Thank You for Smoking

by Christopher Buckley

"Please," Nick said, embarrassed, "by all means."

  "You were a television reporter, before?"

  Nick flushed. Well, there was no escaping it. It would be in his obituary. It was Naylor who, as a local Washington TV reporter, announced on live television that the President had choked on a piece of meat at a military base and died, causing the stock market to drop 180 points and lose $3 billion worth of value before the White House produced the President, alive. The best he could hope for was to accomplish something else in life that would relegate that to the second paragraph.

  "That was a long time ago," Nick said.

  The Captain held up his hand. "You don't have to explain it to me. In your shoes I probably would have done the same thing. One does have to seize the day. JJ told me all about it. That's why he hired you. Knew exactly what he was doing."

  "He did?"

  "Damn right. Whatever else JJ was, and I regret that I had to let him go, he was a student of the human condition. He said to me, 'That boy is going to work his behind off putting this thing behind him, making a new name for himself.' "

  "Other than the Three Billion Dollar Man."

  "He said something else. He said, 'That boy is going to be one angry young man.' I didn't realize just how angry until I watched you yesterday on that colored woman's show, Obrah. Son, you were magnificent."

  "Thank you."

  "I was angry, too, when I got back from Korea. Do you know why, Mister Naylor?"

  "No sir."

  "Because I resolved that I would never — ever — again be put in a situation where I had to submit to the authority of incompetent men. I started in the flues and within five years I was a vice president, the youngest vice president in corporate tobacco history. That, sir, is what anger can do for you. Join me in a brandy, won't you."

  Once again the drinks materialized out of air, borne on a silver tray. What a club! And the waiters didn't introduce themselves to you by their first name. They were everything waiters should be: subservient, efficient, taciturn.

  "Do you enjoy your work, Nick?"

  "Yes," Nick said. "It's challenging. As we say around the office, 'If you can do tobacco, you can do anything.' "

  The Captain snorted into his snifter. "You know, your generation of tobacco men — and women, I'm always forgetting to add 'and women'—think they have it harder than any generation who came before. You think it all began in nineteen fifty-two. Well, puh!"

  Puh?

  "It's been going on for almost five hundred years. Does the name Rodrigo de Jerez mean anything to you?" Nick shook his head. "No, I suppose it doesn't. I suppose they don't teach history in the schools anymore, just attitude. Well, for your information, sir, Rodrigo de Jerez went ashore with Christopher Columbus. And he watched the natives 'drink smoke,' as he put it, with their pipes. He brought tobacco back to the Old World with him. Sang its praises high to the frescoed ceilings. Do you know what happened to him? The Spanish Inquisition put him in jail for it. They said it was a 'devilish habit.' You think you have it bad having to deal with the Federal Trade Commission? How would you like to have to state your case before the Spanish Inquisition?"

  "Well… "

  "You bet you would not. Remember that name, Rodrigo de Jerez. You're walking in his footsteps. He was the first tobacco spokesman. I suppose he, too, found it 'challenging.' "

  "Uh… "

  "Does the name Edwin Proon mean anything to you?"

  "Prune?"

  "God in heaven, the billions of dollars we throw at the public schools. Edwin Proon lived in the Massachusetts Colony in the early 1600s when the Puritan fathers were going around nailing up the first no-smoking signs in the New World. You think you're the first to have to deal with building restrictions and public ordinances? No sir, I do not reckon that you are. Edwin Proon was fighting that battle long ago. They passed a law saying you couldn't smoke in public and 'public' meant anywhere more than one person was present. They put him in the stocks. And when they caught him smoking in the stocks they clamped an iron hood over his face. Do you suppose Edwin Proon found it 'challenging'?"

  Fasten your seat belts, Nick thought, we have four hundred more years to go. In detail, the Captain reminded him that America had waged outright war against the "pernicious practice" — in the 1790s, the 1850s, the 1880s. He reminded him that Horace Greeley had called a cigar "a fire at one end and a fool at the other," that Thomas Edison had refused to hire smokers, that in this very century, Americans — and not just women — had actually been arrested for the act of lighting a cigarette. On and on it went until little beads of perspiration appeared on the Captain's forehead, like julep sweat. Finally he stopped and patted his brow with his handkerchief.

  "Forgive me. I seem to have this tendency since the operation to get… exercised. By the way, never get sick in California. Least nothing that requires surgery. They don't know the first thing about surgery. There was nothing wrong with me that a little bicarbonate of soda would not have rectified."

  They discussed the hypocrisy and villainy of Region 11 politicians. Almost all the anti-smoking ordinances came out of Region 11, California, Reichland of the Health Nazis. What justice was possible when Californians were allowed to determine national health standards?

  "You know who Lucy Page Gaston was?" the Captain asked with one of his penetrating, interrogatory stares.

  No, Nick did not know who Lucy Page Gaston was.

  "She came out of the Temperance Union movement in the 1890s looking for more souls to save. She had six hundred cigarette vendors in Chicago arrested for selling to minors. Founded the Anti-Cigarette League. In 1913 she and some doctor started a clinic where they dragged in poor newspaper boys off the street and swabbed their throats with silver nitrate and told 'em to chew on gentian root whenever they got the urge. Now we got these damned patches. In 1919 she wrote Queen Mary and President Harding and asked them to stop smoking. What crust! Announced she was running for President. In 1924 she was struck down by a streetcar in Chicago coming out of an anti-cigarette meeting. She survived. She died eight months later. Do you know what she died of, Nick?"

  "No, sir."

  The Captain smiled. "Throat cancer. Do you know what that proves, Nick? It proves that there is a God."

  Outside the Club the Captain declared that since it was such a fine spring day he felt like strolling. So they strolled, with the Captain's car following slowly along.

  "Tell me," he asked, "what is your opinion of BR?" He added, "Just 'tween us girls."

  Suddenly the sidewalk was strewn with large banana peels. "BR," said Nick, "is… my boss."

  The Captain gave a little bemused grunt. "Well, I like to think that I'm your boss, son."

  Son?

  "But I do admire loyalty in a man. I esteem loyalty. I can forgive almost anything in a man if he's loyal." They walked along. He stopped to examine some vines. "We should have the wisteria in three weeks. There's no smell like it. I imagine heaven smells like wisteria. BR's got this notion we ought to start bribing producers in Hollywood to make their actors smoke. Interesting notion. Year from now we may have a total advertising ban. He thinks this is the way around it. Cheaper, too, probably. We're spending almost a billion dollars a year in advertising now as it is. What do you think?"

  "Interesting notion," Nick said simmeringly.

  "Yes, I like it quite a bit. Smart man, BR."

  "Oh yes. And loyal."

  "Glad to hear it. He comes from vending machines, you know. Rough part of our business. You need someone like BR these days. He's good with the Japs. Tough. The Far East is going to be increasingly important to us in the years ahead. That's why I made him an offer would've made Croesus blush. Not that anyone in corporate America has the capacity to blush these days. I did hate to let old JJ go. But, he's got his condominium down in Tarpon Springs right on the eighteenth hole. I suppose they'll be putting me out to stud soon enough. On the other hand," he grunted, "when you own twenty-eight percent of the stock you have
the luxury of setting your own timetable. Still, I'm not getting any younger. Sometimes I feel like a Tyrannosaurus rex stumbling through the swamp one step ahead of the glaciers. Do you know," he said with an air of incredulity, "that the scientists are now saying that the dinosaurs died on account of their own flatulence?"

  "No," Nick said.

  "They're saying all those dinosaur farts going up into the atmosphere created a kind of global warming effect that caused the ice cap to melt." He shook his head. "How do they know such things?"

  "Where are the data?"

  "That's right. That's right! Do you remember what Finisterre said?"

  "Wake up, boys, it's Good Friday, let's go have a few beers?"

  "Not that Finisterre. Romulus K. Finisterre. The president. You do remember him? He said, 'The torch is passed to a new generation.' He was talking about my generation. And now the time is coming to pass it to your generation. Are you ready to accept the torch, Nick?"

  "Torch?"

  "It won't be easy. It's a hostile world out there. I look around and all I see is muzzle flashes. What's more, I see muzzle flashes coming from where our friends sit. I had Jordan in to see me the other day.

  That old whore, we put so much money into his campaigns over the years he put his children through college on the surplus. Hell, I couldn't even use my own corporate jet during his last campaign he was so busy using it. And what does he have the crust to tell me, in my own office, if you please? That he has to go along with this excise tax or the White House is going to shut down LaGroan Air Force Base."

  Nick had to agree: it was a sorry situation indeed when the Honorable Gentleman from North Carolina, Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, was casting his vote in favor of a two-dollar-a-pack cigarette tax.

  "Sometimes I feel like a Colombian drug dealer. The other day, my seven-year-old granddaughter, flesh of flesh of my own loins, says to me, 'Granddaddy, is it true cigarettes are bad for you?' My own granddaughter, whose private education, and horse and everything else is being handsomely provided for by cigarette money!"

  The Captain stopped and said, "We got to do something. Something big, smart, and fast. This Hollywood project of BR's. I want you to work on it. And report to me, directly."

  "It was BR's idea," Nick said. "I wouldn't want to offend him by taking over his brainstorm."

  "Don't you worry about that. I'll handle BR. He seemed to think this gal Jeannette was the person to do it. Thinks the sun rises and sets on her. But I think you're our man." He put his hand on Nick's shoulder. "And I am seldom wrong."

  He signaled his driver. They got in. "HQ, Elmore," the Captain told him. "Then take Mr. Naylor here to the airport."

  "I need to pick up my bags at the hotel."

  "That's already been taken care of, sir," Elmore said. The Captain smiled. "Tobacco takes care of its own."

  They pulled up in front of Agglomerated Tobacco. There had been no mention of Nick's five-million-dollar monkey wrench. Nick asked him about it.

  The Captain nodded to himself thoughtfully. "That's a significant amount of money, of course. I must say that you do seem to have a penchant for causing extremely large sums of money to be spent." His face darkened, as if a severe emotional system were moving in over it, and for a moment or two Nick thought all bets might be off and he was headed for the unemployment line after all. But then the thunderclouds headed off. The old man chuckled, "Well I don't suppose five million dollars is going to bankrupt us. However, I do not expect to be swept off my feet by the persuasiveness of this particular advertising campaign." He extended his hand. "Thank you for taking the time to visit with me. I will be in touch."

  At the airport a chain-link fence automatically parted at the car's approach. The plane, a sleek Gulfstream 5, was waiting, engines whining, with a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue — quality stewardess smiling at the foot of the stairs. No wonder the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee had developed a thing for it. "Hello," the stewardess said, "pleasure to have you aboahd!" Nick climbed up. His feet sank softly into lush carpeting. There were oil paintings on the bulkheads, the overhead was quilted, the chairs were enormous, like BarcaLoungers, upholstered in creamy leather that absorbed Nick as he sat down. "The Captain says that's his favorite chair in the whole world," said the stewardess. There was fresh fruit on the table next to it, five newspapers that looked like they'd been ironed, and a heavy-stock card that said, welcome aboard, mr. nick naylor of ats, and gave the flight time to Washington along with the airspeed, planned altitude, weather conditions, the temperature in Washington. She leaned over, affording Nick an unavoidable peek into the soft crevasse between her creamy bosoms, from which wafted the most delicate perfume. "If there's anything I can do to make your flight more pleasant, you be sure to let me know, now."

  7

  Flight okay?" BR asked.

  "Fine," Nick said.

  "What flight were you on? The four-fifteen doesn't get in until five-twenty, and it's only five."

  "Actually, I came up on the plane."

  "Of course you came up on a plane, for Chrissakes."

  "The Captain's plane." He hadn't really decided how to handle his new status, but he felt like a spotted owl flitting about the office of the head of the Weyerhaeuser lumber company — protected.

  BR stared. "That was certainly… gracious of him."

  "Yes," Nick said, enjoying himself. "That's quite some plane, isn't it?"

  "I wouldn't know."

  "Oh?"

  "Yet. I was on the old one. I practically lived on it. The Captain's invited me on the new one a dozen times, but I just haven't been able to fit it in."

  "Well, with your schedule. I can certainly see why Senator Jordan likes it. Ashley, the stewardess — very nice person — told me it's quite an improvement over the G-4, in terms of range."

  "Um-huh. What did he say about your five-million-dollar anti-smoking campaign?"

  "Said do it. But he doesn't want to be blown away."

  BR's face fell. It was visible, like a glacier melting, only faster.Funny thing, life, thought Nick: thirty-six hours ago he was sitting here in this same office being denied caffeine and told he was finished. Now it was BR whose jaw muscles were twitching and looked like he needed a session with Dr. Wheat. Maybe he should give BR Dr. Wheat's card. Dr. Wheat, D.O. Osteopathic Manipulation. Relax. crrrrack.

  "I thought I'd give it to BMG, that new firm I told you about out in Minneapolis. Unless you have any objection."

  "No. Whatever."

  "By the way, BR, the Captain really liked your idea about trying to get movie actors to smoke more."

  BR blushed. "That was your idea. He must have gotten it mixed up."

  "Of course. With all he has on his mind."

  "At his age." Nick could almost see the thought-bubble rising above BR's head. He won't be around much longer, Naylor, and ten seconds after they pronounce him DOA, your ass is mine.

  "Yes," Nick said, "but he seems incredibly sharp. Doesn't miss a thing, does he?"

  "He directed," BR slid a piece of paper across his desk, "that you get this."

  It was a Salary Increase form. At first Nick thought it must be a typo. From one-oh-five to… two-oh-oh? "Well," Nick said, "thank you."

  "Don't," BR said sincerely, "thank me."

  People he passed in the hallways didn't know whether to greet him as a leper or a hero. The air was thick with rumors. Nick was out. But here was Nick with this radioactive smile, so how out could he be? He must be in.

  "Hey, Nick, great going on Oprah."

  "I thought Goode was going to strangle you."

  "Nick, we really spending five mil on anti-kidsmoking?"

  Gazelle was waiting for him, looking vastly relieved over having a boss who still had a job. The boards from BMG had arrived, which was timely. Not a moment to lose there.

  "Let's have a look."

  She propped them up on his couch as Nick studied them. People started to gather around his op
en door, peering in. What's happening? What's Nick up to? Palpable buzz. Suddenly Nick's office was the red-hot center of things at the Academy. And here came Jeannette, smiling like a cobra in a very fetching suit and tie.

  "Nick," she said, making her entrance, "you were fabulous on Oprah. We're getting amazing feedback."

  "You seen these death threats?" Gazelle said, holding up a fistful of WHILE YOU WERE OUT.

  "You wrote death threats down on message slips?"

  "I wouldn't pay any attention to those," Jeannette said, brushing Gazelle aside. "Give them to Carlton." Carlton handled the Academy's security.

  "Excuse me?" Gazelle said.

  "Nick wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't draw out the wackos," said Jeannette dismissively. She turned to Nick and said, "Really, you were amazing."

  "Do you want to read what some of these people had to say?" Gazelle picked one out of her hand like a playing card. " 'I'm going to pour hot tar down your throat, you rotten scumbag. See how you like it.' 'You're a slick dick aren't you, Nick Naylor? I own a high-powered rifle could drop a sack of shit like you at 250 yards, so watch your ass.' "

  "I just wanted to say how terrific you were," Jeannette said, giving Nick's elbow a little squeeze. She turned to the small crowd gathered in the doorway. "Wasn't he?" They applauded.

  Gazelle all but slammed the door on Jeannette's caboose as she walked out. "Can't stand that bitch."

  "I don't know," Nick said, "looked like she was waving the white flag."

  "Oh? Yesterday she was in here with color swatches, redecorating. Now she's in here kissing your ass. And you liking it."

  Nick looked at the boards and frowned. "Would you get me Sven Gland in Minneapolis. That is, if you're finished critiquing?" He flipped through his phone messages. Sammy Najeeb, Larry King's producer. Well well. "Who's Heather Holloway?"

  "Washington Moon reporter," Gazelle snapped.

  "What does she want?"

  "To interview you."

  "What about?"

  Gazelle put her hands on her hips. "What do you think she wants to interview you about? Peace in the Middle East?"