Rolling her eyes, she muttered, “What, is the beer getting warm?” She stuffed her phone in her bag, gathered her notes, and with one last look at the dagger on the table, made her way out.
“Dr. Brawn,” Haley said, leaning her elbows on the front desk and smiling broadly at one of the Fogg Art Museum's conservators.
“Dr. Fitzpatrick.” Sarah Brawn smiled right back. They both knew they were still years from the coveted PhD, but they'd met in a first -year graduate seminar and, sharing a love of pizza and peculiar artifacts, had been friends ever since.
“I think I've got it. An idea for my dissertation,” Haley clarified, seeing her friend's confusion. “Thanks again, by the way, for pulling that dagger for me. It helped get the juices flowing. Those combo weapons blow me away.”
“Ooh, sock it to me. I assume you've got the title?” They enjoyed whiling away the hours contemplating grand titles for their as-yet completed dissertations, that being so much more fun than the actual writing.
She nodded enthusiastically. “Might to Power: British Firearms and the Forging of an Empire.” Haley's tone was appropriately grand. “You know, how it was only with the rise of gunpowder that they were able to build an empire? That way I've got my focus on the seventeenth century, but I can also study all those cool old flintlock weapons.”
“Hasn't that gunpowder thing already been done to death?”
“Hey,” she said, feigning chagrin. “I'm still working on… it.”
“I mean… nicer,” Sarah was thoughtful for a moment. “But forging really sounds more like a sword thing ”-
Haley put up her hand to change the subject. “Meet up with us later?”
“Clan gathering?”
She nodded, pulling a long and well -worn scarf from her bag to wind around her neck.
“So that means it must be Sunday.”
“Pigskin and pints at Paddy's.” Haley smiled. “The countdown to the afternoon game's begun.”
“You Fitzpatricks, you're like clockwork.”
“Where football and my brothers are concerned? Yes.” She scowled at the door as someone let themselves out and a blast of autumn air in.
“Don't you mean football, your brothers, and sports bars?”
“Yeah, yeah, and you're so above it all, right?” Haley readjusted her heavy canvas messenger bag, slinging it over her head and across her shoulder. “Come on, come out with me. I'll buy you a slice… ” She elongated the word slice into as enticing a one as possible.
“Some other time, yes. Tonight? No. We've been over this. I am not interested in getting set up with one of the Fitzpatrick boys.”
“Hey, we're good people!” Haley said, laughing. “And the Pats are playing.”
Grinning, her friend merely waved her ringers in goodbye, nose already tucked back in her book.
* * *
“Doc!” a chorus of voices shouted as Haley entered. Though far from being a fully realized professor, Haley's family had taken to calling her Doc the moment she began grad school. She looked around at all the welcoming faces, letting her eyes adjust. The place smelled of beer and fried things, and it brought a smile to her face. She may be in the ivory tower now, but she was South Boston through and through.
Three tall Fitzpatrick men were at her side in an instant, and two more waved at her from the table, beckoning with frosty plastic pitchers sloshing with whatever the beer of choice was that day. Sam Adams, if she knew her brothers.
The Fitzpatrick bunch took over Paddy's every week for the Sunday games, and was a fixture many other nights besides. Though the clan had grown to include some friends, a few cousins, one wife, two girlfriends, and the invariable men they tried to set their only-and baby- sister up with, the family resemblance among the siblings was unmistakable. The dark, wiry “black Irish” hair and pale skin with a perpetually rosy flush to the cheeks.
Daniel Jr., aka Danny Boy, clamped Haley into a hug, and the smell of fish filled her senses. She looked up and smiled into the eyes of her oldest brother. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail for his gig as a short-order cook in a seafood joint. Danny was tall and had a cleft chin. Haley couldn't understand how the most charming of them could be so completely single.
Colin and Conor, the twins, vied for a spot by their sister. They'd been the biggest troublemakers of all the six kids -holy terrors, her mother used to sigh - and now they were the most stable of the lot. One was married, the other might as well be, and they'd left their dates seated to come and scruff Haley's hair, take her bag, and unwind the scarf from her neck.
“C'mon, beautiful.” Danny pushed his way back between their brothers to undo the top of the sweater still buttoned tight around her neck. “Loosen up a bit.”
“A beer will help!” Gerry shouted from the table, raising his glass in a toast and flashing a wide, gap-toothed grin. His free hand fumbled with the crumpled pack of cigarettes he wasn't allowed to smoke inside.
“Yeah. Doc!” Jimmy shouted. He beamed at her from his seat, his arm wrapped tight around his girlfriend Maggie. Haley had to laugh at the sight of him - the tips of his ears already red with drink. They protruded almost comically from his head, accentuated by his buzz-cut hair, regulation cop just like Dad's. “Get in out of the cold.”