The Walking Man, page 16
Ultimately, Andy’s curiosity about the physical sciences resulted in a prodigious accumulation of knowledge that eventually yielded a shamefully perfect score of eight hundred on both his math and physics standardized achievement tests.
Unbeknownst to Andy, the cause of his genius was a “hockey puck” shot by his brother, Matthew “The Stick” McCormack. The incident occurred when Andy was thirteen months old after his eldest sister, Mary, “M&M” McCormack, strapped him into a baby stroller like he was Hannibal Lecter, so she could spend the afternoon exchanging bodily fluids with her boyfriends, Bob and Rory. Unfortunately, Mary parked Andy behind a street hockey net that her brother Matthew was using to practice his slap shot.
Matthew’s street hockey puck had ball bearings embedded in its surface, so when smacked it would behave like it was travelling on ice. The one hundred mile per hour slap shot that tore through the net and hit Andy above his left eye knocked him out for a day. In response to the trauma, Andy’s brain repaired itself as best it could, but the damage was severe, so lacking viable alternatives, Andy’s body repaired itself by generating an unproven neural network that contained a series of innovative thought channels, which ultimately turned Andy McCormack into a mathematical savant. Specifically, Andy could not only do math better than the average genius, he could also comprehend five dimensions of space, which made him uniquely capable of thinking great thoughts about the weird subatomic particles that make everything happen.
In the end, Andy’s “inexplicable” intelligence landed him a four-year scholarship to MIT, a feat that caused Patricia Sullivan, his high school sweetheart, to dump him on the spot.
“Andy, I’m not going to date some fucking nerd who goes to the fucking Massachusetts fucking Institute of fucking Technology, I have my reputation to fucking think of,” a distraught Patricia said before running into the arms of Buckey Doherty.
Buckey was an unemployed fork truck driver. He drank on D Street and slept on E Street. His ambition was to return to work at Gillette one day – when they moved their big warehouse in Cincinnati back to Boston.
Eventually, Andy made peace with his past by limiting his family visits to the safe holidays: Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, the three days a year that the McCormacks obeyed the no Budweiser before noon rule.
At every family event, Andy’s brothers and sisters would inevitably jibe him for betraying his kind by not working with his hands or getting wasted on Friday nights at the Shaky Shamrock. Usually, disapproval was expressed with an elbow followed by the words “pussy,” “nerd,” or “jack-off.” But on occasion, when local barroom chatter determined that Andy had violated the enigmatic Southie Code of Conduct, an older sibling would be recruited to teach his little brother a lesson.
Such was the case at the christening of Billy McCormack the fourth, the youngest of Andy’s forty-seven nephews. During the baptism Andy’s brother, Declan shot him with a Taser for failing, three years earlier, to attend their father’s fifty-ninth birthday bash. Andy knew his dad did not sanction the hit because Johnny “Yawny” McCormack, a Korean War Veteran and MBTA bus driver, was a good-natured man who was difficult to offend. In fact, at the keg and pasta reception after the christening, in a rare display of affection, Yawny addressed Andy’s poor fit within his brood by sharing a few words of wisdom with his prodigal son. “Andy,” Yawny said. “Family is over-rated. The only thing that really matters in life is beer.”
Life at MIT was not much better for Andy McCormack. Erik “The Particle” Gunther, the chairman of the MIT Physics Department, loved Andy like he was his son, but his jealous colleagues hated Andy for being so fucking smart and so insanely normal.
Being academia, disdain for Andy was usually expressed with snide comments, but on occasion things would get outright nasty. Once, during a mandatory peer review, after Andy challenged a theorem offered by a struggling associate professor. An intense hissy fit ensued, in which the whiny Ph.D. indirectly expressed the jealous sentiments of the entire MIT Physics Department. “Okay, McCormack, my theorem may be wrong, but at least I’m not dating a cheerleader from Boston College, you freak!”
Among his colleagues it was difficult to determine the greater source of animosity they held toward Andy; for some it was the beautiful babes, for others it was Andy’s scientific method, which he arrogantly called, “thinking.” Andy did physics without a pencil, or a blackboard. Instead, he read prevalent theories then conducted thought experiments to advance scientific discovery. Andy did not have a laboratory, or a cell phone, and he only owned one personal computer. Yet, he was able to consistently propose new theories about the nature of space, time and light, which stunned the physics community.
In practice, Andy was the idea man and Gunther did the proofs. To many physicists this meant Andy was a dilettante. Andy countered by claiming his colleague’s math “mumbo jumbo” was a “smokescreen” that hid their incompetence and prevented true insight. Over time, a pile of awards eventually validated Andy’s approach, but they came too late to prevent the nickname “Dandy Andy” from sticking.
Ultimately, Andy fought with his colleagues to maintain the illusion that his work was somehow important. In truth, Andy could not imagine a less vital occupation than generating knowledge for the few folks in the world who cared about advanced particle physics, but in a reality that required money for food and housing, Andy was not unhappy with his profession. His work was easy, and it paid the bills, so Andy, an inexplicably devout Catholic, considered himself blessed and looked forward to a long and happy life of relatively meaningless postulation.
Of course, a life rarely matches its dream, and such was the case with Andy McCormack. Andy was super-intelligent, but he also had self worth issues (leftover from his youth as a “fucking-asshole douche bag”) that left him susceptible to exploitation by others. Consequently, it wasn’t long before Andy lost control of his destiny. The process started with Hope Wynsome, the woman Andy almost hit with a saliva-coated Frisbee.
Hope was a first year graduate student at the MIT Sloan School for Business. Sloan was the place where techies went to get a degree if they weren’t really techies. Andy “met” Hope on the lawn outside the MIT’s Student Center, a block away from the banks of the Charles River. It was the first warm day of spring, after a long hard winter, so the dresses were out and the boys were hunting. Andy was throwing a Frisbee to his dog, Twister, so he could run about the courtyard and check out the ladies without seeming like a predator.
Twister was a Golden Retriever. Andy named him Twister because he looked liked a tornado when he chased his tail, which happened often. Twister did not have a brain; he was petrified by ants and drooled excessively. He also ate golf balls and was once run over by a Ford Escort station wagon without sustaining any obvious injuries. Perhaps due to his unrivaled stupidity, Twister was interminably happy; he was also fiercely loyal. Twister’s sole mission in life was to consume at least four cans of Alpo a day and to be at Andy’s side whenever possible.
Andy recognized Twister was not the most intelligent dog in the world, but he loved him nonetheless. Twister offered Andy unconditional love without asking him to do the dishes. He also never barked and was a good TV companion due to his warmth and strange fear of popcorn. Twister could also jump five feet into the air and turn his head two hundred degrees, which made him a most excellent Frisbee/hunting partner.
The first encounter between Andy and Hope Wynsome happened due to a purposely-errant Frisbee toss. The drool-coated disc landed at the feet of Hope who was sitting on a wrought iron bench reading a business case about some greedy bastard who made a fortune doing something that was technically legal because there was no law against it. Without thinking, Hope picked up the Frisbee and flung it back to Andy. The fling caused a three-inch-wide swath of doggie saliva to slap Hope across her chest, staining her brand new J Crew cotton blouse, turning mauve into burnt umber.
As Andy approached to apologize, Hope’s beauty stunned him, so his first reaction was to try to make things right by cleaning up Twister’s saliva. With no towels in sight, Andy took off his T-shirt and started rubbing it on Hope’s chest. Just as he realized the impropriety of his action, Hope knocked him out with the butt end of her Apple MacBook.
Seeing blood and seeking to protect his master, Twister, the supposedly brainless dog, leapt into the air, grabbed the MacBook from Hope’s hands, and took off. The MacBook contained Hope’s life, so she immediately gave chase. Twister ran straight across MIT’s main courtyard and then across Memorial Drive, where he was grazed by a Taxi and a Cadillac SUV before depositing Hope’s MacBook into Charles River.
Just as Hope crossed Memorial Drive in hot pursuit of Andy’s dog, the cerebrally-challenged Golden Retriever turned and ran straight at her. Two taxis and a bicycle messenger nearly clipped Hope as she ran back across Memorial with Twister on her heels. Hope was five feet away from her bench when Twister caught up to her. The force of the collision and ensuing bite caused Hope to hit the ground like she had been crossed checked by Zdeno Chara. Luckily, Andy had come to during the chase, so he was able to curb his dog’s assault by yelling, “Down, Twister!”
“Your fucking dog just bit my leg, asshole!” Hope Wynsome screamed at Andy McCormack.
“Maybe he’s mad because you knocked me out, bitch!” Andy replied.
“You grabbed my tits, creep!”
Andy paused for a moment. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking…”
Hope tried to hobble away, but her leg was bleeding profusely, so Andy insisted on helping. Having already disrobed his upper torso for lack of a towel, Andy took off his cotton MIT sweat pants and shredded them with his Swiss army knife, an item that had been attached to his key chain since he was twelve years old. Standing in his boxer shorts, Andy then wove his shredded sweats into a tourniquet, which he applied to Hope’s leg to stop the bleeding. Then, without seeking her permission, Andy McCormack swept Hope Wynsome into his arms and proceeded to carry her to the MIT infirmary.
The MIT Infirmary was almost a mile away from the bench where Hope and Andy “met.” As Andy walked he continually apologized to Hope, who was furious, although her anger did not prevent her from noticing that Andy McCormack was built like a Greek god. Andy had Brad Pitt’s looks, without the hint of femininity. He had red-brown curly hair, a freckled face, and a chin that had a perfect dimple. He had broad shoulders and a perfectly hairy chest. He looked rugged like the Marlboro Man – before he developed cancer.
The blood from Hope’s leg soaked Andy’s boxer shorts, so as he walked down Massachusetts Avenue, more than a few ladies were struck by the size of Andy’s manhood, which they could envision with minimum fantasy, due to the clingy nature of blood-soaked cotton. As Andy walked, Hope eventually calmed down enough to consider the possibility that her molester was not a total asshole, a thought reinforced when the admitting nurse at the MIT Infirmary said, “Professor McCormack, what happened to you?”
Not one to lie, Andy responded, “I stupidly grabbed this young lady’s chest, so she knocked me out with her Apple MacBook, so Twister bit her.”
The nurse, familiar with the social miscues prevalent in an institute dominated by men with Asperger’s syndrome unblinkingly responded, “Happens all the time. Don’t worry; we’ll take care of you both.”
Andy turned to Hope and smiled. “By the way, my name is Andy McCormack.”
Hope looked at Andy and was suddenly smitten.
“I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, Professor McCormack. My name is Hope Wynsome.”
Because of suicide attempts and alcohol poisonings, MIT always had a physician present at its infirmary, so a real doctor, from a real Caribbean medical school, quickly determined that Andy’s and Hope’s lacerations did not pose a threat to their long-term health or welfare. After ten stitches to Andy’s head and twenty-eight stitches to Hope’s leg, the couple shuffled to the MIT bookstore, where they inexplicably bought a set of matching MIT shirts and sweats that made them look like the host and hostess of Nerdworld.
Being all dressed-up with nowhere to go, Andy then boldly suggested locking Twister in his office and then proceeding to The Muddy Charles Pub for drinks. Hope liked the drink part of the plan, but instead of storing Twister, she suggested drowning him in the Charles River or donating him to a nearby medical school, where he could be tortured in the name of science.
Before the Frisbee toss, Andy had classified Hope as a rare beauty. Like most men, Andy was quick to assess a female’s core features and he liked what he saw. Hope was five feet tall with dirty blond hair, stunning green eyes and naturally pouty lips. She had large, but not too large, breasts, a firm ass, and gorgeous legs. Overall, the package was enough to make most men instantly fall in love with Hope Wynsome, but Andy had been with beautiful women before and none of them had ever knocked him out, so he was hesitant to follow his heart, which was telling him Hope was “the one,” a feeling reinforced when Hope licked the salted rim of her first margarita and smiled.
“So, Andy, how does a tit grabber and master of a psychotic dog become a professor at MIT?” Hope said with an ear-to-ear grin.
“Actually, being a tit-grabber and owning a psychotic dog is the sole requirement for being a physics professor at MIT,” Andy McCormack disclosed.
“A physics professor?”
“Theoretical physics.”
“Black holes?”
“Eat ‘em for breakfast.”
“Jesus Christ, I can’t tell my friends I’m seeing a friggin’ physicist.”
“If it helps any, you can tell your gal pals that I’m also a little league coach.”
After a third round and multiple assurances that their next encounter would not involve any form of human or canine assault, Hope accepted Andy’s request for a date the following Saturday.
In the days before the big date, Andy sent Hope several get well cards, in which he further apologized for his inappropriate behavior. One of them contained a five hundred dollar J Crew gift card signed: “From Twister.”
Hope never responded to Andy’s cards, so when the big Saturday night arrived Andy was a bit nervous as he approached the Sloane School dormitory where Hope lived. He was fully clothed and had a special gift in hand.
After convincing the dorm’s security guard that he really was a physics professor by doing a Lorentz Transformation, Andy entered the dorm and proceeded to Hope’s room.
Hope greeted Andy with a huge smile and said, “Welcome, Professor.”
Suddenly, it was Andy’s turn to be smitten. Floored by Hope’s beauty, Andy struggled for words before saying, “You look beautiful, Hope.”
Hope smiled. “Think so, Professor?”
“Oh yeah,” Andy said before handing Hope a gift bag. “I got a little something for you.”
Inside the bag was a new Apple MacBook.
“The scuba diving club retrieved your laptop from the Charles then the crew at the Media Lab recovered the data. Those kids love a challenge.”
Hope was moved. “Well thank you, Andy.”
“You’re entirely welcome.”
“So, Professor, are you suggesting I pretend we just met and forget about the horny guy who used a Frisbee and his crazy dog to check me out?”
“Is that what I was doing?”
“‘Throw the Frisbee near the pretty girl’ is the oldest trick in the book,” Hope said.
“Do all women know about it?”
“Of course we do. We know all your tricks.”
“Damn, us guys don’t have a prayer.”
Hope smiled. “You do what we let you do.”
“Will you let me buy you dinner?”
“Of course. You’re the professor, I’m just a lowly grad student.”
“I hope you’re not implying there’s anything inappropriate about our student-teacher relationship?”
“Not yet,” Hope replied.
Hope and Andy would forever own the evening that followed. It started with dinner at Legal Seafood in the Copley Plaza. It was not the most romantic place in the world, but the food was outstanding. Andy, being a douche bag, had a steak. Hope had grilled tuna with wasabi and fresh vegetables. After dinner, the couple had drinks at the Top of the Hub, a bar on the fifty-second floor of the Prudential Building that offered a stunning view of Boston and its surrounding communities.
After a dinner dominated by conversation that could be best described as a background check by Hope, the talk at the Top of the Hub got animated when Hope and Andy began to reveal their real life stories. For starters, Hope told Andy she grew up in a middle class family in Waltham, Massachusetts. She said she had a gay brother and then disclosed she once did not talk to her mother for an entire year.
“A whole year – harsh,” Andy said. “What did she do?”
Hope laughed. “She videotaped me making out with my high school boyfriend.”
“Kinky,” Andy said.
“She used a Teddy Cam,” Hope said with an exaggerated look of disgust.
Hope then revealed her dad once made one hundred and fifty grand a year, but he had not worked for two years, so he was depressed.
“Tough,” Andy said.
Hope sighed then dabbed her eye with a napkin. “Very.”
Andy didn’t want to scare Hope away so he was vague about his family. He neglected to mention his father was an MBTA bus driver who once went to work after drinking a twelve pack of Bud tallboys. He also did not disclose his mother recently did a thirty-day stay in county jail for instructing two of his older brothers to “beat the living shit” out of their next door neighbor, Mr. Daniel O’Malley, an octogenarian with Parkinson’s disease, who mistakenly parked his Buick Century in “Ma’s spot.”
“I’m an Irish Catholic from South Boston, the eleventh of eleven children,” is all Andy said.
“Eleven kids?” Hope howled.
Andy laughed. “My dad once called me his seventh accident.”
