The RubyWay Chronicles Part 13: Gimme Shelter
Oct 27, 2016 18:54:22 GMT -5
Post by Ruby Tyler on Oct 27, 2016 18:54:22 GMT -5
October 22, 2016
“Miss Tyler, are you absolutely sure you want to change your will?”
“Yes, Mr. Jeffries, I am. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me on a Saturday. All right if I take a look at what we’ve got and make some corrections? Friend of mine just announced some news that’s going to affect this.”
The lawyer - a neatly dressed man in his seventies - slid the paperwork over to Ruby and she flipped through it, skimming the pages until she found what she was looking for. She pulled a pen from her jacket pocket and got to work, crossing things out and writing tiny notes between the lines of her last will and testament. Her lawyer looked on with amusement, leaning back in his chair.
“You know, you could just tell me so that I can put it into the document. It’s what you pay me for,” he said with a grin. Ruby glanced up at him and shrugged, making more notes.
“I know, but there’s very particular ways I have to word this. I want to make sure that everyone gets their fair share of the estate.” Ruby made one last notation and turned the paper around so that her lawyer could see what she had been working on.
“All right, let me see here… hm. I’ll have to draw up paperwork for the trusts that you’ve outlined here. One for the benefit of Kimberly Hardaway, the other for the children of the relationship between Jackson Fowler and Sabrina Shaw, am I reading this correctly?”
Ruby nodded. “Yes. Originally I was going to leave Jackie with the sword he gave me and a few other odds and ends, but he just told me recently that he and his fiance are expecting their first child together so I thought this would likely be more fitting. And knowing Jackie, this kid is the first of several.” She smiled at the thought. Though he was her ex, Jackie was still very dear to her and she wanted to do what she could for him and his family.
“And what happens in the event that you have children someday, Miss Tyler? You’re still quite young, so I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility just yet. You may find down the road you’ll have to completely scrap this arrangement for a new one. With estates valued at over three million dollars...”
“If I have to change it again I’ll deal with that when the time comes, but given that my doctors have been telling me for the last ten years that it’s pretty well impossible for me to have kids? It looks like Kim and the Fowler baby - god that’s such a weird phrase - are the only two children I’ll have to deal with in this will.”
The lawyer merely nodded. After all, she was paying his exorbitant fees out of pocket, and the last thing he wanted to do was drive business away. She never complained about his bill and always paid her fees immediately, unlike most of his clients. His silence helped the knot in her stomach ease, and Ruby looked him in the eye when she was ready to continue the discussion.
“The property in Tujunga, along with all its contents, is to go to Jodie Jones and her partner Dave. And I’ve set aside a small amount to go to Anastasia Bongartz and her partner, Sophie. There’s also Hannah LaCroix and Patrick Carson - I don’t know if my calculations were correct, but whatever I leave them should help put a dent in their student loan debt. Hardaway, Kim’s father, gets my personal effects as well as the Mustang. And I think that just about covers it.”
Mr. Jeffries nodded again and took the pages back from her, making his own notes in the margins.
“All right then. I’ll draft this up and email it to you for your review by next week.”
“Thanks, Mr. Jeffries. It’s been a pleasure as always. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a World Championship to try and win.”
“Is that going into your will as well?”
“Thankfully, no. Well, the cash prize I’ll get if I win will, but the belt itself belongs to the company. So you don’t have to worry about it. We’ll talk next week.”
Ruby stood up and shook the man’s hand, then turned on her heel and walked out of the building. She took her cell phone out and shot a quick text to Hardaway, letting him know that she was going to be working on a project for the rest of the day and that if he disturbed her she would stab him.
Later that day...
The cemetery in Baltimore should have been peaceful. It was a modern plot, with neatly tended grave markers and paved roads winding through the rows of headstones. Compared to some of the other graveyards she had explored over the years, it was almost paradise. She was sure that during the daylight hours, it would have been beautiful and serene. But as Ruby compared the numbers on the piece of paper in her hand to the markers next to each row of plots, her stomach twisted into knots. When she found the right row, she turned and walked down the line, searching the names for one in particular.
Ruben…
Jacobson…
LaGuardia…
Smith…
...Hardaway.
She stopped in front of it and took a moment to read the inscription on the stone. Angelina Marie Hardaway. Loving wife, loving mother, loving person. August 30, 1982 - March 3, 2010.
Angie had been twenty-seven when she’d died, just a year older than Ruby was herself. Twenty-seven years old, and she’d left behind an equally young husband and a baby daughter. Ruby and Kevin had an unspoken agreement - he didn’t ask questions about her father or about the Kanemotos, and she didn’t ask questions about Angie. But the more she became a part of his life, she couldn’t help but wonder about it. Google and two old his old rivals, Brad Kane and Joe Ragnal, were fantastic at providing her with clips and stories of his wrestling career before he’d come to San Diego, but much of his personal life was left out of those. However, from watching those matches and old interviews, she could see why Angie had been attracted to him - he was wild, brash, impetuous, and the quintessential “bad boy”. And then underneath all that, he was kind and caring - when he wanted to be, of course. Ruby hadn’t experienced much of that directly, though she’d seen it when he was with his daughter.
The ghost of Angie quite literally hovered between them at times though, and that was why Ruby was standing in front of her grave, leaning on the headstone behind her. Maybe bringing Hardaway along would have been a safer bet, since Angie was so closely tied to him, but this wasn’t a conversation that she could have with her partner present. This was a conversation that needed to happen woman-to-woman, even if only one of them was technically living. Summoning ghosts could be a tricky business, but Ruby’s time with the order had given her a few solutions for when the dead were the only ones who could be interrogated about an event. With gloved hands, she took a stick and drew a series of runes in the dirt, heedless of the damage it was doing to the grass. With her other hand, she withdrew a small waxed paper packet from the pocket of her jeans and shook the contents over the strange symbols she’d drawn in the grass. The powder was a mix of mallow root, rowan, poplar buds, and dandelion seeds, all dried and mixed together in order to attract spirits. There was no guarantee that Angie would come through, but it was worth a shot.
For a few moments, there was just silence echoing around her. Then, a sudden wind picked up and sent a chill down Ruby’s spine, accompanied by a whiff of sulfur.
“What do you want?” a voice hissed in her ear. Ruby jerked away from the sound, looking at the empty space next to her. There was a barely perceptible shadow, darker somehow than the darkness that surrounded them. It was vaguely humanoid in shape, but there were no visible details besides it being a few inches shorter than Ruby. Now that she had the thing’s attention, Ruby reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and switched on the recorder inside.
“I want to speak with Angie Hardaway,” she said calmly, her voice low.
“Why should she speak with you?” the voice asked, again uncomfortably close to Ruby’s ear. But the whisper was barely audible, so Ruby supposed she would have to deal with it if she wanted to have a real-time conversation with this thing.
“Because there are things I need to know about her. About her… husband. Ex-husband. Whatever you want to call him.”
“Kevin.”
“Yeah, him.”
“You don’t call him by his name except when you fuck?”
There wasn’t any particular tone to the spirit’s voice, so Ruby wasn’t sure if it was a genuine question or something designed to throw her off balance, but she was rattled all the same.
“Don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“You’re fucking my husband, of course it’s my business.”
“You’re dead, remember?”
“Not to him, Ruby Tuesday. I’m still on his mind every day. Does he think of you the same way?”
Ruby bit her lip, running through several uncharitable answers in her head before finally answering, “It doesn’t matter to me. I’m here to talk about you and what you want with him.”
“Isn’t it obvious, Ruby Tuesday?”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Would you prefer sug?”
Ruby’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the shadow beside her. “I’d prefer Ruby. So what’s your endgame here, Angie?”
“I want you to get away from my husband. I want you away from my daughter. I want you GONE.”
The last word was so loud Ruby was sure that if anyone else was around, it could have been heard. The shadow next to her was growing darker and more defined, drawing strength from its own anger. Ruby’s eyes went wide but she held her ground, determined not to let Casper the Bitchy Ghost get the better of her.
“I’m protecting them. And doing a better job than you are, since every time you’re around it just throws him off and makes him all weird.”
“Would you lay down your life for the two of them?”
“Yes.” Ruby spoke without hesitation, barely waiting for Angie’s spirit to finish the question. “I don’t have anyone to stick around for. He does. So when the time comes for us to decide who lives and who dies, well… I’ll fall on that grenade every time. Even if he doesn’t realize that’s what I’m doing. So do us all a favor and leave them alone. I got this.”
The spirit seemed like it was going to say more, but a rustle from behind them made them both stop. Ruby reached for her switchblade, opening it and holding it against her leg, out of the intruder’s line of sight. She stood perfectly still, listening and watching and waiting for her moment to strike. One heartbeat, two, and then the intruder was behind her. She tossed her hair over her shoulder as if fidgeting and glanced behind her for a quick second. The sight of Hardaway brought mixed feelings. On the one hand, at least he wasn’t a threat.
On the other, she hadn’t told him that she was coming here, or that she was planning to summon the ghost of his dead wife. So that was a bit of an invasion of privacy, and while she was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to try and kill her again, she didn’t know how much damage had been done to the fragile trust that had been built up between them over the last ten months. So she turned away from the spirit and toward Hardaway with a sheepish expression.
“So… how long have you been standing there?” she asked, trying to break the tension that had sprung up around the three of them.
“Long enough,” he responded, and with that Ruby scuffed her boot over the runes she’d drawn, destroying them and scattering the herbs that had drawn Angie’s ghost so that the spirit would dissipate.
Dealing with the living was bad enough, after all.
“Miss Tyler, are you absolutely sure you want to change your will?”
“Yes, Mr. Jeffries, I am. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me on a Saturday. All right if I take a look at what we’ve got and make some corrections? Friend of mine just announced some news that’s going to affect this.”
The lawyer - a neatly dressed man in his seventies - slid the paperwork over to Ruby and she flipped through it, skimming the pages until she found what she was looking for. She pulled a pen from her jacket pocket and got to work, crossing things out and writing tiny notes between the lines of her last will and testament. Her lawyer looked on with amusement, leaning back in his chair.
“You know, you could just tell me so that I can put it into the document. It’s what you pay me for,” he said with a grin. Ruby glanced up at him and shrugged, making more notes.
“I know, but there’s very particular ways I have to word this. I want to make sure that everyone gets their fair share of the estate.” Ruby made one last notation and turned the paper around so that her lawyer could see what she had been working on.
“All right, let me see here… hm. I’ll have to draw up paperwork for the trusts that you’ve outlined here. One for the benefit of Kimberly Hardaway, the other for the children of the relationship between Jackson Fowler and Sabrina Shaw, am I reading this correctly?”
Ruby nodded. “Yes. Originally I was going to leave Jackie with the sword he gave me and a few other odds and ends, but he just told me recently that he and his fiance are expecting their first child together so I thought this would likely be more fitting. And knowing Jackie, this kid is the first of several.” She smiled at the thought. Though he was her ex, Jackie was still very dear to her and she wanted to do what she could for him and his family.
“And what happens in the event that you have children someday, Miss Tyler? You’re still quite young, so I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility just yet. You may find down the road you’ll have to completely scrap this arrangement for a new one. With estates valued at over three million dollars...”
“If I have to change it again I’ll deal with that when the time comes, but given that my doctors have been telling me for the last ten years that it’s pretty well impossible for me to have kids? It looks like Kim and the Fowler baby - god that’s such a weird phrase - are the only two children I’ll have to deal with in this will.”
The lawyer merely nodded. After all, she was paying his exorbitant fees out of pocket, and the last thing he wanted to do was drive business away. She never complained about his bill and always paid her fees immediately, unlike most of his clients. His silence helped the knot in her stomach ease, and Ruby looked him in the eye when she was ready to continue the discussion.
“The property in Tujunga, along with all its contents, is to go to Jodie Jones and her partner Dave. And I’ve set aside a small amount to go to Anastasia Bongartz and her partner, Sophie. There’s also Hannah LaCroix and Patrick Carson - I don’t know if my calculations were correct, but whatever I leave them should help put a dent in their student loan debt. Hardaway, Kim’s father, gets my personal effects as well as the Mustang. And I think that just about covers it.”
Mr. Jeffries nodded again and took the pages back from her, making his own notes in the margins.
“All right then. I’ll draft this up and email it to you for your review by next week.”
“Thanks, Mr. Jeffries. It’s been a pleasure as always. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a World Championship to try and win.”
“Is that going into your will as well?”
“Thankfully, no. Well, the cash prize I’ll get if I win will, but the belt itself belongs to the company. So you don’t have to worry about it. We’ll talk next week.”
Ruby stood up and shook the man’s hand, then turned on her heel and walked out of the building. She took her cell phone out and shot a quick text to Hardaway, letting him know that she was going to be working on a project for the rest of the day and that if he disturbed her she would stab him.
Later that day...
The cemetery in Baltimore should have been peaceful. It was a modern plot, with neatly tended grave markers and paved roads winding through the rows of headstones. Compared to some of the other graveyards she had explored over the years, it was almost paradise. She was sure that during the daylight hours, it would have been beautiful and serene. But as Ruby compared the numbers on the piece of paper in her hand to the markers next to each row of plots, her stomach twisted into knots. When she found the right row, she turned and walked down the line, searching the names for one in particular.
Ruben…
Jacobson…
LaGuardia…
Smith…
...Hardaway.
She stopped in front of it and took a moment to read the inscription on the stone. Angelina Marie Hardaway. Loving wife, loving mother, loving person. August 30, 1982 - March 3, 2010.
Angie had been twenty-seven when she’d died, just a year older than Ruby was herself. Twenty-seven years old, and she’d left behind an equally young husband and a baby daughter. Ruby and Kevin had an unspoken agreement - he didn’t ask questions about her father or about the Kanemotos, and she didn’t ask questions about Angie. But the more she became a part of his life, she couldn’t help but wonder about it. Google and two old his old rivals, Brad Kane and Joe Ragnal, were fantastic at providing her with clips and stories of his wrestling career before he’d come to San Diego, but much of his personal life was left out of those. However, from watching those matches and old interviews, she could see why Angie had been attracted to him - he was wild, brash, impetuous, and the quintessential “bad boy”. And then underneath all that, he was kind and caring - when he wanted to be, of course. Ruby hadn’t experienced much of that directly, though she’d seen it when he was with his daughter.
The ghost of Angie quite literally hovered between them at times though, and that was why Ruby was standing in front of her grave, leaning on the headstone behind her. Maybe bringing Hardaway along would have been a safer bet, since Angie was so closely tied to him, but this wasn’t a conversation that she could have with her partner present. This was a conversation that needed to happen woman-to-woman, even if only one of them was technically living. Summoning ghosts could be a tricky business, but Ruby’s time with the order had given her a few solutions for when the dead were the only ones who could be interrogated about an event. With gloved hands, she took a stick and drew a series of runes in the dirt, heedless of the damage it was doing to the grass. With her other hand, she withdrew a small waxed paper packet from the pocket of her jeans and shook the contents over the strange symbols she’d drawn in the grass. The powder was a mix of mallow root, rowan, poplar buds, and dandelion seeds, all dried and mixed together in order to attract spirits. There was no guarantee that Angie would come through, but it was worth a shot.
For a few moments, there was just silence echoing around her. Then, a sudden wind picked up and sent a chill down Ruby’s spine, accompanied by a whiff of sulfur.
“What do you want?” a voice hissed in her ear. Ruby jerked away from the sound, looking at the empty space next to her. There was a barely perceptible shadow, darker somehow than the darkness that surrounded them. It was vaguely humanoid in shape, but there were no visible details besides it being a few inches shorter than Ruby. Now that she had the thing’s attention, Ruby reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and switched on the recorder inside.
“I want to speak with Angie Hardaway,” she said calmly, her voice low.
“Why should she speak with you?” the voice asked, again uncomfortably close to Ruby’s ear. But the whisper was barely audible, so Ruby supposed she would have to deal with it if she wanted to have a real-time conversation with this thing.
“Because there are things I need to know about her. About her… husband. Ex-husband. Whatever you want to call him.”
“Kevin.”
“Yeah, him.”
“You don’t call him by his name except when you fuck?”
There wasn’t any particular tone to the spirit’s voice, so Ruby wasn’t sure if it was a genuine question or something designed to throw her off balance, but she was rattled all the same.
“Don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“You’re fucking my husband, of course it’s my business.”
“You’re dead, remember?”
“Not to him, Ruby Tuesday. I’m still on his mind every day. Does he think of you the same way?”
Ruby bit her lip, running through several uncharitable answers in her head before finally answering, “It doesn’t matter to me. I’m here to talk about you and what you want with him.”
“Isn’t it obvious, Ruby Tuesday?”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Would you prefer sug?”
Ruby’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the shadow beside her. “I’d prefer Ruby. So what’s your endgame here, Angie?”
“I want you to get away from my husband. I want you away from my daughter. I want you GONE.”
The last word was so loud Ruby was sure that if anyone else was around, it could have been heard. The shadow next to her was growing darker and more defined, drawing strength from its own anger. Ruby’s eyes went wide but she held her ground, determined not to let Casper the Bitchy Ghost get the better of her.
“I’m protecting them. And doing a better job than you are, since every time you’re around it just throws him off and makes him all weird.”
“Would you lay down your life for the two of them?”
“Yes.” Ruby spoke without hesitation, barely waiting for Angie’s spirit to finish the question. “I don’t have anyone to stick around for. He does. So when the time comes for us to decide who lives and who dies, well… I’ll fall on that grenade every time. Even if he doesn’t realize that’s what I’m doing. So do us all a favor and leave them alone. I got this.”
The spirit seemed like it was going to say more, but a rustle from behind them made them both stop. Ruby reached for her switchblade, opening it and holding it against her leg, out of the intruder’s line of sight. She stood perfectly still, listening and watching and waiting for her moment to strike. One heartbeat, two, and then the intruder was behind her. She tossed her hair over her shoulder as if fidgeting and glanced behind her for a quick second. The sight of Hardaway brought mixed feelings. On the one hand, at least he wasn’t a threat.
On the other, she hadn’t told him that she was coming here, or that she was planning to summon the ghost of his dead wife. So that was a bit of an invasion of privacy, and while she was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to try and kill her again, she didn’t know how much damage had been done to the fragile trust that had been built up between them over the last ten months. So she turned away from the spirit and toward Hardaway with a sheepish expression.
“So… how long have you been standing there?” she asked, trying to break the tension that had sprung up around the three of them.
“Long enough,” he responded, and with that Ruby scuffed her boot over the runes she’d drawn, destroying them and scattering the herbs that had drawn Angie’s ghost so that the spirit would dissipate.
Dealing with the living was bad enough, after all.
So Zero took his ball and went home, leaving us without a World Champion. It hasn’t stopped the Twitter rants, unfortunately, but what it has done is opened up the playing field - marginally, at least. You’ve still got Cannon and Carmine, Annie and Dan and Cordy all in the running for this, the shot at becoming the next FGA World Champion. And personally, I hope they all die in a fucking fire. Maybe then something will finally happen in this company without having to involve any of them. I understand that they make money and that they’re talented, but you have people working for this company that are trying to do things like pay off student loans. Graduate school doesn’t come cheap, as it turns out. And I used to do this because it was something that I loved and was passionate about, and it beat the hell out of working at Starbucks.
The longer I stay doing this, the more I realize that this isn’t just about my love for the industry. Since I arrived in FGA I’ve had to scratch and claw my way to relevancy, only to be told time and again that I wasn’t good enough to be playing with the big dogs. What I’d done in the past didn’t matter. I was in a new place, with new competition. I should have been happy just to have a contract, apparently.
But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more and so did my tag team partner, so we went after it. And we were made laughingstocks for insisting that we had a right to challenge the status quo - both the team and the general state of things. So I figured if people are just going to laugh at our attempts to fight the good fight and give the audience some hope, then… hey. If you can’t beat them, join them.
So that’s the person you see now. Ruby Tyler, free from the constraints of trying to save a world that doesn’t give a shit about anyone in it. I’m done. And now with this opportunity in front of me, it’s time to bust through the competition and move on to the next round.
That being said, the competition I’m facing in this round is anything but easy. Chris Madison has been here in FGA before, and since his return he’s kind of gotten softballed. I know he’s eager to be more successful this time around than he was during his last stint in FGA, but Chris, it’s time for you to face some facts. You’re old, beat up, and worn out. Sure, you’ll make a good showing, and God knows you’ve got the experience under your belt, but you’ll be left looking for other chances to cement your legacy here once Molly and I are through with you. I may or may not also have a side bet on this match regarding whether or not you’ll turn on your tag team partner to get her back for all the damage she did to you once upon a time. Little Miss Annie has certainly… well I can’t really say she’s grown up, but she’s changed since you left. Or maybe this is the real Annie and she’s been deceiving us all along.
Oh yes, my dear little Annie, the patron saint of basic white girls everywhere. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a nice pumpkin spice latte after beating the shit out of people too, but there’s something insidious about you. You remind me a bit of Regina George, actually. You have your little group of friends, your inside jokes, and you expect that because you’re just so damn popular with your music and your movies and your Playboy shoots that everyone wants to know the secret of being Annie Zellor-Dupree, Wrestling’s Little Sweetheart. But underneath that candy-coated exterior, there’s a stone cold spoiled bitch who’ll do just about anything to get what she wants. You want to think that everyone out there loves you but trust me, little girl, most people are getting sick of your antics. The harder you try, the more you come across as fake and staged. Sure, the wrestling talent is real, I’ll give you that, but everything else? It’s just branding. Annie Zellor, leader of the Anniemaniacs, adorable pop princess, is nothing but manufactured bullshit designed to sell things. In becoming so committed to your branding, I think you’ve lost sight of who you really are… and it’s getting really goddamn ugly, Annie.
Personally though? I think it’s past time for a change and if you can drop the bratty, entitled diva attitude, you might go from high school mean girl to someone I can actually tolerate being around. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Cause what’s happened here in FGA is that everyone’s trying to make me fit a mold. Even my tag partner, Molly Reid. Now, it’s no secret she and I don’t really like each other. It’s not really personal on my part - I’ve just never seen any depth in Molly. Could be that’s my own fault, for not getting to know her better when I first arrived, but when I got here I still had the stink of Exodus Pro on me and it felt like I was an outsider. Which is fine. This is a business first and foremost. We’re not here to make friends, we’re here to work. But friendships do form, and I’m sick of being told that my work in another company, that the friends I did make over there, are meaningless here.
Molly has her way of doing things, which is fine. She’s a good wrestler, a champion, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to get her across the ring from me. I know she’s looking forward to the same, which is why she and I will be defeating Annie Zellor and Chris Madison to go on to the next round. And when that happens, you’ll be seeing a different Ruby Tyler in the ring. Because I don’t care what lengths I have to go to in order to get what I want out of this tournament. For the last six months, I’ve been held back by my own insecurities and feelings of being on the outside looking in.
No longer.
I refuse to let others in this company dictate to me how I should go about making myself relevant. I am done listening to the opinions of others, especially those who arrived in this company already part of something. Whether their reputations preceded them, or whether they had friends already here to make the transition easier, my journey in FGA has been filled with people telling me that I’m wrong, that I’m not talented, that I complain too much and that I cling too closely to a company that was run by a narcissistic, grudge-bearing shitdick.
Fuck all of you.
I will not be ashamed of my past. Before coming to FGA, I went undefeated in singles competition for over a year, until that streak was broken by none other than the Patron Saint of Starbucks herself.
Rag on my relationship with my tag partner all you want. Hardaway and I know what we are, and we’re far more secure in that than we were when we began working as a tag team. We’ve had our stumbling blocks, but he’s shown time and time again that in this company, he is the only person that I can trust. He is the only one who understands where I’ve been and where I want to go.
And if he and Cannon win their bracket, and he beats dear old Johnny, well then… things are gonna get real interesting, especially after Molly and I win and if I go on to beat Molly.
But first things first.
Beat #SparkleHand. Beat Molly Reid.
And show everyone in Frontier Grappling Arts that I am done with being their whipping girl.
Chris Madison.
Annie Zellor.
Molly Reid.
The three of you have been judged.
You have been weighed.
You have been measured.
You have been found wanting.
And on Saturday night at Vertigo?
All three of you will fall to the Huntress and her Dead Aim.