Thank You for Smoking

by Christopher Buckley

  It felt like he was being struck on the back with wooden mallets. He realized that he was in fact arching off the table with every jolt of current like a frog in a high school biology class experiment.

  "H-how m-many v-volts?"

  "We're at three-thirty already. Very impressive. I don't like to go much higher than four hundred. The smell of burning flesh alarms the other patients." Dr. Wheat was prone to black humor. He explained that this was DC current that was coursing through Nick's body, that being preferable to AC, which would have the effect of stopping his heart and cooking him. After fifteen minutes, he turned it off and tried to rotate Nick's neck, pronouncing himself still unsatisfied with the result.

  "Have you ever considered a less stressful line of work?" he said, opening a cabinet and taking out a bottle of liquid and a hypodermic needle. "Like air traffic controller?"

  "And abandon the fifty-five million people who are counting on me," said Nick, checking his chest for burn marks. "What is that?"

  "This," Dr. Wheat said, filling the syringe, "is for the stubborn cases." He sank the needle into Nick's shoulder by the neck. It was not a good sensation going in, but… oooooooh what a delicious feeling suffused through all those hypercontracted muscle bands. Suddenly it felt as if his head were borne on clouds.

  "Whoa," he said, rotating like a gyrocopter, "what is that?"

  "Novocaine. We need to break a cycle here."

  "Could I get a prescription for that?"

  "I don't think so. I'm going to give you some Soma tablets. Four a day, no driving, and let's see you in two days."

  Nick felt pretty great, humming down Route 50 toward Washington, trying to see if he could lose his bodyguards. Little game he'd developed, and good sport. He zoomed over the Roosevelt Bridge and turned hard right onto Rock Creek, left onto the Whitehurst and up Foxhall to Saint Euthanasius for his appointment with the Reverend Griggs.

  His bodyguards pulled up in a pissed-off screech of tires as he was walking into the administration building, and came running over sweatily.

  "Hi guys." The guys didn't look happy.

  "Nicky, I really wish you wouldn't do that, or we're going to have one of us in the car with you."

  "Re-lax, Mike." It's soo easy with one cc of novocaine in your traps.

  They waited inside for the Rev, who came after a few minutes and started at finding so much suited gristle in his quiet waiting room. "Ah yes," he caught on, "these must be the gentlemen referred to in the newspaper article today. Terrible business." Nick told the boys that he was unlikely to be assaulted in the offices of the Rev and left them to peruse copies of Anglican Digest and Modern Headmaster while he went off to conduct whatever business it was the Rev had in mind.

  "Thank you so much for coming," he said, ushering him toward a leather chair. His study looked as though it had been decorated in 1535: floor-to-ceiling Tudor wainscoting, mullioned windows, a threadbare Persian rug, and the faint smell of a hundred years of spilled dry sherry.

  They had a little preliminary chin-wag about the recent controversial nomination of a female suffragan bishop. Being a lapsed Catholic, Nick had only a tenuous grasp of hierarchical Episcopalian nomenclature. In fact, he had no clue as to what a suffragan bishop was, except that it sounded like a bishop in distress. Eventually he grasped that it just meant the number-two bish. Since Joey's entire future lay in the hands of the Reverend Griggs, Nick feigned keen interest in the controversy, until even the Reverend Griggs seemed to lose interest and with a soft clearing of his long throat came to the much-awaited point.

  "As you know, we hold an auction every year, to raise money for the scholarship students. I was wondering if your association might possibly be interested in participating? This recession has put everyone in a pinch. Even our more—" he smiled " — pecunious parentry."

  Geez, Louise. For this Nick had been churning all week? So the Reverend Griggs could hit him up for some underwriting? And yet the Soma and the novocaine had him in a complaisant frame of mind. He reflected warmly and fuzzily that things really had not changed much since 1604. That was the year that James I, king of England, published (anonymously, pamphleteering not being seemly in monarchs) a "Counterblaste to Tobacco." He noted that two Indians from the Virginia colony had been brought to the Sceptered Isle in 1584 to demonstrate this newfangled thing called smoking. By the standards set by Dances With Wolves and The Last of the Mohicans, James not been very pc.

  "What honor or policie," thundered His Royal Highness, "can move us to imitate the barbarous and beastly manner of the wilde, godlesse, and slavish Indian, especially in so vile and stinking a custome?" He allowed as how it had first been used as an antidote to the dreaded "pockes" — which had ruined the complexion of his relative Elizabeth I — but wrote that doctors now considered it a filthy, disgusting habit, providing in a way the first surgeon general's report, and a full 360 years before Luther Terry's in 1964.

  As for himself, wrote His Grace, smoking was "a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible, Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse."

  By 1612, however, James I was having second thoughts. His exchequer was bursting at the bolts with the import duties on tobacco from the Virginia colony in the James River Valley. In fact, nothing further was heard from His Majesty ever again on the loathesome custome. And thus it has remained, in a way, even to the present day, as the U.S. government goes about like Captain Renaud in Rick's Cafe shouting, "I'm shocked — shocked!" while its trade representatives squeeze foreign governments — particularly Asian ones — to relax their own warning labels and tariffs and let in U.S. weed.

  "Mind if I smoke?"

  The Rev looked momentarily stricken. "No. Please, yes, by all means."

  Nick lit up a Camel, but refrained from blowing one of his nice tight smoke rings, despite what a nice halo it would have made around the Rev's head. "Ashtray?"

  "Of course, let's see," the Rev fumbled, looking helplessly around the study. "We must have an ashtray, somewhere." But there was nothing, and with Nick's cigarette already lit, the fuse was, so to speak, burning. Nick took deep drags, hastening the process.

  "Margaret," the Rev said desperately into the phone, "do we have an ashtray anywhere? Anything, yes." He sat down.

  "We're finding one."

  Nick took in another deep drag. The cigarette hovered over the Persian rug. The door opened, Margaret bearing a chipped tea plate embossed with the coat of arms of Saint Euthanasius. "This was all I could find," she said in a voice somewhere between embarrassment and resentment that she had been called upon to play enabler to the blacke stinking fume.

  "Yes, thank you, Margaret," said the Rev, nearly grabbing the plate and handing it over to Nick mere seconds before the ash fell onto the school motto: Esto Excellens Inter Se. ("Be Excellent to Each Other.")

  "Mainly," Nick said, "we sponsor sports events. But we might be able to work something out." "Wonderful," the Rev said.

  "I'll have to run it by our Community Activities people. But we speak the same language."

  "Marvelous," said the Rev, twisting in his Queen Anne chair. "I wonder, would it be necessary to… promulgate the… exact provenance of the underwriting?"

  " 'Underwriting by the Academy of Tobacco Studies' on the programs?" Nick exhaled. "That is pretty standard."

  "Yes, certainly. Yes. I was only wondering if perhaps there was some other… corporate entity that we could acknowledge. Generously, of course."

  "Hm," Nick said. "Well, there is the Tobacco Research Council."

  "Yes," the Rev said with disappointment, "I suppose." The TRC had been in the news recently because of the Benavides liability suit. It had come out that the TRC had been set up by the tobacco companies in the fifties as a front group, at a time when American smokers realized they were coughing more and enjoying it less, the idea being to persuade everyone that the tob
acco industry, by gum, wanted to get to the bottom of these mysterious "health" issues, too. The TRC's first white paper blamed the rise of lung cancer and emphysema on a global surge in pollens. All this, apparently, the Rev knew.

  "Are there by chance any other groups?"

  Nick clasped his hands together and made a steeple. "We are affiliated with the Coalition for Health."

  "Ah!" the Rev said, clapping his hands. "Perfect!"

  The Rev walked Nick to his car. Nick asked, "By the way, how's Joey doing?"

  "Joey?"

  "My son. He's in your seventh grade."

  "Ah! Extremely well," the Rev said. "Bright lad."

  "So everything's okay?"

  "Spiffing. Well then," he shook Nick's hand, "thank you for coming. And I'll look forward to hearing from" — he winked, the dog-collared son of a bitch actually winked—"the Coalition for Health."

  11

  The novocaine had worn off by now, but Nick still felt pretty good and loose as he roared out of the Saint Euthanasius parking lot ahead of his bodyguards, and after the way he'd handled the Rev, entitled to his sense of triumph. The Soma had crept in on its little cat feet and was now purring in his central nervous system, hissing away all bad thoughts. He lost Mike and the boys by executing a sudden left turn at a red light off Massachusetts Avenue, narrowly avoiding an oncoming dry cleaning van and almost flattening a group of Muslims returning from prayer at the mosque; at which point it occurred to him that Dr. Wheat had told him not even to drive, much less play Parnelli Jones in city traffic.

  Jeannette reached him on the car phone to say that she needed to get with him on media planning for next week's Environmental Protection Agency's report on second-hand smoke. Yet another bit of good news on the tobacco horizon. Erhardt, their scientist in residence, was cranking up the report about tobacco retarding the onset of Parkinson's disease.

  "I'll be there in ten minutes," Nick said, feeling a little tired at the prospect of another meeting. His whole life was meetings. Did they have this many meetings in the Middle Ages? In Ancient Rome and Greece? No wonder their civilizations died out, they probably figured decadence and the Visigoths were preferable to more meetings.

  "I'm going to swing by Cafe Ole, pick up some cappuccino," he yawned, feeling a little Somatose. "You want some?"

  "God, please."

  He parked in the basement garage — no sight of Mike, Jeff, and Tom, he noted with satisfaction; some bodyguards — and made his was upstairs to the Atrium. There were a dozen food places here with names like Peking Gourmet (very low mein and chicken MSG), Pasta Pasta (sold by weight), RBY (Really Bodacious Yoghurt), and So What's Not To Like Bagel. There were tables around the fountain where people could eat. It was a nice place to eat lunch, especially during the Washington summers when no one wanted to venture out onto melting sidewalks.

  Nick was standing in front of the counter at Cafe Ole waiting for his two double cappuccinos when he became aware of someone staring at him. He turned but didn't see anyone, except for a bum. Having been born in 1952, he still thought of them as "bums," rather than "the homeless," though he was careful never to call them that. In fact, he had tried to set up a program whereby the cigarette companies would distribute free cigarettes to homeless shelters, but the gaspers got wind of it and got HHS to stop it, so it was no free smokes for those who needed them most.

  Nick recognized most of the bums who would pandhandle in the Atrium until Security chased them away, but not this one. Quite a specimen he was, a hulking, big figure, and talk about the Grunge Look — he was wearing the remnants of about a dozen overcoats. The hair hung down in greasy clumps over his face, which looked like it had last seen soap and water during the seventies. He approached.

  "Gaaaquadder?" His eyes were clearer than most of these guys', which looked like bad egg yolks.

  Nick gave him a dollar and asked him if he wanted a cigarette.

  "Gaaaablessyoubruhh." Nick gave him the rest of the pack.

  "Gaaaamash?" Nick gave him a disposable lighter. His cappuccinos were ready. He headed off for the escalator that led up to the lobby where the office elevators were. The homeless guy followed along. Nick wasn't looking for a relationship here, but being a lapsed Catholic, he would never be entirely sure, despite his certainty that it was all a crock, that one of these wretches wasn't the mufti Christ checking to see who was being charitable toward the least of his creatures, and who wasn't and was therefore going to have such a hot time in the eternal hereafter as to make a Washington summer seem Antarctic by comparison.

  "What's your name?" Nick asked. "Reggggurg."

  "Nick. You from around here?"

  "Balmurrr."

  "Nice town." They were on the escalator now. "Well," Nick said, "hang in there."

  He felt something poke him in the middle of his back, like an umbrella tip. Then he heard a voice — it came from the bum but it was a whole new one — say, "Don't turn around. Don't move, don't speak. That's the muzzle of a nine millimeter, and if you don't do everything I tell you to, when I tell you to, you'll be on a slab at the morgue with a tag on your toe by the time that coffee cools."

  As introductions went, it was attention-getting. They reached the top of the escalator. There were so many people all over the place Nick wanted to shout, Help! but the voice, the voice had been very emphatic that he not do that.

  "See that limo over there?" said the bum. "Walk toward it very slowly. Do not run."

  Nick did not run. The limo's windows were opaque-black. They had about fifty feet to go. Here he was, all these people — he was being kidnapped in broad daylight, in front of hundreds of people. And— why?

  He paused about five feet from the car. The gun dug into his spine. "Keep moving."

  He should be remembering details. It was black. No, dark blue. Cadillac. No, Lincoln. No, Cadillac. That would be a big help. So few limousines in Washington.

  The rear door opened.

  All those Beirut hostage news stories flashed before him. He was last seen being forced into the trunk of a black sedan four years ago. At least they weren't putting him in the trunk.

  Nick became aware of pain in his hands. He was holding his two cappuccinos in their Styrofoam cups. His heart was beating fast. No need for caffeine.

  He turned round and threw the cappuccinos at the pistol-packing bum. They hit him on the chest and bounced off. The lids held. The cups fell to the ground and burst open, scalding his ankles with foamy cappuccino. How many times in his life had the plastic tops come off when they weren't supposed to, burning his hands, his lap, ruining the upholstery, making brown stains in the crotch of tan summer suit pants, usually before an important meeting. But no, now, the one time in his life it would have actually helped for the tops to come off, . they had held, the insolent, mocking little plastic bastards.

  The bum shoved him backward into the limousine. Nick's head took a whack on the door jamb on his way in. Hands pulled him in, and while the lights of the Milky Way pulsated through his optic nerve, a black silk hood went over his head and his hands were efficiently cinched behind him with what felt like garbage bag ties. The car took off, slowly, into the traffic.

  "Hello, Neek. It's so good to meet you finally."

  It was a strange accent, mittel-European, creepy and oleaginous.

  "What's the deal, here?" Nick said.

  "Can you breathe okay under de hood? It would be terrible if you couldn't breathe, wouldn't it?" A little cackle of laughter. It sounded familiar, like.

  "Where are we going?" Nick asked.

  "What an incredibly unrealistic question, Neek. You're expecting maybe an address?" That accent. That's it — Peter Lorre, the actor who played whatsisname, the greasy little hustler in Casablanca, Uguarte. Only Lorre, as far as Nick could recall, was long dead.

  "Is this for ransom money?"

  "It's for de mortgage, Neek." Laughter. Nick decided to dispense with further conversational ice-breakers.

  After about h
alf an hour, the car stopped, doors opened, hands pulled him out, doors opened and shut, muffled voices spoke, they went up a flight of steps, down a hall, another door opened and shut, he was pushed down onto a chair, his ankles were tied to its legs. None of this was reassuring. The hood stayed on. That was reassuring, assuming they didn't want him to see their faces. The tie binding his wrist was undone, and now came a part he really didn't like at all, not one bit: they started to remove his clothes.

  "Excuse me. What's happening?"

  "Don't worry, Neek, dere aren't any women here. You don't have to be embarrassed." That voice. It was creepy and unnerving. That was it for Peter Lorre movies, never mind that Casablanca was one ofhis favorites. "Oh, I'm so sorry, you must be dying for a cigarette."

  In fact, a cigarette would be good right about now, yes.

  "On the udder hand, if you wait a leetle while, you'll have all de nicotine you can handle." Laughter. And not a nourishing kind of laughter either, more what you'd expect from someone with severe psychological problems. Maybe he should try to keep up some conversation.

  "Can we talk about this? Usually, they let you know why they're kidnapping you. Otherwise, like, what's the point?"

  "You know why, Neek. We want you to stop killing people. So many people. More dan half a million people a year. And dat's just in the United States."

  "There's no data to support that," Nick said, who perhaps could be forgiven, this once, for using the singular rather than plural verb form.

  "Neek! Dat's not going to woork. You're not on de Oprah Winfrey show anymore."

  "Well, it's nowhere near half a million. Even hardcore gaspers only claim as high as 435,000."

  "Gaspers. I like dat, Neek. Is dat what you call people who want the tobacco companies to stop committing human sacrifice for the sake of their profits?"

  Nick was down to his boxer shorts now. He heard the sound of cardboard boxes being opened. With a black hood over your head, you become very curious about noises. More ripping, like plastic wrapping.