“So,” Alisa began, working the words out in her mouth, one by one. “Danielle’s a really good engineer.

She’s
the one who finally figured out the best way to work off the impurities in the ore.” Tom Severe was clearly not
listening. He sat at the table for three, slightly hunched over and spinning an empty wine bottle in his hands.
There was an unconscious rhythm to his movements, as if his fingers simply felt the motion of the bottle. A
large white dog, a Labrador, wandered over to the table. The dog looked expectantly at the empty chair opposite
Tom. The animal’s tongue lolled out of its mouth and sprayed drool over the table and the chair. “What about
her?” Tom finally asked, his head still slumped forward, his eyes still looking at his hands. It was the first time
Alisa had ever seen him actively dominate over anyone else, including his employees and even the headhunters
he hired to find his successors, who were either found or died bitter and angry after the process started. Alisa
had been working on her article for several days and tried to come up with a clever opening sentence that would
indicate the genius and importance of Danielle, the subject. She had trouble getting the tone right. For a while
she considered the idea of writing a scathing article about the anti-personnel mine she had come across the
previous week, something along the lines of; “An anti-personnel mine is a simple device, with a mixture of
plastic and metal, designed to kill a man or his fellows. They are usually constructed by the most desperate of
terrorists – and when the mines are triggered, they eject a lethal spray of metal fragments into the victim.” Then
she thought about writing a more honest and revealing piece, something like; “I found myself in the most
desperate of situations, faced with the horrifying prospect of tracking down a terrorist group that had taken
dozens of innocent lives.” She couldn’t get the tone right. In the end she decided to go for honest and a little bit
of ridicule. She decided on this line; “In these days of post-September 11th ramping up of defense spending,
Danielle Mellow’s job badge reads like a technologist’s wet dream. It is a new field, the mining industry, and
she is the shining star of it.” She tried pronouncing the words and deciding on her timing. Other women she had
worked with in TV news had told her that the biggest secret was to take their time. The key to great journalism,
they said, was always to speak slowly.