Thank You for Smoking

by Christopher Buckley

  His bodyguards sat at a nearby table with their Velcro bags, ready to turn Il Peccatore into an abattoir if Peter Lorre and his gang of dispatchers made another move. They were two taciturn women, steely-eyed and very butch, admittedly, but women bodyguards? He said something about it to Carlton, who just laughed and said, "Listen to me, Nicky, Godzilla wouldn't want to fuck with these babes, believe me. Anyone so much as brushes up against you is to become a major organ donor. If there's anything left whole enough to donate."

  Jeannette arrived ten minutes after eight, full of apologies, and carrying tchotchkes that she presented to Nick: a Healthy Heart 2000 tote bag.

  "Double Dewar's, up," she told the waiter. She lit a Tumbleweed Light and exhaled. "Christ, I didn't think I'd make it out of there alive. Wall-to-wall cardiologists." She shuddered.

  "I won't do the cocktail parties anymore," Nick said. "I'll sit on the panels, I'll eat lunch with them, but I will not be in a room with them while they're sucking up chardonnay and vodka. It's just too volatile."

  "Farkley Krell was there," Jeannette said. Krell was Senator Ortolan K. Finisterre's gray eminence, his chief aide, speechwriter, press secretary.

  "Did he throw his drink in your face, or merely ignore you?"

  "I was very polite. I went over, stuck out my hand, which he did not shake, and told him how much we were looking forward to working with him on secondhand smoke."

  "That was brave."

  "What else am I going to say? BR said show the flag, so. He looked at me like I was wearing mustard-gas perfume and said, 'I'm sure we'll be working together on a lot of issues, soon.' "

  "Hm. What did that mean?"

  "I don't know, but I thought I better call BR about it. That's why I'm late. He got Gomez in on it. And guess what? Finisterre's got this Guatemalan housekeeper named Rosaria. She's been with the family since when Romulus was president. Since before, since the Devonian era, whenever. Anyway, she smokes. And guess what?"

  "Don't tell me."

  "Uh-huh. They give her six months, tops."

  Nick sighed. "You know, there's never any good news. At least Polly and Bobby Jay get some good news sometimes. Sixty Minutes does a show saying red wine keeps you from having a heart attack, or someone uses a gun to do some good, like kill a serial murderer." He shook his head. "How does Gomez know this about the cleaning lady?"

  "Gomez? Are you kidding. Gomez knows everything. I think he still works for the CIA. But I've got a bad feeling about this. Finisterre's up for re-election next year, his numbers suck, he's looking for an easy win…"

  Nick stirred his vodka with his forefinger.

  "Well," Jeannette said, leaning into him, "let's talk about something else."

  The soft-shells arrived. They were tiny, delicate, crispy, dusted with just a hint of ginger, and topped with a lobster roe sauce. Refusing the wine list, Nick asked the waiter if they happened to have a particular thirty-eight-dollar bottle of Sancerre, which he knew they definitely did have because he'd checked before Jeannette arrived. The maitre d', playing his role, cooed over Nick's arcane selection. It turned out to be delicate yet assertive, dry yet full-bodied, tangy yet smooth, fruity yet not fruity. It was everything a thirty-eight-dollar bottle of wine should be, namely, good.

  "You certainly know your wines," Jeannette said, leaning in even closer.

  "Why don't we have another bottle."

  "Absolutely. No one drinks anymore. No one drinks, no one smokes…"

  In the car, Nick tried to concentrate on staying in his lane and on praying that there were no breathalyzing cops with roadblocks tonight. His BAC had to be in triple digits.

  "Let's have a nightcap," Jeannette said.

  "We could go to the Jockey Club?"

  "Too crowded," Jeannette said. "What about your place? Isn't it just off DuPont Circle?"

  "Yeah."

  She touched his arm as he shifted gears. "Then step on it," she said silkily.

  "Ohh," she said.

  "Ahh," he said.

  "Uhh," she said.

  "Ooo," he said.

  "I've wanted to do this ever since I first saw you," she said.

  "Mrrr," he said.

  "Urr."

  "Do you want me to tie you up?"

  "Hm? Uh-uh."

  "Do you have any rope?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Clothesline?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Bungee cord?"

  "Uh-uh."

  "Garbage-bag ties?"

  Nick sat up. "No. Don't we want some light in here?" Jeannette had insisted on pitch-blackness. Nick heard the sound of stretching rubber.

  "What are you doing?" he asked.

  "Putting on latex gloves."

  "Gloves?" he said.

  "Why are you putting on gloves?"

  "I love gloves. I think they're soo sexy."

  "Uh."

  She chewed his earlobe.

  "Here," she said, handing him a box in the dark.

  "What's this?"

  "Condoms," she moaned. "Extra large."

  "Oh."

  He started to open the flaps on the box. Were they the glow-in-the-dark kind? Was that why she wanted the lights out? "You're not offended? It's just, I'm so fecund."

  "No," Nick said, "of course not." He ripped open the box.

  "Here," she said, taking it from him, "let me."

  "You're not going to tie me up with them?"

  "Silly," she said.

  "Ohh," he said.

  "Ahh," she said.

  16

  BR called him at seven-thirty in the morning while he was humming C'est fumee, c'est fumee! in the shower — Jeannette had slipped away sometime in the predawn — to say that he'd just had a call from the Captain. Lady Bent was addressing the Trilateral Commission in New York and a rare fifteen-minute window had opened up in her schedule. He wanted Nick to go up to New York and talk turkey to her.

  "Why me?" Nick said.

  "The Captain thinks the sun rises and sets on your ass."

  "But what am I supposed to tell her? 'Mention cigarettes next time someone asks you about the Middle East'?"

  "The Captain thinks she'll go for you because you're young, good-looking—"

  "Oh, come on, BR."

  "And because you, like her, have been the victim of terrorism."

  "Look, I don't even speak British."

  "Okay, then call the Captain and tell him you refuse to meet with the former prime minister."

  Nick sighed. Two, alas, could play the old You tell the Captain game.

  "All right. But I've got the puffers coming in at nine."

  "Fuck the puffers. Let Jeannette speak to them."

  "They're expecting me. I can't let them down."

  "They give me the creeps, those people. What a bunch of losers."

  "They're dedicated. Look, I can do both the puffers and Cement Knickers."

  "As long as you're on that ten o'clock shuttle. By the way, top security on this. If that Holloway broad or any other reporter finds out that Nick Naylor is giving motivational training to Penelope Bent, it'll be raining shit for forty days and nights, so not a word to anyone, even your staff."

  Nick got back into the shower and lathered. He felt curiously neutral about the prospect of meeting the most famous woman in the world — British princesses and Liz Taylor aside — because he knew exactly how it was going to turn out. She'd cut him into tiny, bite-size morsels, eat him, and afterward floss her teeth with his guts.

  He relathered. Making the ten o'clock shuttle would be tight… but he couldn't let down the puffers. It was a big deal, to them.

  These were the smokers' rights groups that had spontaneously popped up around the country as the anti-smoking movement had gathered momentum. They championed the rights of the oppressed smoker who couldn't find a smoking section in a restaurant, or who had to leave his desk and go stand in the snow to have a cigarette. They targeted local politicians who favored anti-smoking ordinances, attacked the surg
eon general much more viciously than the Academy itself could, organized "smoke-ins" — pathetic as they were, Nick had to admit — and "seminars" — also pathetic — sent out form letters pre-addressed to anti-smoking congressmen and senators in Washington, gave out "Smoker Friendly" awards, mostly to restaurants that didn't put their smoking sections in the back next to the Dumpster, and distributed morale-boosting T-shirts and caps with pro-smoking emblems modeled on the old Black Panther salute: upraised fists holding cigarettes. Ostensibly, these were grassroots, heartbeat-of-America (or heart-attack-of-America) citizens groups that showed just how committed and politically active the fifty-five million smokers were. Look at all the money they were able to raise to support all these activities.

  In actual fact, there wasn't really anything spontaneous about the rise of these groups. They were front groups: the Captain's brainchild, modeled on the CIA-funded student organizations of the 1950s. They were almost entirely funded by the Academy, with the money being laundered — legally — by giving it to various middlemen who, posing as anonymous donors, passed it along to the groups as contributions. The whole operation cost next to nothing, relatively, and this way tobacco's friends in the House and Senate could stand up and point to them as evidence of a groundswell.

  Also, every now and then, if it was a very slow news day, the local newspaper might send a reporter out to interview the local head of the Coalition For Smoking Indoors or Smokers United For Freedom, or the more militant Hispanic group, Fumamos!

  Once a year all the groups came en masse to Washington to hold a smoke-in on the Mail and roam the halls of the Capitol building in search of health-conscious congressmen to harass.

  Though the Academy naturally preferred to keep a low profile in its contacts with the front groups, Nick felt it was important to have them in for a pep talk. So what if they were stooges. They didn't know that. BR was right, in his snobbish way: they were all, as a rule, a bubble off plumb. Nick at least was paid to be passionate about smoking. These people did it for free. In a funny kind of way, the puffers were just like the gaspers: humorless, obsessive, pissed off.

  And yet Nick felt that the least the Academy could do was spend half an hour with them. He wasn't about to shortchange them for some retainer-grabbing former British PM. This morning Nick was at peace with the world, despite the fact that he'd gotten almost no sleep the night before. Getting laid has that effect. And he had gotten laid. She'd put him through two boxes of her condoms. Jeannette definitely knew her way around the sack. She was thoughtful, too; he didn't want empty condom boxes strewn around for Heather to see, and when he went to throw them out, he saw that she'd taken them with her. Tidy; probably went along with the compulsion to want to tie people up.

  As he walked in, Gazelle announced that Agents Monmaney and Allman were waiting for him in his office.

  "Good morning," Nick said grimly. "Have you found them yet?"

  Agent Allman returned his greeting. Agent Monmaney did not.

  "What can I do for you?" Nick said, dispensing with further pleasantries. "I've got a very full morning."

  Monmaney took out a notepad. "Six years ago, when you were working for WRTK, you went on the air live and said that President Broadbent had died."

  "Uh-huh," Nick said.

  "How did that come about?"

  "An honest mistake."

  This elicited one of Monmaney's slow-fuse stares.

  "Does this have any bearing on finding my kidnappers?"

  "No," Agent Allman said. "Well, you're busy. We can talk more later." They left. Nick wondered: could you request a change of FBI agents?

  They were all waiting for him in the small auditorium. Nick was taken aback at the atmosphere in there, which was so full of smoke he could hardly make out the back row. These people did love to smoke.

  They gave him a standing ovation. It was gratifying. My people, he thought. The head of United Smokers of America, Ludlow Cluett, gave him a rousing introduction, making it sound like he'd fought off his kidnappers with bare fists, and said how much the Academy meant to them. Little did he know.

  Nick took the podium and started in on the speech he'd composed in the shower, in which he likened them to a long line of American freedom fighters stretching all the way back to Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys. It required some rejiggering of American history, but it could be done.

  He got as far as World War I and Pershing's urgent telegram to Washington saying the doughboys needed more cigarettes — leaving out the part about how that had produced the first cases of lung cancer in America — when all the smoke in the room started to get to him. His head spun and throbbed and he started to cough. Really cough, the kind where you have to hold a handkerchief in front of your mouth or people around you get sprayed.

  "Excuse… " he gasped, "flu. harrrrrg …"

  He managed to pull himself together and was in the midst of a little Lucy Page Gaston-bashing when he was struck by a hurricane-force coughing spasm that left him with stars in his eyes and his heart approaching paroxysmal atrial tachycardia. Tobacco Spokesman Suffers Fatal Heart Attack While Addressing Pro-Smoking Groups. People would laugh as they read his obituary. He had to get out of there.

  "In conclusion," he wheezed, "let me leave you with the thought that. "

  They were looking at him adoringly, hanging on his words. My people.

  "… that it's people… like you… who are… righting the … harg harg… fires of freedom around this… harg harg harg… great nation of… wheeze… ours."

  He reelingly stuck around to sign a few autographs, mostly on cigarette packs, and fled for the shuttle, where he opened his New York Times to the front page and read: "To save money, airlines in the United States are circulating less fresh air into the cabins of many airplanes." And they were mad at the cigarette companies?

  He ducked into the men's room at National Airport while waiting for the shuttle. It was the one place his women bodyguards couldn't follow him into. He was standing in front of the urinal minding his business when he heard a voice behind him say, "Hello, Neek!" Peter Lorre!

  Nick whirled around, still holding his spigot, which was at this point in full flow, only to find himself spraying the pants leg of an innocent and very aggrieved businessman.

  "Hey! Damnit!"

  "Sorry. Sorry," Nick stammered. "I… "

  The businessman furiously cleaned himself. Nick looked around. There was no one else in the bathroom. Nick spent most of the flight up staring at the back of the seat in front of him. He called Dr. Williams on the Airfone and described the episode. In his sympathetic way, Dr. Williams reiterated that Nick had undergone great trauma, and offered the number of a psychiatrist. Nick said he'd think about it, hung up, and went back to staring blankly at the back of the seat.

  Lady Bent was installed on a high floor of the Hotel Pierre. To get to her floor a special key had to be inserted into the control panel by an assistant manager, and as you rode up you had the feeling that sensors were examining your body; every part of it.

  The door dinged open to reveal three athletic men with bulging armpits; Nick recognized them immediately as Security, and they fixed him with the usual evaluating stares. Though out of power, Lady Bent was still under Special Branch protection on account of what she'd done to the IRA after they blew up her bulldogs. They'd vowed to get her, someday.

  Her bodyguards did not like the fact that Nick had arrived with some of his own armed guards — thank God they hadn't brought their sawed-off shotguns. A Mexican standoff developed, because Nick's Valkyries were under strict orders not to let him out of their sight, and Lady Bent's people weren't about to let them get near Lady Bent. A factotum arrived and made diplomacy between the two armed camps and asked Nick to follow him.

  They went into a vast and endless suite. The factotum knocked softly on a door, which opened to reveal not Lady Bent but her private secretary, a man of viceregal air, tall, thin, exquisitely tailored. He had strange, transparent skin — y
ou could almost see his skull underneath — and a nose so aquiline that Nick was tempted to offer it a fish to eat.

  "Ah, yes, Mr. Naylor," he said, unsmilingly offering a hand. "I'm afraid we're running a bit over this morning so if you wouldn't mind having a seat I thought we could use the time to talk about what it is, exactly, you'd like to discuss with Lady Bent."

  "Sorry?" Nick said dumbfoundedly.

  The viceroy gave a brief show of pain, suggesting that he had not achieved a double first at Cambridge in order to waste his time repeating his beautifully crafted questions for the benefit of mentally defective post-colonials. He repeated himself word for word, slowly.

  Clearing his throat, Nick asked, "I meant, what were you under the impression I was here to discuss with Lady Bent?"

  "We were told, simply, by Mr. Boykin's people, that you desired to speak with the former prime minister in connection with her arrangements with Agglomerated Tobacco. The precise nature of the discussion was never in fact specified, despite our, I must say, repeated requests for clarification on the matter. So here, as it were, we are; though I certainly hope, not at odds."

  Enough words there to choke a giraffe, but it was gradually dawning on Nick that the Captain, titan of industry and leader of men that he was, was completely cowed by this woman, despite the fact that he was paying her a small fortune and flying her around in his Gulfstream at $15,000 an hour. He couldn't quite bring himself to come right out and tell her: "Damnit, start saying nice things about my cigarettes!"

  And from the looks of it, the viceroy wasn't even going to give him any face time with old Cement Knickers unless he was first satisfied that the topic was worthy of her precious time.

  "Uh," Nick said, trying desperately to think of something to say. The viceroy stared. Nick whispered, "Is this room clean?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Has it been, you know, swept?"

  "Swept? What do you mean? For bugs?"

  Nick nodded.

  "I… should think not, in all likelihood. But why on earth would you be concerned about that?"

  Nick took out his notepad and wrote, "Is there a bathroom where we can talk?"

  "A bathroom?" the viceroy said. "What are you talking about?"