Thank You for Smoking

9

It was just a short item, in the "Reliable Source" section of the late edition of the Sun, slugged, caller to king show threatens to stub out tobacco smokesman. Nick felt a little short-changed. The guy was obviously just some nut with too much free time on his hands, but where did the Sun get off making puns out of a death threat? In this crazy, mixed-up world?

He called the Sun on his car phone to complain. After explaining to the operator that he had a complaint and wanted to speak to an assistant managing editor, he was put through to a recording.

"You have reached the Washington Sun's ombudsman desk. If you feel you have been inaccurately quoted, press one. If you spoke to a reporter off the record but were identified in the article, press two. If you spoke on deep background but were identified, press three. If you were quoted accurately but feel that the reporter missed the larger point, press four. If you are a confidential White House source and are calling to alert your reporter that the President is furious over leaks and has ordered a review of all outgoing calls in White House phone logs, press five. To speak to an editor, press six."

Exhausted, Nick hung up. His phone rang. It was Gazelle, concerned because Jeannette was going around breathlessly telling everyone in the office that five of the six major pharmaceutical companies that manufactured nicotine patches were threatening to sue unless Nick issued a retraction of his comments on the King show. The achievement of car phones is that your morning can now be ruined even before you get to the office.

People greeted him in the corridors. "Hey, Nick, way to go!"

"You gonna be okay, Nick?"

"Jesus, Nick, who was that guy?"

Gazelle handed him coffee and told him that BR wanted to see him right away.

Jeannette was there when he walked in. She jumped up and went over to him and — hugged him. "Thank God," she said.

"Nick," BR said, with this concerned, three-furrows-in-his-brow look, "are you all right?"

"Fine. What's the problem?"

"The problem," BR said, sounding a little surprised, "is that your life has been threatened."

Nick lit up a Camel. Nice, being able to smoke in BR's office now. "Oh, come on. Some nut."

"That's not how I see it. And that's not how the Captain sees it."

Nick exhaled. "The Captain?"

"I just got off the phone with him. He wants full security around you until this matter is… until we know exactly what we're dealing with here."

"That's crazy."

"Jeannette," BR said, "would you excuse us?" Jeannette left the room. "Nick, we got off to a bad start, and that was my fault, for which I hereby apologize. Sometimes I can be an asshole. It's… the world I come from, vending machines, it's a tough world. I have some edges. But never mind that. I've come to realize lately just how valuable you are to Team Tobacco. So," he smiled, "my concern for you isn't just warm and fuzzy feelings. Basically, I don't want to lose you. And certainly not to some nutcase."

Nick was quite overwhelmed. "Well," he stammered, "I appreciate that, BR."

"So it's settled. We're putting a security detail on you."

"Wait, I didn't agree to that."

"Nick, you want to tell this to the Captain?"

"But I get dozens, hundreds of threats. I've got a whole file labeled 'Threats.' It's under 'T.' One guy wrote that he was going to tar and feather me. He was going to collect an entire vat full of tar from those disposable cigarette-holder filters and cover me with it and then feather me. You can't take this stuff seriously."

"This is different. This was live, national — international — television. Even assuming the guy is just a crank, other people watching might get an idea. They're called copycat killers, I think. Anyway, we're just not prepared to take the chance."

"You're telling me," Nick said, "that I have to have a bodyguard?"

"Bodyguards, plural."

"Uh-uh. Not my style."

"Then you tell the Captain," BR said, holding out his phone. "Listen, in this town it's considered a sign of having arrived."

"I'll look like a drug lord, for crying out loud."

"Look, I don't want to sound like I'm capitalizing on a gruesome situation, but, how can I put this? — the fact that it's gotten to the deplorable point where a senior vice president for a major trade association, for God's sake, is reduced to needing security, in the nation's capital, to keep himself from being killed by a bunch of fanatic anti-smokers—"

"You're really getting into this, aren't you?"

"Nick, I know it's a sow's ear, but maybe there's a silk purse inside."

"Well, yeah, but…"

"All right, then. Aren't you having lunch with Heather Holloway of the Moon today?"

"Yes," Nick said, surprised at how well apprised BR was about his daily schedule. Jeannette.

"So, she's going to notice that you've got bodyguards and put that in her story. How bad can that be for our side?"

Nick left BR's office in a foul mood and went back to his office and called the Captain and asked him if this ridiculous order had come from him. In fact it had, and the Captain was adamant.

"Take it as a measure of our esteem for you, son. Can't go taking chances. I just got off the phone with Skip Billington and Lem Tutweiler and they want to put you in an armored personnel carrier." Billington and Tutweiler were heads of, respectively, Blue Leaf Tobacco, Inc., and Tarcom, two of the largest of the Big Six tobacco firms; by virtue of which they occupied seats — large ones — on the ATS board.

"I think," Nick said, "that we're overreacting to a crank call."

"You let us be the judge of that. Now what progress have you made on the Hollywood project?"

Nick fudged, the correct answer being none. The Captain, shrewd as he was, already knew. "I hope you'll be able to apply yourself to that as soon as possible. In fact, things being what they are, you being a ter'rist target…" This seemed to Nick a rather fraught way of looking at it, but paranoia rubs off and now he was getting sort of nervous. "… it might behoove you to get out of town for a few days and go out there and — don't they all hang out by pools, with their telephones and glamorous stars? That doesn't sound like such an unpleasant assignment," he chuckled. "On second thought, why don't you come down here and run the tobacco business and I'll go out to Hollywood and hang out by the pool with all the beautiful women." He added, "Don't tell Mrs. Boykin I told you that or she'll put a water moccasin in the toilet bowl."

In a serious tone of voice, he said, "Now you listen to the security people and don't you go taking any chances. By the way, did BR convey to you my expression of confidence?"

"Yes sir, he did," Nick said, embarrassed that he hadn't thanked the Captain for his extremely generous raise. "Thank you. It was extremely generous."

"Tobacco takes care of its own. Call me from the pool and tell me all about the women. I like that what's her name, blond gal, in that movie they have the ads for about those fellahs throw themselves off cliffs with rubber bands tied to their ankles…"

"Fiona Fontaine."

"That's her. Fine specimen. Now if you could get her to light up, well, that would be something."

Nick went to see Carlton. Carlton was a former FBI agent who looked like anything but. More like a goofy friendly-faced ice cream vendor, thin, short, and mild, except that his eyes had this tendency to widen and widen as you talked to him, so that by the time you were finished he was looking at you like you were a serial axe murderer.

"Tell you the honest truth, Nicky" — security people had this tendency to use the diminutive in order to achieve instant intimacy—"I think we're overdoing this."

"Hey, I know that," Nick said.

"Big guy says you get security, so we're going to give you a detail."

"A detail? No one said anything about a detail."

"The big guy said a detail. It's expensive, let me tell you. Somebody up there must like you." Nick groaned. Carlton said, "Look at it this way — you'll save a fortune on cab fare."

"Oh no," Nick said. The company had given him use of a BMW, which Nick liked to drive. "I drive myself. They want to follow me, that's fine. But I drive myself, alone."

"Nicky, Nicky, Nicky."

"Carlton, could you please not call me that, okay?"

"Look," Nick said to Mike, head of his three-man detail, "could you not come into the restaurant with me? I'm meeting a reporter and I'm going to look like a total wimp if I walk in there with you guys."

"Can't do it, Nicky. Orders."

So Nick walked into Il Peccatore, trying to keep as far ahead of his three obvious bodyguards as he could. They had the little pigtail radio cords that came up the back of their collars and went into their ears. Though with whom were they supposed to be communicating? Nick suspected they wanted to be mistaken for Secret Service agents.

He scanned the room. Senator Finisterre was not there — he was pretty much avoiding Il Peccatore since the incident. But his nephew, Senator Ortolan K. Finisterre, was there, lunching with Alex Beam, the Sun columnist, no doubt telling him how he really wasn't interested in running for governor of Vermont when there was so much work to do right here in the Congress yada yada yada.

Heather Holloway was already there, at the corner table, looking over her interview notes.

Hm. Very nice indeed, bit of a cross between Maureen O'Hara and Bonnie Raitt, without the gray thing in the hair. Glasses. Nick found glasses sexy on a woman. The shrink he went to during the divorce said this was significant but wouldn't tell him why, wanted him to figure it out for himself. Nick told her, for seventy-five bucks an hour — fifty minutes — she could goddamn well tell him, but she wouldn't. Great skin, smattering of freckles. The figure, well, yes, Bobby Jay was right about that, it was a very attractive figure, rounded yet exercised, StairMaster voluptuous. And what was this peeking out beneath the table? Pale, ivory stockings? Whoa. She was in a short green suit, open collar, and gold earrings. She smiled up at him through the glasses. Dimples. Dimples!

"Who are they?" she said after the introductions, pointing to Mike, Jeff, and Tommy, his bodyguards.

"Off the record?"

"No," she smiled, "on the record. I'm sure that you're good company, but this isn't a social lunch."

That was encouraging. Nick explained, emphasizing that they were unnecessary.

She said, "I have spoken to a number of people who don't… I wouldn't call them major fans of yours."

"Well, that's tobacco for you." He picked up a menu. "The sole in flagrante is good."

" 'In flagrante'?"

"It's named after Senator Finisterre." Heather stared.

"You remember, he was interrupted in the middle of… in the back room here? Maybe you read about it?" Maybe sexual jokes of questionable taste — or wit — within sixty seconds of having met were… not such a good idea? With all that red hair she might be Catholic. "Everything's good. Pasta. Veal chop Valdostana, very good. The trout is excellent. Lot of almonds, if you like almonds."

She ordered salad and San Pellegrino water, which made him feel like a spurned waiter. Nick, feeling trapped inside his own recommendation, ordered the trout, though he did not particularly like trout with a lot of almonds.

"So," he said, "how long have you been a Moonie? I mean, how long have you been with the Moon?" Very good, two gaffes in two minutes. Why not follow up with something suave like "Your breasts are really incredible. Are they real?"

"A year," she said. "Do you mind if I tape?"

"Please," Nick said magnanimously.

She put her tape recorder on the table between them. "I'm always convinced that I'll get back to the office and there'll be nothing but static on it."

"I know." Perfume. Dioressense? Krizia? Fracas? Fracas, definitely.

"Is that Fracas you have on, by any chance?"

"No."

"Oh?"

"I interviewed Mick Jagger last year," she said, turning on the recorder, "when the Stones played at the Cap Center. When I got back all there was was hissing. I thought they were going to fire me. I had to reconstruct everything he said. I had to put it all in italics."

"Well," Nick said, "he's never said anything interesting." From the look Heather gave him he realized he was probably not going to score points with her by denigrating rock and roll's biggest icon. Not that being a Washington trade association spokesman wasn't incredibly sexy… "I mean," he said, "I am a Stones fan. It's just… " Move on, Nick.

"So," he said, "what's the focus of your piece?" Yes, let's talk about me.

"You are."

"I suppose I should be flattered."

"I started out with the idea of writing about what I'm calling 'The New Puritanism.' "

"Oh yes. Lot of that going around. Olive?"

"No, thank you. I was going to talk to lobbyists for unpopular industries. Tobacco, guns, liquor, lead, asbestos, whaling, toxic waste dumpers, you know…"

"Your basic planet- and human-race — despoiling swine."

"Not necessarily," said Heather, blushing. "Then I saw you on the Oprah show and thought… something interesting going on in there."

"The idea being to find out how I'm able to live with myself." Nick tore into a bit of oven-hot bruschetta.

"No," she smiled, "I don't imagine that's a problem. Any more than it was for…"

"Goebbels?"

"I wasn't thinking of him," Heather said delicately, "but that is an interesting analogy. Is that how you see yourself?"

LOBBYIST SEES HIMSELF AS A GUCCI GOEBBELS.

"Not at all. I see myself as a mediator between two sectors of society that are trying to reach an accommodation. I guess you could say I'm a facilitator."

"Or enabler?"

"Beg pardon?"

Heather flipped through some pages of her notebook. " 'Mass murderer,' 'profiteer,' 'pimp,' 'bloodsucker,' 'child killer,' 'yuppie Mephistopheles,' here it is, 'mass enabler.' "

"What is that you're reading from?"

"Interviews. In preparation for our meeting today."

"Who did you talk to? The head of the Lung Association?"

"Not yet."

"Well, frankly, this doesn't sound like a very balanced article you're writing."

"You tell me — who else should I talk to?"

"Fifty-five million American smokers, for starters. Or how about some tobacco farmers whose only crime is to be treated like cocaine producers when they're growing a perfectly legal product. They might have a different view, you know."

"I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry. Actually, I was going to talk to a tobacco farmer."

"I know a lot of them. Fine people. Salt of the earth. I'll give you some phone numbers."

"I guess what I'm trying to get at is, why do you do this? What motivates you, exactly?"

"I get asked that all the time. People expect me to answer, 'The challenge,' or, 'The chance to prove that the Constitution means what it says.' " He paused thoughtfully. "You want to know why I really do it?" Another thoughtful pause. "To pay the mortgage."

This manful statement appeared to make no impression on Heather Holloway, other than mild disappointment. "Someone told me that's probably what you'd say."

"Did they?"

"It's a kind of yuppie Nuremberg defense, isn't it?"

"What is it with the Y-word? That's a very eighties word. This is the nineties."

"Excuse me."

"And, I mean," he said, looking offended, "are you calling me a Nazi?"

"No. Actually, you're the one making Third Reich analogies."

"Well, it's one thing to call yourself a Nazi. That's self-deprecation. For someone else to call you one is deprecation. And it's not very nice."

"I apologize. But a mortgage isn't much of a life goal, is it?"

"Absolutely. Ninety-nine percent of everything that is done in the world, good and bad, is done to pay a mortgage. The world would be a much better place if everyone rented. Then there's tuition. Boy, has that been a force for evil in the modern world."

"You're married?"

"Divorced," Nick said a bit too quickly.

"Kids?"

"One son. But he's practically grown up."

"How old is he?"

"Twelve."

"He must be quite precocious. So how does he feel about what you do?"

"Frankly, twelve-year-olds don't care where the money comes from. I could be a vivisectionist and I don't think it would make a whole lot of difference as long as I keep him in Rollerblades and snowboards. Not that I equate vivisectionists and the tobacco industry. As a matter of fact, I feel very strongly about animals being, you know, used for dubious scientific purposes. The ones they torture out at NIH. My God, those poor little bunnies. It would break your heart to see them in their little cages, puffing away."

"Puffing?"

"Those smoking machines they attach to them. Criminal. Listen, if I had to smoke like seven thousand cigarettes a day, I'd get sick, probably. And I consider myself a heavy smoker."

"But doesn't it bother you being vilified like this? There are easier ways of paying mortgage and tuition."

"If it makes other people happy to have me play the role of villain, when all I really do is provide information about a legal and, I might add, time-honored industry, fine, no problem. Whatever."

She flipped through her notepad, making Nick suspicious.

"You were a reporter at WRTK."

"Um-hum," Nick said, lighting up. "Do you mind if I smoke?" Heather seemed to find this amusing. "No, please. Isn't their nickname W-Right To Know?"

"Um-hum."

"Is this an uncomfortable subject for you?"

"Not at all," Nick said, thoughtfully exhaling straight up so it wouldn't go in her face, though this made him feel like a metal dolphin in a fountain.

"I looked up the news clips," she said delicately, "but if you're agreeable, it would be better if you could tell me about it. So I get everything right."

"It's just kind of old news, is all. This is going to be a big part of your piece?"

"No. Not big. So this happened at Camp LaGroan.?"

"Um-hum." Nick slowly stubbed out his cigarette. Thank God for cigarettes, they gave you time to get your act together, or at least to look philosophical. "You'll recall President Broadbent liked to spend time with the boys, being a former marine and all. And I was in our van, monitoring the radio. We'd gotten the base frequencies from, well, someone, which you probably already knew, since you know all this, anyway," he sighed, "so we had the frequency and I was monitoring it and there was this, suddenly there was all this radio traffic about Rover choking to death on a bone. Rover being President Broadbent's Secret Service code name, and the fact that at that very minute the President was in the mess hall having lunch with the boys, so I, you know… "

"Went with it?"

"Um-hum. And it turned out to be a different Rover that had choked to death."

"The commandant's dog?"

"Um-hum. A German shorthaired pointer. A six-year-old, sixty-seven pound German shorthaired pointer. On a chicken bone."

"And…?"

"This was not a career-enhancing episode."

"It must have been awful. I'm sorry."

"I look on the positive side. How many people get to announce to the nation, 'The President is dead.' It's quite a feeling to say those words. Even if he wasn't dead."

"Yes," Heather said. "It must have been."

"Do you remember when Walter Cronkite said, 'We have just received this news flash. President Kennedy died at one o'clock, Eastern Standard Time.' You're probably too young. It was an amazing moment. I always used to get a chill when I thought about it. I still get it, except that it's immediately followed by the urge to vomit."

"What happened afterwards?"

"Walter Cronkite became the most respected newsman in history. I became a spokesman for cigarettes."

"It must have left you pretty damaged."

"On the contrary, I have extremely thick skin. It's practically like leather. I'd make a very comfortable Chesterfield. Couch, not cigarette."

"It didn't seem that way on the Oprah show," Heather said. "You really tore into that guy."

"That guy? Please. That guy is a dork. There are an awful lot of sanctimonious people out there who expect everyone else to canonize them because they're going around like hall monitors confiscating all the ashtrays. And once they've confiscated the last ashtray, do you think they're going to stop there? Oh no. They'll be slapping warning labels on kids' Popsicles. 'Warning, the surgeon general has determined that Popsicles make your tongue cold.' "

"Speaking of kids, what about this five-million-dollar program you announced on the Oprah show? Doesn't that indicate that your industry feels guilty about its product?"

"No," Nick said. "Not at all."

Heather appeared to be waiting for a better answer.

"I think it shows a remarkable sense of sensitivity."

"But isn't it hypocritical for the tobacco companies to mount an anti-smoking program for kids when they're spending millions in advertising to hook them in the first place? That absurd camel, Old Joe, with the nose like a penis and a saxophone. Honestly."

Nick shook his head. "Boy, you put up five million dollars to keep kids from smoking, and does anyone say, 'Thanks'?"

" 'Thanks'?" Heather laughed.

"Not that we're implying that smoking is harmful to their health. But you don't want to take any chances where children are concerned. I mean, they're the future, right?"

"Wow," Heather said.

" 'Wow'?" Nick said. It was her admiring tone that threw him off balance.

"I… " she flushed, "this is awkward for me."

"Please," Nick said, almost taking her hand, "tell me."

"It's a little embarrassing."

"You don't have to be. Really."

"I find this all very… stimulating."

"What do you find stimulating?"

"Your total absence of morality." She sounded excited. Her eyes looked dreamy behind the glasses; she was leaning in close to him. "I get the feeling you'd do anything to pay that mortgage."

"Well, within limits."

"I was raised Catholic. Maybe that's why I find evil so refreshing."

"Evil?" Nick said with a nervous laugh.

She reached over and with her thumb and forefinger started playing with his silk Hermes tie. "But rarely have I seen it so attractively packaged." Her eyes raised slowly from the tie to his. Dimples. "Sick, isn't it?"

"Oh," Nick shrugged, "I'm not much into judging."

"I've actually gone to shrinks about it. They say it's all bound up with my feelings about religion and authority. Some women are turned on by dirty talk. I'm turned on by moral degenerates."

"Well, I don't really see myself as—"

"Oh," she said huskily, "shut up and tell me again about your plans to get more children to smoke."

"Don't you have it backwards?"

"Oh no," Heather said, dipping into her zabaglione and putting a custardy finger into her mouth, "I don't think so."

"Off the record?"

Her chest swelled. "What about very… deep… background?"

"Check." Nick waved to the waiter.