Thank You for Smoking

by Christopher Buckley

  "Thanks, Bryant. Four days ago, Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby, was abducted outside his office in Washington,D.C. He was found, later that night, with a sign around his neck that said he had been, and I quote, 'Executed for crimes against humanity.' His body was covered with a lethal number of nicotine patches, the kind prescribed for smokers who want to give up. According to doctors at George Washington University Hospital, he was near death when he was brought in. The FBI is investigating the case, which seems to indicate that at least one element of the anti-smoking movement has adopted the tactics of terrorists. Mr. Naylor joins us this morning from his bed at George Washington University hospital. Good morning."

  "Good morning, Katie."

  "I know this has been quite an ordeal for you. My first question to you — How did you survive? Reports are that you were literally covered with patches."

  "Well, Katie, I guess you could say that smoking saved my life."

  "How?"

  "As a smoker, a pastime I happen to enjoy along with fifty-five million other adult Americans, I was able to absorb the dosage, though it did almost kill me. If those policeman hadn't found me when they did, I wouldn't be chatting with you today."

  "We'll get back to the issue of smoking—"

  "If I might point out, Katie, this just goes to prove what we've been saying for some time now, namely, don't mess with these nicotine patches. They're killers."

  "But not if you use them as directed, surely."

  "Katie, out of respect for your viewers, I won't go into what these things did to me, the nausea, the projectile vomiting, the paroxysmal atrial tachycardia, the cutting off of blood to the brain, the numbness and cold in your extremities, the horrible skin rash, the blurred vision and migrainous neuralgia. So I won't go into all that, except to say, If that's what a bunch of these patches can do, well, huh, I can only imagine what just one could do to a normal, healthy smoker. So put me down for a big resounding, Just say no."

  "We understand that a note from the kidnappers was delivered to the Washington Sun."

  "I'm not sure I'm supposed to comment on that, Katie."

  "It's in today's edition."

  "It is?"

  "So it's already out there. Would you like to hear what it says?"

  "Uh… "

  "Quote, Nick Naylor is responsible for the deaths of billions—"

  "Billions? Millions, surely."

  "No, it says billions."

  "Well, that's absurd. I've only been with the Academy for six years, so even if you accepted the 435,000-a-year figure, which of course is completely nonsense anyway, I would only have been quote responsible unquote for what, two-point-six million. So I don't know where this individual is getting 'billions' from? What am I, McDonald's?"

  "Should I go on?"

  "Please, yes, by all means, I'm fascinated."

  "He was dispatched as a warning to the tobacco industry. If they don't stop making cigarettes right now, we will dispatch others."

  "Was this by any chance written on the surgeon general's letterhead?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I thought I recognized her style. No, of course, I'm kidding, Katie. Humor, you know. The best medicine…"

  "Do you have any idea who might have done this to you?"

  "No, but if those people are listening, as I'm sure they are, being probably big fans of yours as I certainly am, I'd like to say to them, Come forward, turn yourselves in. I'm not going to press charges."

  "You won't?"

  "No, Katie, I think people who would do something like this need help, more than anything."

  "That's a very tolerant point of view."

  "Well, Katie, you can't spell tolerance without the t in tobacco. Our position all along has been, we understand there are people who care strongly about smoking. We're saying, Let's work together on this. Let's get some dialogue going. This is a big country, and there's plenty of room in it for smoking and nonsmoking areas."

  The first call was from the Captain. "Brilliant, son, brilliant."

  BR called. "I gotta hand it to you, Nick, you blew us all away. We're out of breath here."

  Jeannette came on. "Nick, you give great talking head."

  Polly called, laughing. "What was that all about?"

  "It's not up to me," Nick said. "I just hope it turns out to be Virginia they took me to and not Maryland."

  "Why?"

  "Because," Nick said, "Virginia has the death penalty."

  13

  On Nick's first day back at work, BR gave him a welcome-back speech in front of the whole staff. He made it sound as though Nick had outwitted his captors and escaped. In fact, Nick still had no idea how he had ended up on the Mall, but he doubted that he had outwitted them as it's difficult to outwit while having a heart attack and projectile vomiting. The staff treated him like a returning war hero. All the attention was starting to make him a little squirmy, and now here was BR suddenly sounding like Henry V at the battle of Agincourt, exhorting his happy band of brothers. Then he quoted Churchill during Britain's darkest hour: "Never give in," he said. "Never. Never. Never!"

  The staff stood up and applauded. Some had tears in their eyes. Well, he'd never seen anything like this at the Academy of Tobacco Studies. His kidnapping had had an amazing, morale-boosting effect. It was as if the long, uneasy truce between tobacco and the hostile world out there had finally broken down into open warfare, and by God, if this was war, then let it start here. They were ready. People who had never been inside a military base, much less on the business end of a gun, were walking around using phrases like lock and load and incoming. It was galvanizing, truly. Talk about esprit de corps. Nick was moved.

  "Nick," said Gomez O'Neal, "a question." Gomez, tall, dark, pockmarked, with arms like bridge cable, was head of Issues Intelligence, the division in charge of coming up with personal information about the private lives of prominent gaspers and tobacco litigants. He'd been in some unspecified branch of the government, and did not invite questions about his past. For vacations, he went on one-man survival treks in places like Baffin Island and the Gobi Desert. BR seemed not to like Gomez, but then Gomez did not seem to care; he was not the sort of person one casually fired, any more than presidents had been able to get rid ofj. Edgar Hoover.

  "Shoot," Nick said, a figure of speech one used carefully around Gomez.

  "You gonna quit smoking?"

  There was nervous laughter. The truth of it was that Nick had not had a cigarette in over a week; the thought of putting any more nicotine into his system held little appeal. It occurred to him that this might even qualify him for workmen's comp.

  They were all looking at him expectantly. He couldn't let them down. He was more than their spokesman now; he was their hero.

  "Anyone got a smoke?" he said. Twenty people produced packs. He accepted a Camel, lit up, took just a little down into his lungs, and exhaled. It felt quite good, so he took another puff and let it out. People smiled approvingly.

  Then spots appeared. Soon the whole Milky Way galaxy was pulsing through his optic nerve and he was in a cold sweat and the room and — oh no, not again, not in front of the whole staff.

  "Nick?" BR said.

  "I'm fine," he said wobbily, putting the Camel down in an ashtray. The taste in his mouth. Uch.

  "Take it slow at first," BR said.

  "Maybe you should start with filters," someone said helpfully.

  There was this awkward silence as Nick stood there in front of them, blinking, quietly reeling.

  "Hey Nick," Jeff Tobias said. "Did you see the figures on female eighteen to twenty-ones?"

  "Uh-uh." My kingdom for a wintergreen Life Saver.

  "Up twenty percent."

  "Wonderful," Nick murmured.

  BR added, "Wait until after Nick's anti-smoking campaign." Quite a few chuckles. "By the way, when do we get to see boards?"

  "I'm videoconferencing with Sven this afternoon," Nick said, noticing that hi
s fingers had gone cold again. Should he call Dr. Williams? You smoked a cigarette?

  "I'm sure we're all eager to see what he's come up with. Okay," BR said, "now I'd like to turn the meeting over to Carlton, who is going to brief us on some new security procedures."

  Carlton warmed up his audience with a joke about two guys who go camping and a grizzly bear attacks them in the middle of the night and one guy puts on his sneakers and starts lacing them up. The other guys says, "Why are you putting on sneakers, you can't outrun a grizzly bear." And his friend tells him, "I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you." The point, Carlton said, was that in anti-terrorism, a phrase that put everyone into buttlock, you win by making the terrorists pick on the other guy. People glanced uneasily at each other. We few, we happy band of brothers.

  Warming to his message — and was Carlton ever in his element— he emphasized the importance of not setting patterns. Everyone should leave for work at a different time every day, take a different route every day, be alert to strangers, especially ones wearing uniforms. He passed out photocopied sheets entitled what to do if you find yourself locked in a car trunk. People stared at it, hemorrhaging macho. Locked… in a trunk?

  "Now let's talk about explosives." This part of his presentation went on for a full quarter-hour, during which he enumerated some three dozen types of bombs, including one that was attached to your windshield wiper blades. "Turn on the wipers and boom, eye-level, in the kisser." Betty O'Malley went pale.

  BR interjected, "Now give us the good news." Carlton opened a case and passed out little black things that looked like beepers. They were electronic locator devices, like the ones in life rafts that send out emergency signals. If anyone was snatched, they should push the two little buttons together and the whole U.S. government would be alerted. Then he opened another case and gave everyone little canisters of pepper gas. These were to be spritzed into the faces of any suspicious individuals. But only after they'd made the first move. And only if it looked like they were about to kill you. Otherwise, do exactly what they said, even if they wanted you to get into that lockedtrunk.

  Any questions? By now you could have heard a pin drop, and the floor was carpeted.

  "I'm not sure I understand," said Charley Noble, from Legislative Affairs, "are we all targets?"

  "I don't know the answer to that," BR said, "but I'm not prepared to take any chances. Carlton has arranged for everyone here, and I mean everyone, no exceptions — except of course for you, Nick — to spend next weekend at a facility in West Virginia where they train government people in anti-terrorist driving tactics."

  There was intense murmuring. "You'll all receive instruction in— what is the drill, Carlton?"

  "Examining a vehicle for bombs, evasive maneuvers, J-turns and bootleg turns, proper ramming technique, and surveillance detection."

  "Bombs?" said Syd Berkowitz of the Coalition for Health. "Are there bomb threats?"

  "Just a precaution. I assure you that the FBI is going to have these people in custody very, very soon. In the meantime, we've made arrangements with 1800 K Street to use their basement parking. For the time being, there'll be no parking in our own underground garage."

  By now the murmuring was quite loud. BR had to raise his own voice to be heard. "People, people. This is just precautionary. There have been no bomb threats. Anyway, we're on a high floor here. And I'm certain everyone here could handle a little smoke inhalation."

  Jeannette laughed. No one else did.

  After the meeting, BR took Nick aside. He handed him a box of NicoStop patches. Nick held it as if BR had just handed him a fresh, steaming turd.

  "Guess what?" BR said. "Sales of your 'deadly Band-Aids' are off forty-five percent since your gig on the Today show."

  Nick handed him back the box with a shudder. No more nicotine for him.

  "I feel awkward scoring points off this rotten business, but, God, talk about stepping in shit and coming out smelling like roses. Look at this press." He handed Nick a thick folder, a veritable media hero sandwich, clippings sticking out like bits of lettuce and ham. Nick had already seen most of them. He'd been on all the morning network shows, all the cable shows. The Europeans and Asians, who were still puffing away happily, couldn't get enough of him. Nick had experienced the thrill of being simultaneously translated. The French interviewer, a very fetching and soulful-looking woman, had done a little medical research on vasoconstricting and had put it to him: had it affected his "romantic capabilities"? Nick blushed, said no, pas du tout, and broke out in cold sweat. He'd been on Slovakian TV, a very important appearance as Agglomerated Tobacco, the Captain's own company, was moving into the former Eastern Bloc in a big way, introducing a brand whose name translated as "Throat-Scraper." The Eastern Euros, who'd been brought up on cigarettes that tasted like burning nuclear waste, were old-fashioned about their smokes: they demanded more, not less tar. To them, lung cancer was proof of quality.

  "Jeannette tells me that Young Modern Man wants to do a week-in-the-life story on you," BR said.

  "Yeah," Nick said, again annoyed at the Jeannette-BR pipeline, "I'm inclined to pass on that one."

  "Japan's very important to us, and they do reach two out of three Japanese men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one." This was the age group known within the Academy as "entry-level."

  "I just don't know if I want Japanese reporters hanging out in my office for a week. Or any reporters. I think maybe I'm getting a little overexposed."

  "Two out of three, Nick. Millions and millions of young, modern Japanese. You're a hero to these people. That brings a certain responsibility."

  "I'll get back to you." The nice thing was that Nick was now a certifiable, eight-hundred-pound gorilla, with I'll-get-back-to-you privileges.

  "I spoke to the Captain earlier. He hopes you'll be able to do it." Agglomerated was moving into Japan, too, now that the U.S. trade rep had threatened to slap imported soy sauce with a 50 percent tariff unless they opened their ports and lungs to U.S. tobacco products.

  "I'll get back to him, too." Nick was pushing the envelope a little here, but all BR could do was make a face that said, All right, but I hope you know what you're doing.

  All this attention. And Sammy Najeeb had called this morning to ask — to insist — that he go back on the Larry King show. She and Larry were sure, knew in their bones, that the threatening caller would call in again, and could Nick imagine what kind of TV that would make?

  "By the way," BR said, full of drama, "Penelope Bent is coming in next week and guess who she wants to meet?" Penelope, now Lady Bent, had recently signed a seven-figure-a-year deal with Bonsacker International, formerly Bonsacker Tobacco, Inc., to lend a little clahss to their board and annual shareholders' meetings. This was increasingly common among the Big Six tobacco companies, which were retaining a lot of substantive celebrities — Vietnam-era POWs, former presidents of prestigious universities; they'd even asked Mother Teresa — to shill for them under the guise of celebrating freedom of speech, or the Constitution. The former British PM was their latest acquisition.

  "Oh?" Nick said.

  "The Captain called me this morning. They're all still in awe of her and haven't been able to get in a word edgewise. She's quite a talker, apparently. Anyway, he thought you might take the opportunity to give her a little gospel so if she gets any hostile questions about the relationship, everyone will be singing off the same sheet of music. Stress diversity. Agglomerated isn't just tobacco, it's infant formula, frozen foods, industrial lubricants, air filters, bowling balls. You know the drill."

  "Yes, I do," Nick said, miffed at being given advice on spin control. "I doubt that the Titanium Lady needs lessons on handling the press from me."

  "She wants to meet you, Nick," BR said brightly. "You should be flattered."

  "Okay, I'm flattered."

  "Maybe you'll pick up some tips on how to deal with terrorists. Remember what she did to the IRA after they blew up her bulld
ogs?"

  "Aren't I supposed to be going out to Hollywood?"

  "We're working on setting up a meeting with Jeff Megall's people. It's like getting an appointment with God."

  "The Jeff Megall?" Nick said.

  "Himself. But the Captain says he wants you right here where the press can find you until they get tired of you. Frankly, if I'd known that a kidnapping would result in this kind of coverage, I'd have kidnapped you myself. Speaking of L.A., as long as you're going to be out there… "

  "Uh-huh," Nick said suspiciously.

  "Your friend Lorne Lutch."

  "He's not my friend, BR. All I did was talk you people out of suing him. I ducked into a closet at the Larry King show to avoid running into him."

  "He's been hitting us very hard lately," BR said. "Did you see the things he said about us last week? No, of course not, you were still in Intensive Care. Your pal Oprah had him on with the Silver-O's girl. You should have seen them, both talking through their voice boxes. A duet for two kazoos."

  It was one Oprah appearance Nick was glad not to have been invited to share.

  "It was pathetic. Her being a woman, I can forgive her. But him. The man has no sense of personal responsibility."

  "He's dying, BR. We should probably cut the man some slack. If it was me, I'd slip him some money, help out with the expenses."

  BR said, "I'm not sure that's the approach I'd take, but you and the Captain think alike on this one."

  "Okay," Nick said to Sven, who was staring back at him on the video-phone, "does it gobble?"

  Sven said, "I want to point out at the beginning that thrilled as we are to be on this account, and we're extremely thrilled, everyone here, what you asked us to produce was an ineffective message that will have no impact on the people it is targeted at."

  Nick had the feeling he was being taped. It was like having a conversation in the Oval Office with Nixon at the height of Watergate.

  "I just want it clear what our role is," Sven said.

  Nick said, "Okay, you've established that your role is the tormented artiste. Can we proceed?" Honestly, these creative hothouse orchids. And in Minneapolis, no less. Nick still had frostbite from his visit there six months ago.