single character page numbering (with no hyphen)

[Ken Poshedly]

FM8.0 on a Windows Vista platform

I'm sure there's a simple answer for this, but I've really tried all 
I can think of and can't seem to find a way to get rid of the 
preceding hyphen for a page number within a footer.

Like it or not, I'm trying to place just a single, lower-case Roman 
numeral in the footer of my TOC. So with the file open and Master 
Pages view selected, I choose Format > Headers & Footers > Insert Page #

What I get is a hyphen preceding the pound-sign variable or 
placeholder or whatever it is.

I've checked Format > Document > Numbering and tried to make sure 
there is nothing in the Chapter box.

I've checked Format > Paragraph Designer > Numbering (just to see if 
a hyphen is included in the numbering equation) but there is no 
numbering scheme to found there at all.

I've checked Special > Variable > Edit Definition and deleted the 
unnecessary building blocks for Current Page # (leaving only 
<$curpagenum> with no preceding hyphen) and, for whatever reason, 
that didn't work.

Note that in the rest of the book, I do use a chapter number with 
hyphen with page number combo. But I don't want it that way in the 
TOC and I don't want to designate the TOC as section 0. No comments, 
please, on my choice of document or numbering decisions.

So short of actually typing in an i and an ii and so on, what else to do?

-- Kenpo in Atlanta