HiddenTrack.fm

A South London sound system selector who ran the second Saturday dance for thirty years is losing his hearing from the top down and stops going, so his wife, the sweet high voice of 1988, teaches herself to sing an octave low, pulls him to the front of the church hall with his hand on the speaker, and sings into his chest while the whole room sings the high part he can't hear.

The men in his family always stopped where the sand gets wet, so at forty one a Philadelphia dad takes six a.m. lessons from a sixteen year old lifeguard and clings to the wall all July, until he learns to float, swims out to his daughter at the shore on Labor Day, and the next June finds his own father in lane four.

After a long day in the Revelwood, a couple stays in at the base with Emily's eggs, ten Penny Bun for an omelette, and Midnight Lilies picked at one in the morning, letting the candles stretch the Rested buff while the Matron waits one more night.

On a first date at a little Thai place in Atlanta, she sets up a secret code with her friends spying three tables over in a wig and a trench coat, until her date blinks twice at the door and she realizes his band buddies are spying too, and by the check the two crews are sharing spring rolls while the couple slips out the side door.

A year sober, a man becomes the permanent Friday night driver for his old drinking crew, carries them home one by one across Houston and waits for every hall light to come on, until the night of his one year coin, when all three show up stone cold sober and put him in the back seat.

A night shift nurse and a fifth grade teacher have been married ten years and only overlap from 7:10 to 7:30 every morning at the kitchen sink, and the one year they both take their anniversary off, they fall asleep on the couch by noon and call it the best day of their lives.

His card declines on a first date at a pricey downtown rooftop, she pays and says the next one is on him, so he pulls off date two on twelve dollars with street tacos and a borrowed rooftop, then finds out the bank froze his card because he never spends that much.

After her mother's stroke, a daughter finds the kitchen flour tin lined with recipe cards in handwriting she can no longer ask about.

He borrows a black tie for a friend's funeral he cannot afford to dress for, and spends the service counting every kindness he still owes.

Two regulars keep trading coat check tags at the Saturday dance until the clerk starts saving their numbers on purpose.

Two night-shift strangers keep meeting on the last bus; the only proof is a stack of transfer stubs in a jacket pocket.

A Sunday diner cook folds paper hats for every kid at the counter; years later one of them walks back in with a child of his own.

A best man dances the whole reception in blistering rental shoes that never fit, and still asks the bride's sister for one more song.

Every time Dot lets him go, her no-good ex rolls back like the ball return, until she buys a ball with her own name on it.

A grandson quizzes his grandmother for her citizenship test with her late husband's flashcards.

A shut-down neighborhood roller rink reopens after seven years, and the wheels remember how.

Thirty-eight months of partial payments end with one red stamp.