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THE GIRLS

EPISODE 3

ANNOUNCER:

The Girls is brought to you by Macmillan Publishers.

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

Yeah, I saw her. She was blond, though.

WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:

So … I think I might actually have a bead on this girl. I don’t know what exactly it’s going to lead me to—but it’s more than I started with.

DANNY GILCHRIST [PHONE]: Don’t sound so excited.

WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:

I’m going to find Sadie and all she’s gonna want is to be left alone. You do realize that, don’t you?

[THE GIRLS THEME]

WEST McCRAY [DINER]:

You’re telling me she had a different hair color than she does in this photograph? She was blond instead of brunette?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

Yeah, and by the looks of it, she’d done it herself. And she was rail thin, a wisp of a thing, not much to her. Didn’t talk right either. That stood out more than anything else. She had a stutter.

SAUL LOCKWOOD:

Oh! Yeah … I remember her now. She ordered a … coffee. I thought she was a runaway. She pissed you off some, didn’t she, Roo?

WEST McCRAY:

So you did talk to her?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

She talked to me. She wasn’t just passing through. She was looking for someone, so she made a point to ask.

WEST McCRAY:

Who was she looking for?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

Her father.

WEST McCRAY:

What?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

She was looking for her father, so she said. She had a picture of him and everything. Knew his name, she knew he’d been a regular down here at the diner a couple years back. She wanted to get in touch with him and she wanted to know anything I could tell her.

WEST McCRAY:

What did you say?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

I told her I’d never seen the guy. But she seemed pretty desperate and I felt sorry enough for her I asked for her phone number and said I’d call her if I ever saw him.

WEST McCRAY:

Do you still have that number?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

Well, get this—she said she didn’t have a phone and that was the second weird thing about her, because every kid and their granny has a cell phone these days, right? I got one—hell, my ninety-year-old mother has one. I ended up giving her a menu and told her she could call the diner and check in with me to see if he’d been around.

WEST McCRAY:

Back up—you said that was the second weird thing about her. What was the first?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

I knew the man she was asking after and he didn’t have any kids.

WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]:

His name is Darren M. I’ll omit his last name until I track him down. I searched him online and got a lot a results but every Darren I made contact with wasn’t the one I was looking for.

WEST McCRAY [TO RUBY]: And you knew him.

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

I sure did. Actually, he told me he’d been a regular through the years. When he was passing through, I guess he made a point to stop for the apple pie—but it wasn’t until he lived in Wagner that I considered him a regular. He shacked up with some woman in town for a few months and he’d have lunch here by himself every day. Real good guy. Kept to himself. Never caused trouble.

WEST McCRAY:

Do you have the name of the woman he was with?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

It was Marlee Singer.

WEST McCRAY:

Are you still in contact with Darren?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

No. Once he ended it with Marlee, he was gone from here. I didn’t even see him every now and then. I used to have a phone number, because Ray was alive at the time, he was getting toward the end, and Darren asked me to tell him when Ray passed. Darren sent the most beautiful flowers when it happened, they were white roses and baby’s breath. I thought that was such a thoughtful thing to do. But I don’t have that number anymore.

WEST McCRAY:

Could you look for it maybe, and tell me if you find it? If I can get ahold of him, it would be really helpful.

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

I doubt I’ll find it and I’m telling you, Darren doesn’t have kids.

WEST McCRAY:

You sound so certain of that but if he only lived here briefly, it seems fair to assume there’s a lot about him that you never got around to knowing.

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

I’m certain because I asked. He sat where you’re sitting now, shooting the shit, and I asked him if he had kids and he said no. What do I care if he has kids? What’s he got to gain by lying to me? Nothing.

WEST McCRAY:

What’s Sadie got to gain by lying to you?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

[LAUGHS] Come on. You think she’s the first girl trying to put the screws to some man she calls daddy? I’ll tell you what else, she was damn rude.

WEST McCRAY:

Rude how?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

When I said I hadn’t seen Darren before, she called me a liar. Take my word—I’m telling you, she was running some kind of con. She didn’t like that I saw through her.

WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]:

When I’m done talking to Ruby, and before I search online for Darren, I try to get in touch with Marlee Singer, but she doesn’t pick up the phone. Then I call May Beth. When I tell her the news, she’s absolutely stunned.

MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: No. No, that can’t be right. Sadie didn’t know who her father was. She always told me she didn’t give a damn.

WEST McCRAY [PHONE]:

Well, his last name isn’t Hunter, if it is this guy.

MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: Darren …

I’m telling you, I never heard that name in my life. [PAUSE] But I guess that doesn’t mean anything. Claire had a lot of men in and out, before and after Irene died … God. She’s really looking for her father? That’s what she said?

WEST McCRAY [TO RUBY, IN DINER]: There a chance anyone else in the diner was in contact with Sadie?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

Anyone other than Saul and me, I got no clue. She was only here for … couldn’t have been an hour.

WEST McCRAY:

If I leave a photo of Sadie with you, you think you can put it up? Ask around?

RUBY LOCKWOOD:

Sure thing.

WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]:

A day later, I get a phone call from a man named Caddy Sinclair.