it’s dressy, didn’t I?” he said with an apologetic grimace.

“I can change if we’ve time to double back and —”

“No,” Lars replied. “They will adore you with or without a little black dress. Miamians love nothing better than British ways!”

It was a smart affair, very thin people weaving around bizarre sculptures, and Grace felt too young and lacking in poise.

The next day Lars bought her the little black dress he’d mentioned, and she was thrilled.

He was the kind of boyfriend who paid attention.

“You’re a six, right?” he said.

“Is that a ten in old money?” she asked, and he laughed and said that it was.

“Then that’s right,” she said. “I’ll wear it the next time we go out.” ****

In the video control room there was often discussion of the effects of the JumboTron.

Some people loved the thing, while others had their misgivings.

“Watch,” Janey, an assistant, said when she handed Grace a coffee. “Watch the eyes of the crowd when the lights go back on.”

Some kid in the crowd

They gaped in amazement, laughed in delight and waved

was always allowed to count down to the moment before a game when the lights were all turned off, in order to build tension.

Only the Tron stayed lit. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one,” a childish, but massively amplified, voice would say.

Then it would begin: lights went on, and in the control room they could see the crowd again, every last one of them watching the screen.

Always the screen.

Grace began to notice that there were lots of people who seemed to need to drag their attention back to the pitch.

Janey pointed to a family whose faces filled the JumboTron screen.

“They actively have to resist the urge to only watch the screen. They spend most of a game with their eyes fixed on unreality.”

Rick tutted.

“It’s not unreality, Janey, it’s the live game, but bigger.”

“And with flashing lights and fancy bits,” Janey said.

Grace saw it – the blur between the actual game and a version of the game.

“I heard that a teenager pretended it was her birthday to get on the screen last week,” she said to Janey, who nodded.

“They think they are in control,” Janey said, “but it’s the Tron that’s controlling them.”

Rick laughed. “Over-reacting a little?” he asked.

Grace and Lars had a great social life. One night he took her to a corporate event in a silver skyscraper, and she wore the little black dress.

“I’m schmoozing a woman here for a job,” Lars said casually in the elevator as it passed floor 37.

“That’s great!” Grace exclaimed.

“If you could say you’ve known me for, say, three years?” he added after a few more seconds.

“OK,” she agreed.

“That’s great.” He nodded. “So helpful.”

It wasn’t much of a fib, Grace thought, and he deserved whatever job he was going for.

As they sailed past floor 43, he suggested she mention that she worked for a recruitment company.

“Maybe make a light joke,” Lars said, putting an arm around her waist, “about how you’ve been trying to poach me.

“Oh, and in case I forget to tell you later, I had a really good time tonight.”

Grace laughed, blushed, and tried to remember what film she’d heard that line in.

She felt nervous the whole evening and was fairly sure she’d done a terrible job of playing her part, but Lars told her she had been fine. ****

There was a big baseball game that week and the producer wanted the crowd really whipped up.

“I’ve sent Tom out,” he said. “He’s like a cowboy, the way he herds them around.”

Janey looked up from her notes.

“Hey, don’t use that word – ‘herd’,” she said.

“Well,” the producer said, “we can have them perform, can’t we? It’s harmless. They have a good time.”

Grace looked at the bank of monitors.

A row of teenage girls was staring at the screen, each noticing herself on it.

Each girl touched her hair in an embarrassed way or put on a careful selfie smile.

“The screen is the draw for them,” Grace said quietly. “Less so the game.”

“Not you as well!” Rick declared. “Those girls come for the screen and that’s cool.”

It was, Grace thought, as though they could not look away from the JumboTron. They were performing.

Grace’s three-month training period neared its end, and her relationship with Lars neared the two-month mark.

She felt pretty good about the first of those – video shading was not going to be her chosen career, but she had something solid for her CV.

But what about Lars? If she was going to stay in Miami to be with him, she’d need another job.

Her parents were making more contact from home, gently pushing to find out when they might see her.

She brought it up with Lars.

“What would I do without you?” he asked.

Grace talked her thinking through while Lars unwrapped some of the fifty-dollar sushi boxes he favoured as a takeaway.

Grace didn’t like the raw fish, but he said it was all the rage.

She was just wondering aloud about jobs when he interrupted her.

“You could see my orthodontist,” he suggested. “He is truly the best.”

“Sorry?” Grace asked, jolted from her train of thought.

“Just a little work,” Lars said. “Your cute British teeth could be cuter.”

Grace found herself covering her mouth, arranging her smile, trying to see herself in the black glass splashback behind him.

She said she’d think about that, then they ate the sushi.

“I forgot to say,” Lars said as he slid the packaging into the trash. “My company’s back at your stadium on Saturday.

“I could come to visit you in your little booth.”

“That would be good,” she replied. ****

The game was nearly over when Grace saw her boyfriend on the JumboTron.

The directors didn’t often send cameras to the corporate areas – the corporate people there were never as engaged and over-excited, and they didn’t make for such good content.

But today there was champagne in there, Rick told Grace, and they were going to make a montage as corks were popped.

The golden hair and big smile made it easy to identify Lars.

He was in profile, talking enthusiastically to a pair of men in suits and handing them glasses of fizz.

The men turned to look at the game, saw themselves on camera and made faces.

Grace laughed – they had changed from formal to goofy in an instant.

Lars had not seen the JumboTron or a camera; his face had suddenly fallen into a flat, bored expression, his mouth thin and hard.

He held up the champagne flute and peered into its contents, as though it wasn’t good enough.

The camera was only on them for seven or eight seconds, but the images imprinted themselves on Grace’s brain.

Lars looked different – his face longer, his smile gone.

She looked to the corner of the control room where a freelance editor was doing rough cuts for the usual video of parts of the game that would be posted on social media.

The editor was replaying the last minute or so and happened to zoom in on Lars – large skin pores, stubble a little ginger in the harsh stadium lights, a glimmer of perspiration.

The editor zoomed out and there the expression was again, Lars unaware and not performing.

Grace’s foot touched her bag. It had lain at her feet as she worked through every day of the training.

Inside was a leaflet from Lars’s orthodontist. It was made of expensive card with beautiful people on the front.

She had been considering an appointment, but now she wondered why. Nobody had told her before that she needed dental work.

Lars would be in the control room in 15 minutes, maybe less.

All of a sudden she longed for her tiny apartment, her duvet and the TV soap opera she’d got hooked on, but which Lars had jokingly suggested wasn’t “really her”.

At home, she never felt she was performing, or needed to perform.

There was a real version of Grace, she thought, and a JumboTron version.

In the big-screen version, her birthday could be on any day she chose, as long as it made her famous for 15 seconds.

In the JumboTron version she was never watching the game, but always the screen, and everything and everyone on it was more than 20 feet high.

Lars was just a guy who liked the best champagne, and Grace didn’t feel as though they were going anywhere. She wasn’t even sure she knew who he was.

“Rick, can I go?” she asked.

He looked round, surprised.

“I guess so. I can wrap up.”

“Thanks.”

A few seats were always reserved for the video team. They were near the tunnel and near the pitch itself, and the view of the JumboTron from them was, ironically, terrible.

Grace would go out there now and watch the closing minutes, smell the dust and the fried onions and share the experience with some people who loved baseball, up close and personal.

“Thanks, Rick,” she said, standing in the doorway. “I’ve learned a lot.”

The End.