Every Night at 2 a.m., the Same Caller Asked My Radio Station to Play the Same Song for “Rosa.” He Never Gave His Name. After 300 Nights, I Found Out Who Rosa Was

The phone lit up at 2:00 a.m., the same as every night.

“KMRF, you’re on the air.”

“Good evening, son.” Old man. Spanish accent. A voice like gravel in a coffee can. “Would you play the song for Rosa tonight?”

“Already cued up, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Click.

The song was “Volver, Volver,” a 1974 recording by Vicente Fernández. A ranchera about a man begging the woman he lost to come back to him.

I’d played it three hundred nights in a row.

I’m Santiago Reyes. Everybody calls me Santi. I’m 46, divorced, and I host the overnight show, midnight to 6 a.m., on KMRF, a five-thousand-watt radio station in Marfa, Texas, in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert.

My audience is truckers, ranch hands with insomnia and a few artists who are awake because they’re artists.

And him.

He never gave his name. He never talked for more than ten seconds. The calls came from a number with a 432 area code, which covers half of West Texas.

He’d started calling the week I started the show. Three hundred nights.

I used to joke on the air that Rosa must be the luckiest woman in Texas.

Then one Tuesday in November, at 2:00 a.m., the phone didn’t light up.

2:05. Nothing.

2:15. Nothing.

At 2:30, I played the song anyway.

At 3:00, I looked up the number in the station’s caller log and called it.

It rang eleven times.

Then a woman answered. Out of breath. Scared.

“Who is this? How did you get this number?”

“This is Santi from KMRF,” I said. “Is the man who calls for Rosa all right?”

There was a long silence.

“My name is Rosa,” she said.