Thank You for Smoking

by Christopher Buckley

  "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 LaGro
an.?"

  "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.

  10

  A Thoroughly Modern Merchant of Death: Nick Naylor, Tobacco's Chief "Smokesman".

  An Evil Yuppie or Merely a Mass Enabler to 55 Million Smokers? Claims He Is 'Proudest' of ATS's Anti-Underage Smoking Program

  BY HEATHER HOLLOWAY MOON CORRESPONDENT

  Robby Jay and Polly were waiting for him at their usual table by the fake fire at Bert's. Bobby Jay was wearing a smirk the size of the Trump Tower. Polly appeared not to have drawn a conclusion yet about the full-page story in the Moon's "Lifestyles" section, but she looked at Nick as he sat down — late — with more than usual curiosity. "You look tired," she said pointedly.

  "Rough morning," Nick said. "Advertising-ban strategy session, sick-building-syndrome position paper to get out, radio debate with Craighead. Get this — Helpless, Hopeless, and Stupid is going to start using the phrase 'tobacco and other drugs' in all its literature. So now we're just like heroin. Or alcohol," he tweaked her.

  Nick ordered a vodka negroni. It was nice, these Mod Squad lunches. You could drink hard liquor in the middle of a school day without people assuming you were an alcoholic underachiever. Strange how in America in the 1950s, at the height of its industrial and imperial power, men drank double-martinis for lunch. Now, in its decline, they drank fizzy water. Somewhere something had gone terribly wrong.

  "What's with him?" Nick said. Bobby Jay was poring over Heather's article, running his hook down the columns of ink as though he was looking for something crucial.

  "I can't quite figure out if I won my hundred bucks," Bobby Jay said. " 'Merchant of Death,' huh? Well I guess she got that right."

  "You didn't… " Polly said with a look of latent ferocity. "Of course not. What do you take me for?"

  "I'm not," she said, tapping loose her cigarette ash, "entirely sure." Bobby Jay read aloud from the Moon:

  " 'Morality is not the issue here,' Naylor told the Moon. 'Tobacco is a hundred percent legal product that nearly sixty million American adults enjoy, just as they do coffee, chocolate, chewing gum, or any number of other oral refreshments.' "

  " 'Oral refreshments'?" Polly snorted. "That's new."

  Nick winked. "Sounds like a breath mint, doesn't it?"

  Bobby Jay continued:

  "Even his adversaries, and there are many of them, admit that Naylor is a formidable opponent. 'He's very, very slick,' said Gordon R. Craighead, head of Health and Human Services' Office of Substance Abuse Prevention, the tobacco lobby's principal federal opponent, 'and very, very smart, and that makes him very, very dangerous. This is an industry that kills about half a million Americans a year, and this nicely dressed, smooth-talking, BMW-driving Joseph Goebbels manages to make it sound like we're against free speech.' "

  "The BMW-driving bit really hurt," Nick grinned.

  Fortunately, Dr. Wheat had had a cancellation an
d was able to see Nick after lunch. Though his delicious evenings with Heather went jar toward stress reduction, and were a darn sight more fun than Prozac, the Larry King phone threat, plus having bodyguards, had gotten to him.

  Nick had been going to Dr. Wheat for about a year. Dr. Wheat had a lot of clients in high-stress jobs. Occasionally, Nick's neck had a tendency to kink so that he couldn't swivel his head, and since part of his job involved being a "talking head" on television, it behooved him to have a head that swiveled. He'd tried neuromuscular massage, yoga, acupuncture, electronic relaxation machines that emitted bleeping noises and had pulsating red lights that supposedly persuaded your brain that you were relaxed, when in fact you were extremely alarmed; also Valium, Halcion, Atarax, and other state-of-the-art calmer-downers, some more controlled than others. Finally someone — the chief spokesman for the Savings and Loan Association, who had herself been coping with stress — suggested that he go see her D.O., or osteopath, who, she assured Nick, were real doctors. So Nick went and Dr. Wheat, a pleasant young man — Nick noted with some chagrin that he was now not only older than most policemen, but also than many doctors — felt his neck, tsk-tsked, and performed a series of high-velocity, low-impact maneuvers on him, each of which resulted in a terrible crrrack of various bones, but which afterward allowed him to rotate his head almost like the girl in The Exorcist. Nick had become quite a fan of OMT, or osteopathic manipulative technique; in fact, he had even done some pro bono work for their trade association. It was he who had come up with the successful slogan for their ads: "D.O.s Are People Doctors."

  Dr. Wheat felt Nick's trapezius muscles (anterior and posterior), the suboccipitals, and his sternocleidomastoid. By now he knew these muscles as well as suburban Arlington, which is on the whole much more complicated than the human anatomy.

  "Boy," he said — he was very chipper, Dr. Wheat, mid-western and good-natured—"if I didn't know better, I'd say rigor mortis had set in. What have you been doing to yourself?" He did a few HVLIs, but was not satisfied with the result, and disappearing, returned pushing a disturbing-looking device on wheels. It looked like something that the Iraqi secret police would use on someone caught writing saddam sucks on a public wall; it had straps and electrodes. Dr. Wheat rubbed jelly on parts of Nick's chest, attached the electrodes, and said, "You may feel a slight burning."