Not the Way God Intended

Larry Andrews

'Boston?! Freakin' Boston?' The man yelled into an earpiece. 'I'm in Manchester for Christ's sake! That could take me two goddamn hours in that goddamn traffic!'

Larry Andrews stood slap bang in the centre of his spacious office in City Hall Plaza of Manchester, New Hampshire. His pudgy face glistened with sweat and his puffy cheeks glowed red as he ran a stressed hand through his hair, which was now a compound of grease and sweat.

Mr Andrews's office sprawled 25ft by 20ft, with two of the four walls composed entirely of glass windows overlooking the vast New Hampshire skyline below his top floor viewing point from the state's tallest building. And yet, somehow, the walls were closing in on him. The voice on the other end of the earpiece assured him that a trip to Boston was not optional.

Be there by 5pm or it's over.

Andrews glared at his Rolex wrist watch; 3:24. No time to waste. He whisked his blazer jacket from the back of his office chair and went bounding toward the door, knocking all sorts of documents and devices to the floor as he wrestled his chubby arms into the tight sleeves of the blazer.

As he strode ferociously down the hallway toward the lift, Andrews began weighing up exactly what he'd gotten himself into.

Of all the mega deals he'd ever made, the stakes had never been this high... nor the chances of success so slim. Perspective poked its ugly head in once more. Money, money, money. Numbered pieces of paper- that's all it was. Now it was so much more. It was do or die, and the latter loomed large.

Larry Andrews had been a prominent name in the business world before he'd even started his sophomore year at college.

Caught somewhere between too fat for a linebacker and too skinny for a lineman, Andrews spent his college football career as a dummy for the first-stringers in training and a bench warmer on game days. Andrews's idea sprouted on one particularly weather-beaten pitch (or sideline, in his case) away to Alabama, when he spent the game more concerned with the battering his feet were taking from the waterlogged turf than the battering his team were taking on the scoreboard. Thus, Larry Andrews invented IN-SHOE-LATE. IN-SHOE-LATE, or ISL, was a simple but effective layer for the inside of the players' boots which was waterproof and insulated.

Andrews gave free samples to all his football buddies and it went down a treat. The players wore the product every gameday, causing whisperings of Larry's genius invention to spread around town. It didn't take long for Andrews to hone in on his target market.

Kids wanted nothing more than to be just like their idols. By that logic, young football fans wanted nothing more than to emulate the stars they watched on TV and in sold-out stadiums. Andrews seized the opportunity, striking deals with every elementary school in the area. This progressed to middle schools and eventually high schools by the time his freshman year of college came to a close. The IN-SHOE-LATE logo- a chicken scratching of a shoe with the letters 'ISL' dead centre atop a slanted underline- was spreading through schools like wildfire.

If you ask Larry Andrews, the real fun hadn't even started yet. That offseason, the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself to Larry Andrews and took full advantage.

When his college's star running back was selected with the No. 1 overall draft pick, Andrews made sure he took ISL straight to the global stage with him. The charismatic, if dim-witted, speedster gave himself the ever-modest title 'Speedy Guns-zalez' as he hogged the media's attention. Having not yet mastered the art of negotiation, and having his head too far up his own backside to hire and agent, 'Speedy' agreed to do a short advert for a laughably low fee. Andrews had struck gold.

The painfully amateur production featured 'Speedy' with some of his old teammates telling the camera to buy IN-SHOE-LATE 'because you can't get cold feet in the NFL'.

In another savvy move, Andrews posted the video on Youtube- costing virtually nothing and actually making money off his own advertisement via other people advertising on his video. You're a goddamn genius, Andrews. He told himself.

It wasn't just Larry who saw himself as a genius. Magazines like Entrepreneur, Fortune and Sports Illustrated purred over his low overheads, 'innovative resourcefulness' and 'aggressive ambition'.

Back to the present and it was that damned aggressive ambition that hand landed him in this hot mess. At 25, Larry Andrews had the world at his feet (invariably warm feet, I might add). And what do you do when you have the world at your feet in your mid-twenties? You go double or nothing.

So here he was, pushing his Rolls Royce Ghost aggressively through the thick New Hampshire traffic in an attempt to meet a highly ambitious target. Larry Andrews was on the brink of nothing.