If only she could lance her eyes. Blindness would be preferable to finishing and filing. She peeked at it, just a little, but enough to catch, “On a personal level and as a matter of social policy …” Oh, it stung. To this pass she had come. No, that was wrong. She had been at this malingering stretch every three weeks for the last many years. This column was no worse than any other. The use of her children, the summoning of the bittersweet, the unrepentant manufacturing of a personal drama or two—she’d done it all before, happily, breezily, as indefatigably as a pompom float with televised mummers. The paper put up with her—at first she thought it was because of Don, but then she decided it was because they needed a woman, and it was only quite recently she had realized that they quite honestly believed she was good. Not just that, but that she was in possession, as the editorial-page editor informed her over lunch, of an instinctive understanding of human nature and the nature of power. Her moral impecuniousness and vice-caked stratagems had left her happy, healthy, and wise, afloat in coin and praise.

She pushed away from the desk. It was late morning. There was nothing to do but nap. She curled into a sofa, held a pillow, and knew that sleep, so recently just finished, would still come.

Vera watched Mitch walk across the Room to his desk when he’d been, at least as of 1:15 p.m., trounced. A story about the report was on CNN, and CNN was on every television screen, angling downward from ceiling-high shelves across the Room. Reporters and editors were standing around the screen in their vicinity, engrossed, nodding with lips pressed, performing the head tilt that signified dismay to be working at the chump paper of the moment combined with the anticipation that came from knowing someone’s hindquarters, not their own, were soon to be on carving wood. Rejoicing detractors were bouncing e-mails back and forth like overamped chimps. Since no one dayside ever e-mailed Vera, she knew of this the way she knew of everything, through Stanley. Mitch, the old sock, is in trouble. A little later, Stanley added, Be nice to him if you can.

Vera saw Adam glued to the TV, not far from her marooned desk, and now Martina Welk, the National editor, who never came to this part of the Room, was approaching. Mitch, newly transferred to the Foreign Desk, had a seat right next to Vera. Her desk was at the border between Metro and Foreign.

Why didn’t they use the new Pentagon hire on this? The rationale of most decisions was a mystery to her. But she was pleased too. She had not yet seen such a big story up close, to get a feel for how the Room really worked.