Rona had some idea of the demise of the Word on the Street. Although she hadn't heard anything for sure, she'd asked Matt once or twice whether they still carried it in his record shop, and the vagueness of his response: "Uhh . . . No, no we don't any more" told her quite a lot. Plus, it didn't take a lot of imagination to see Si running the magazine into the ground. Hell, it'd been close enough even when she'd been there to reign in some of his less carefully considered excesses.

Thinking back, the magazine had been doomed from the beginning: Rona recalled having a strangely unsettled feeling about it, even when she first went in to work there. She was just out of uni then, and looking for something to fill in all the time she suddenly had. She hadn't been able to find any work, or none that appealed to her anyway, and she had an idea that maybe she could make a go of writing, and that Melbourne being Melbourne the best place to start was the street press. She knew she wouldn't get paid to any meaningful degree, she knew she'd be lucky if she just got a few free C.D.s out of it, but all the same she was surprised when Si had told her, when first showing her around the office:

"One day I hope to be able to pay everyone who works here. After all, what's more valuable than a good writer? But at the moment I'm the only one here getting any money out of it. It's my job, you know."

"Oh" Rona had said, a little taken aback by the audacity of this plan. "Is . . . Do you really see that happening?"

"Well!" Si had laughed, "Not this year, naturally. But we've got a pretty solid grant - that reminds me, I'll get you to write a proposal later to get it renewed - and I figure, give it a year, year-and-a-half, maybe, we can build up a big readership in this city. Really get the advertisers interested. Maybe start doing some promotions. Who knows, maybe we'll even expand to cover Geelong, too!"

"That could be exciting . . ." Rona had answered, looking around at the old computers and somewhat disaffected staff.

"Tell me, Ronnie -"

"Rona."

"Sorry. Why the Word?"

Rona had looked at him. She hadn't expected to be second-guessed. "What . . . Why am I here?"

"Yeah" Si had grinned eagerly.

"Well, to be honest with you, I applied to a bunch of street magazines around town. You're the only one who replied."

"Oh, fabulous! Well we're glad to have you here."

"I mean, you're not the closest to home, but . . . "

"Don't worry, I like to think that the Word is like a home. That's what we all call it here, by the way. Just the Word."

"Okay, I'll remember that."

"Great. Here, come with me, and I'll show you where the magic happens." And he'd led her over to the computer roster sheets. Really, she'd started getting the feeling things weren't going to end well the moment he'd used the word 'magic'.