The Fictional Rock and Roll Where Are They Now

Ruby Tuesday

By all accounts, Ruby Tuesday vanished long before anyone realized she was gone. She slipped away as people do in cities like New York, L.A., or wherever her life was strewn across endless miles of pavement and fading neon signs. Who could claim to know her, really? She was always a mystery, a patchwork of fleeting moments—an untouchable presence wrapped in the sheer electric glow of youth, woven through the fringes of every room she entered.

I first met Ruby years ago, when we were both young enough to believe in the promise of tomorrow. She was a restless, feverish thing—never tied down, never caught, always halfway out the door before the conversation ended. She’d grin at you like she held all the cards, a sly grin, the kind that made you feel like a secret had passed between the two of you. But there was no secret, not really. That’s the trick Ruby always played—on you, on the world, on herself.

Time passed, as it always does. We lost touch, though not completely. You’d hear whispers. Ruby in London, Ruby in Paris. She was always on the cusp of something, and yet never quite there. There were stories, of course — there always are with women like her. Some said she married a businessman in Sydney. Others claimed she’d become a recluse in the Pacific Northwest, living in a dilapidated cabin surrounded by fir trees, the echoes of some long-dead rock star’s ballad trailing through the wind. But then again, perhaps she was still wandering — wasn’t that her way? To move without looking back, unburdened by the wreckage she left behind?

And the men? There were always men, helpless to resist her charm, or what they imagined was charm. They wanted to claim her, pin her down like a butterfly in a glass case. But Ruby wasn’t a butterfly. She was a wild thing, feral, quicksilver, burning too brightly to be held for long. Maybe it was her youth that drove them mad — her wide, luminous eyes, the scent of salt air and cigarette smoke that clung to her skin, the softness of her lips when she murmured something just out of earshot. They never understood that Ruby could never be caught. She slipped through their fingers as easily as sand.

But what of her now? What of Ruby Tuesday, that ephemeral woman from another time, another song? She is older, certainly. But not Ruby. Ruby cannot age like the rest of us. She is a ghost, fixed forever in some shadowed corner of memory, a woman who disappeared when no one was looking.

I’d like to believe she’s somewhere quiet now, far from the noise of the life she once led. Maybe she’s by the sea, in a small cottage where the walls are worn but the air smells of salt and pine. She might have a cat or two, and a garden where she grows wildflowers. And yet, even then, even in that imagined serenity, Ruby would remain untamed. She wouldn’t be tamed. Not even by the passage of years.

In truth, though, we’ll never know. Ruby Tuesday was never meant for this world. She was meant to be fleeting, like the song that bears her name — a few minutes of beauty, of melancholy, of something almost unattainable. And then gone.

Perhaps that is how she would want it. To be remembered not as she was, but as the idea of her. The girl who couldn’t be kept. The one who never stayed.

And now, like everything else, she is gone. But can you ever really lose something that was never yours to begin with?