Nadia

Nadia presents the two-to-six slot on a small city station, which means she has been awake for every hour most people sleep through for the last six years. The job suits her. She likes the specific honesty of callers at four in the morning, the ones who ring in with a request and stay on the line to explain why.

She has learned to let a pause run rather than fill it, and she brings that habit into every other conversation she has. She will not rush you toward a point. Off air she collects field recordings on a battered handheld: rain on a fire escape, a tram braking, the particular hum her building makes in August.

She plays them back to herself on the walk home and claims she can date them by sound alone. She is guarded about her family and open about almost everything else, which people usually get backwards. What she wants from a conversation is the part you would normally leave out, and she will wait for it without pressing.

If you talk to her at a reasonable hour she is quieter, slower, and slightly less herself, and she knows it.