Ruby_Glint

Name: Ruby Mackie

Age: 23

Gender: Female

Type: Dreamer

Appearance:

Small and lithe. At 5’3” and 102 pounds, a strong breeze could blow her away. She certainly isn’t built for fighting. She is stronger than she looks, but not by that much. Her hair is long and brown, her eyes a pale hazel green.

Personality:

Ruby is compassionate and tough. She is kind and sees the best she can in everyone. She comes across as naive, but she isn’t. Her eyes are much wider open than most people perceive them to be. She’s an advocate for the homeless, and will tend the hurts of those she can.

Sexuality:

Hetero

City History:

Ruby was the second daughter in the family of a hit man. Bobby (Mack) Mackie and Rose Bartlett married when Rose found herself expecting. Bobby was a lot of things, but he always took care of his responsibilities. They all knew he worked in the family business, but no details. Her father kept the girls sheltered but mama took to drinking, then opium. It was her escape from the occasional threats, the suspicion that her husband killed for a living, and the lack of love in the marriage. They both loved their girls, but not one another. Ruby and her older sister, Pearl, watched their mother become more and more lost in the bottle, or the drugs, slipping away. Finally, their father had enough and tossed mother out on the streets, not even his girl’s tears and pleading spared her. She was a danger to the kids and Bobby wouldn’t stand for that. He hired a nanny. A wrinkled old woman named Gertie.

Ruby would see her mother a few years later. She was homeless, drunk and barely recognizable as Rose Mackie. She didn’t recognize Ruby and maybe didn’t even see her. But Ruby slipped the money she’d had to go get some pop to her mother. She found out later that her mother had OD’d that night. She partly blamed herself for giving her some money that likely went into getting the drugs.

Pearl was killed in a ‘mugging’ when she was twenty three. Dad went after the ‘muggers’ and never came back. At twenty, Ruby was left alone. But Bobby Mackie was nobody’s fool. He’d been saving some of his money to set his girls up in good marriages. It was all Ruby’s now. Ruby didn’t want it. She wanted to help people like her mother.

When she started looking around for a place to make a soup kitchen word got out. She was offered a three floor old community center building just outside the docks for a dirt cheap rent. She wasn’t dumb. She knew nothing that looked too good to be true was. She learned she was never to go to the top floor and never to ask questions. She grew up Bobby Mackie’s daughter, she knew how to remain blissfully ignorant. In fact, she could actually convince herself nothing was going on. Especially if, in the end, the Rose and Pearl Soup kitchen was able to offer a single meal a day till the food ran out.

She had plenty of volunteer staff. She set up a room with 20 cots and 20 footlockers behind the dining area. The number of staff changes, but their children were welcome as well, they got a roof over their heads, a men and women’s shower with those little hotel soaps and a nice pillow and blanket for their cot. Not a bad payback for helping cook and clean and run errands.

Ruby lives above the kitchen. It isn’t fancy, three rooms, which is more than the volunteers have, but it’s hers. All from money daddy put away. Blood money. That and for never asking what went on upstairs. Not a bad deal. Of course she struggles to meet the bills, scrapes like everyone else, but she’s one of the lucky ones. So second and third hand is just fine for her.

The Catholic Church also makes donations, food, sometimes other supplies. They send a priest or nun down from time to time to give the word to the homeless masses. Most sit through the sermon for a filling, hot meal.

The endless stream of the destitute could drag most people down and Ruby has her moments of feeling the futility, but she at least knows she’s doing SOMETHING, trying to help while honoring the memory of her family.

Special Skills and Abilities:

Ruby can cook , and I mean cook. She can make something good out of hardly anything at all. She’s also a giver. She’s always willing to do what she can. But she’s usually sharp enough not to be taken advantage of.

Weaknesses:

Migrains. Usually a day before ‘that time’ every month. Vast changes in temperature can also bring them on. She has medicine, but it only half helps, and tends to put her to sleep as much as anything.

Lack of self confidence: Ruby has low personal self esteem. She gives all to the soup kitchen, can be confident when fighting for it or its future because she believes in it. But for herself? She’s a skinny, plain thing no one would really look twice at unless they were desperate. She apologizes often in her personal life, like everything is her fault. To her, it usually is. She sees herself as the ugly sister, the one without the brains or the ability to do anything other than what she’s doing. She feels she can’t do much right outside of the kitchen. She feels she’s given in by accepting the arrangement she has to keep her little haven running. She’s still under the mob’s thumb, so she can’t be as good as she wanted to be. That makes her kind of worthless, doesn’t it?

Organization freak: A form of OCD. There is a place for everything and everything should be in its place. After service she HAS to go through and make sure all labels are facing forward and cans and spices are in alphabetical order so they can be found quickly. Her apartment is neat and organized. Her books are alphabetical, her clothes are organized by color, and God-forbid dishes are in the sink, they need to be tucked away where they belong. It’s her little oasis of order in all the chaos.

Guns: Considering how her father and sister likely died Ruby has a thing about guns. Not just any ‘thing’. If she sees one she can’t take her eyes off of it, she starts to shake and seems to only be able to focus on the firearm. She stutters unbelievably before it builds into a full blown panic attack. Once in panic attack mode she takes a few minutes to calm down after the gun is once more out of sight. Much longer if it was actually used in a threatening manner. Even holstered guns, so long as she can see them, start her off. Oddly, if she KNOWS someone is carrying, but cannot actually see the gun she is able to convince herself all is fine. It’s the sight of one that sends her off.

Strengths:

Balance and grace. Ruby rarely ever stumbles and she can dance like an angel. She can slip around people without touching in a crowd and there is just a kind of fluidity to her movement.

Focus: If she were unable to focus on goals or deal with crises she’d never have managed what she has. She is the voice of reason, the calm in the storm. Damn straight she’ll freak out when all is said and done, but when it matters, she’s the rock.

Dependable: If Ruby gives her word she’ll do all in her power to follow through. She doesn’t make impossible or improbable promises for this reason. She is the one the ‘staff’ can count on. She’ll stand up for friends, or hide those in trouble. She might get walked on from time to time, but she usually can tell when things are turning into being USED.

Family or Connections:

Parents and sister all deceased. Her father had a lot of DiGiovanni low level contacts and some of the low to mid level mob might know who she is. Whomever is running whatever they are running out of the third floor of the Rose and Pearl certainly does. But she knows nothing, she can’t be used to threaten anyone and she plays nice without a fuss. SHE wants nothing to do with them, so she has no contacts there. Hers are all on the street. The homeless and the destitute, they’re her contacts.

Residence:

A small sparten, but neat apartment over the Rose and Pearl Soup kitchen. Five blocks north of the docks.

Career:

Is it a cook, philanthropist or a charity worker? Maybe all of them combined. Nah, a philanthropist needs a lot more money, she’s just scraping together enough to run the place free and clear.

PB: Darla Baker