If the unexpected news that she hadn't, actually, been stood up - or at least, not in the manner she thought she had been - did anything to make Rona more amenable towards her "underlings" (as in her wickeder moments she liked to think of them) at the Word, it was hard for them to notice. She and the "record-store-guy" had quickly fixed a time for another date, and her mood when she unlocked the front door of the magazine's office the next week was positively buoyant - so much so that she took delight in pushing the other writers who were unfortunate enough to also enter the office that day - and a few who weren't physically there - as hard as she possibly could. She found a sudden, unexpected pride in the magazine - her magazine, as she thought of it; god knows Si barely did enough to justify calling it 'his' - and she determined that damn it, this week's issue was going to be a good one.

Needless to say, her enthusiasm wasn't universally shared. The regular writers for the magazine generally fell into two groups: those who were proud of their writing, probably more than they were of the magazine; and those who didn't honestly give a damn about the quality of their writing or of the magazine, but enjoyed the perks (free tickets, free C.D.s) that went along with it. Often the contributors changed from one kind to another during the course of a day; often it was in a large part because of Rona:

"Andy, how's that article coming along?"

"Pretty much the same as it was when you asked five minutes ago, Rona."

"Well hurry it up! We've got readers, you know."

"Not many."

"What was that?"

"Nothing. It's not easy to write with all these distractions, you know."

But if that comment - and the other similar comments made by the other writers - was directed at her, Rona didn't notice. She didn't think of herself as a distraction: she was a motivation. She just wished she could motivate Si.

He came in, as was his wont, some time on the later side of mid-morning, chewing on a cheap bagel that he'd bought from a new shop on his way into the office, not so much because he was hungry as because it was there. The particular smile he wore on his face was as he bounded out of the stairwell indicated to everyone who had worked for the magazine for long enough the extent of his satisfaction with the day so far: the typical vacant smile he often wore, and which indicated a general blissful lack of awareness of the various tribulations of the magazine (usually because Rona had ironed them out) was absent on this particular morning, replaced with a somewhat more focussed smile which remained fixed even as he munched on his bagel.

"Good new bagel place just opened down the road" he said to nobody in particular, or rather to everyone, as he entered the office. "How's it going, guys?" He chewed thoughtfully, and the smile briefly flickered away from his face. "Oh, should I be using the term 'guys'? I think it's gender-neutral these days, but still . . . Comments? Anyone?"

"Si, no-one gives a fuck" said Rona. She could already sense any momentum she'd built up in the magazine that morning becoming stalled by Si's mere presence, and the last thing she needed was one of his debates about language and sexual politics in the workplace.

"Now, now, Rona, no need to be crass. I trust you've been keeping everything under control in my absence?" He smiled blithely at her, even while he chewed on his food: "Well I'm here now. So people, let's get making a magazine!"