Rhapsodies

Brian Fitzpatrick and his older brother Liam have rarely gotten along very well.  There are several reasons for this, including their six-year age difference and very different temperaments.  As the oldest of the five Fitzpatrick siblings Liam had always been expected to be ‘the responsible one’ and because of this he has always been pretty straight-arrow and serious.  (Other words and phrases have been used by the rest of the Fitzpatrick siblings, although never in Liam’s presence.)

Brian, on the other hand, is quite the opposite.  The nonchalant ease with which he mastered his fields made him seem like a hyperactive slacker to anyone not paying very close attention, and when Brian entered the corporate world his frequent job changes seemed to prove all of Liam’s doubts about him.  When Brian settled into a role as a “consultant” it seemed to the practically-minded Liam that his younger brother had given up and was, despite fleeting evidence to the contrary, coasting through life underemployed.  Liam takes pride in having earned his relatively prestigious post in the upper echelons of middle management; Brian’s ‘dawdling and dabbling’ constantly scratched the blackboard in the inner sanctum of his mind.

This feeling was mostly mutual.  Brian was frequently annoyed by his brother’s sober and serious nature and regarded Liam’s gradual success and comfortable position as the result of a lack of ambition.  Brian may also be just a little jealous of Liam’s happy family life, and clearly takes great pleasure in the company of his nieces and nephew.  However Brian’s relaxed and heterodox approach to interacting with children pushes all of Liam’s ‘conventionality buttons’ and he sees Brian as a ‘corrupting influence’ on his children.

Their animosity seemed to change after the two were forced to spend a night drinking together.  After helping get a very drunk Liam home Brian ended up reflecting on his brother and their relationship.  Brian decided that he had been a jerk to Liam over the years, and actually felt guilty about it.  Having come to this realization of his misconduct he decided to do something about it.

Weeks later, after Richard Okubo showed up at Fitzpatrick Consulting and told Rowan that he “took care of that thing” for Brian, rumors began rushing around that the company Liam had been working at for most of his career was going to be sold.  Concern for his position in upper-middle-management has had Liam on edge for some time.