Thank You for Smoking

by Christopher Buckley

  "What?"

  "Travel."

  "No."

  Agent Monmaney read aloud off the memo paperclipped to Nick's plane tickets. "Dulles-LAX. Mahmoud will meet you at the gate."

  "Oh, that. Business. I thought you meant pleasure." Agent Monmaney gave Nick his timber wolf stare.

  "Why are you asking me this?" Nick said.

  "Don't worry," Allman said. "He's just that way. Could we see your apartment?"

  "My apartment?"

  "Yes."

  "Well… are you looking for something?"

  "In cases where there's loss of memory due to trauma, it makes sense to take everything into account."

  "You understand," Agent Monmaney said, "that this is a request. You're not required to comply with it."

  "I'm not?"

  "No. You're only required to comply with a search warrant."

  "Right," Allman said. "But we don't have a warrant."

  Nick thought: was there anything in his apartment he needed to worry about? Anything indelicate? No. Jeannette was so meticulous about picking up the limp love zeppelins. Oh Christ. The hash brownies in the freezer. Whatshername, Paula, the stewardess, had brought some over one night two years ago. His cleaning lady had eaten one by mistake and cleaned the toilet with the vacuum cleaner. He meant to throw them away. Why hadn't he thrown them away? Fool! Idiot! Sent to prison for stale hash brownies!

  Agents Monmaney and Allman were looking at him.

  "Uh, yeah, sure. When would you like to stop by?"

  "What about right now?"

  "Now?" Nick said looking at his schedule. "Now… today… kind of. How about tomorrow?"

  That look again. Monmaney said, "You're going to Los Angeles tomorrow."

  "Right." He took out his keys and handed them over. "Help yourself."

  Monmaney shook his head. "It would be preferable if you were present."

  "I'm trying to help, but it's kind of hard to run a staff meeting and give two interviews and prepare for a panel on secondhand smoke but… fine." He buzzed Jeannette and asked her to cover for him.

  He drove in the back of their sedan, imagining his next ride in it, handcuffed, on the way to being booked for possession of drugs. He foresaw it all: You say her name was Paula? What airline did she work for? Allman, the cheery swine, was intent on making small talk. It was difficult to rehearse your explanation for possession of narcotics while making small talk with a fed.

  Wait a minute, that's not my refrigerator!

  "I don't see why you're so worried," Polly said.

  Nick had convened an emergency meeting of the Mod Squad. Bobby Jay had been a bit put out since this was his bowling-prayer-and-pizza night with the born-agains, but recognizing the note of panic in Nick's voice, he was here. At night, the flames from the fake fireplace looked slightly more realistic.

  Nick was sucking down his third vodka negroni.

  "You're kind of guzzling that," Polly said.

  "You still haven't explained what the problem is," Bobby Jay said. "Since they didn't find your drugs."

  "Shh," Nick said. "Jesus."

  "Let's leave Jesus out of this."

  "He had his hand right on it," Nick said, reliving the horror afresh: Agent Monmaney opening the freezer, feeling around amidst the frozen bagels and the cookie-dough ice cream and pina colada concentrate. "I was going to try to grab it out of his hand and try to eat it when the other one, Allman, comes into the kitchen with this look on his face like he's saying, I found it."

  "Found what? What could he have found?"

  "I don't know. It was this silent thing between G-men. Whatever it was, Monmaney caught it. He stopped feeling around in my freezer. They said goodbye and left."

  "But what could they have found?"

  "Nothing."

  "You're sure you didn't have any more drugs stashed away somewhere?"

  "Will you please shut up, Bobby. And what happened to all that male bonding at the firing range? Instead I call you up and you're out bowling for Jesus."

  "I'm working on it."

  "Well work harder, would you, please? If this is the best you can do, no wonder the handgun control lobby is getting the upper hand."

  23

  The next night, Nick was riding in Mahmoud's great white whale, on the way from the airport to the Encomium, when he looked out the window at the Los Angeles skyline and saw the billboard, bold as one of his lies. It showed a huge skull with crossbones. The copy beneath read: don't smoke death cigarettes.

  Nick knew all about Death cigarettes. Everyone at the Academy kept a pack, with its distinctive skull and bones logo, despite the fact that the industry's official attitude toward Deaths was not exactly collegial. It was the perfect cigarette for the cynical age. It said — shouted —Our product will kill you! What product advertised itself more honestly than that? The surgeon general's warning on the side was positively ludicrous. And they were flying off the shelves, though their appeal tended to concentrate on young urbans for whom coughing up blood was still a sign of manhood.

  It was late in Minneapolis, but for a thirty-million-dollar-a-year account, your creative ad director should take your call even if it is late in Minneapolis. Nick explained his idea to a groggy Sven, who said he'd get his Skunk Works right on it and would fly to Washington on Friday.

  Early the next morning, Nick found himself sitting next to Kevin Costner outside Jeff Megall's office. He barely had time to tell him how much he liked Dances With Wolves before he was ushered in by the efficient older lady.

  They were all sitting around the malachite conference table.

  "Nick," Jeff said warmly. Jack Bein made a sign to Nick that he should be impressed by the warmth of Jeffs greeting. "Nick, this is Jerry Gomick and Voltan Zeig, whom you know of. And this is Harve Gruson. Harve has been involved with the final polishes on Sector Six. Since the arrangements worked out by everyone's legal people are so specific as to the content of the extra scenes, it makes sense for all of us to get together. Harve, bring us up to speed."

  "Okay," said Harve, a mostly bald, overweight, and exhausted-looking man in his early thirties. "We've got ten scenes where there's ambient smoking. They're doing whatever they're doing — navigating, eating, getting dressed, whatever — only they're also smoking. Then we've added scenes. So far, we've got two postcoital scenes, at almost a minute per."

  "Is that where he does the thing with the smoke rings?" Jeff asked.

  "No. She does the thing with the smoke rings. She teaches him how to blow smoke rings. It's hot. My computer screen went into meltdown."

  "May I?" Nick held out his hand for the script.

  POV over Slade's shoulder. SLADE Bull's-eye. Where did you learn to do that? ZEENA My programmer was into horseshoes.

  "You mean," Nick said, "that she's blowing smoke rings at his…"

  "Told you. Hot."

  "Too bad we can't put it in the U.S. version," said Jeff. "That's a great scene."

  "We need the PG-13," Voltan shrugged. "Fiona plays a robot?" Nick said.

  "Not a robot. A Format Seven Gynorg. The brain of Einstein and the body of Jamie Lee Curtis."

  "Dream date," Jerry said.

  "Not my dream date." Voltan laughed crudely. Jeff said to Harve, "What else do you have for us?"

  "We've changed the scene where Mace escapes from the prison on Alar. In the U.S. version, he puts out the guard's eye with the icicle.

  In this version, he'll put it out with a cigarette. Alarians only have one eye, so it's no more sightseeing for him."

  "I don't think putting out eyeballs with our product. I'm pretty sure that's not what we're looking for."

  Harve turned to the producers. "I was told cigarettes had to be integral. How much more integral can you get? Mace gains his freedom with a cigarette. It's a very powerful message."

  "I think," Jeff said, "that Nick is uncomfortable with it."

  "Okay," Voltan said, "lose the eye."

  Harve shrugged.

>   "By the way," Nick asked, "how are we explaining why the oxygen inside their spaceship doesn't blow up every time they light up?"

  "It's the twenty-fifth century," Voltan said. "By then they'll have it figured out."

  "We could drop in a line that they mix Freon in with the air supply," Harve said.

  "That's good," said Jack. "Would that make them talk funny?"

  "Like fags," Voltan said.

  "Nah," Jerry said. "That's helium."

  The Captain reached Nick in the great white whale on his way to the airport. He didn't sound very good, and there was a lot of static on the line. "I'm in my bass boat," he coughed, "up at the lake in Roaring Gap for a few days. Thought I'd get some fresh air and prove to those idiot doctors down there there's nothing wrong with me that some competent medical advice couldn't solve. I'm beginning to suspect they all got their medical degrees in Grenada. They're saying they want to open me up and stick another pig heart in me. Only good thing about it is you don't have to wait to find a donor. They just go out back with an axe. Oop, hooked one. Call you back."

  The phone rang a few minutes later, just as Mahmoud was turning off at Century Boulevard toward LAX. "Sumbitch wrapped me around a log. Felt like a six-pounder, too. Now son, uh, BR tells me the FBI is poking around, asking questions. Can you shed a little light on it for me?"

  The Captain's tone took Nick by surprise. He told him everything, except about the hash brownies.

  "Huh," the Captain said. "Well, they're probably on a fishing expedition, just like me. But I don't like it. With this Finisterre thing, the last thing we need right now is something like this." There was a pause. "There isn't anything going on I oughta know about, is there?"

  "What do you mean?" Nick said.

  "Nothing. BR's a little squirrelly."

  "What," Nick said, "did BR tell you, exactly?"

  "He seems to think we ought to hire you a lawyer. Jewish name. One who got that fellah off was making his clients glow in the dark. Carlinsky."

  "I'm not quite clear why you should be hiring me a criminal lawyer."

  "Now don't get yourself all in a sweat. Stress is a killer. You fish?"

  "A little."

  "If you want to take a vacation right now, you go ahead."

  "A vacation? With everything that's going on?"

  "You know what Winston Churchill said. He said there's never a convenient time for taking a vacation, so go ahead and take it."

  Nick sat in First Class grinding the enamel off his teeth and feeling the bands in his neck muscles hypercontracting. He called Jeannette. There was something in her voice, too. She sounded like the old Jeannette, the one who'd shown no interest at all in staying up all night to make him moan.

  "My flight gets into Dulles at six," Nick said. "Can you meet it? I need to talk to you."

  "I'm really busy," she said. "What do you need to talk to me about?"

  "BR talked to the Captain about the situation, you know, about the two people who came to see me—"

  "The FBI?"

  Terrific. Half the ham radio operators in America were listening in. "All I know is BR called the Captain about my situation and the Captain just called me to suggest I take a vacation."

  "I wish the Captain would call me and tell me to go on a vacation."

  "That's not really the point. Do you have any idea what it is BR told him?"

  "No."

  "Do you want to get together later?"

  "No." The next sound Nick heard was a recorded voice telling him that if he wanted to make another expensive call from thirty-five thousand feet up, all he had to do was press 2.

  He called BR. He was put on hold for eight minutes.

  "Yes, Nick?" Again the tone of voice. Had everyone at the Academy been breathing Freon?

  "I was wondering what you told the Captain that made him suggest I hire a lawyer and go fishing."

  BR cleared his throat. "I thought I owed it to him to bring him up to speed vis a vis this FBI thing."

  "I see. Did you tell him anything else?"

  "Only what I know."

  "Well, what do you know?"

  "That the FBI has been taking a very active interest in you. I've gone ahead and retained Steve Carlinsky for you—"

  "Oh."

  "Look, Nick, the FBI was in here today, again. People are talking. I think at this point we all need some counsel."

  "What did the FBI want this time?"

  "Nick, I don't think I'm in a position to discuss that with you."

  "What?"

  "It's for your protection. But, clearly, I have a responsibility to think about the Academy's position."

  Nick buzzed for the flight attendant. "Do you know to make a vodka negroni?"

  "I sure don't!" she said brightly.

  "What I don't understand," Steve Carlinsky said the next morning in his office, the walls of which were taken up with many photographs of famous people posing with him, "is why you waited until now to call me."

  Carlinsky was tall and gaunt with close-set eyes that had a look of permanent astonishment. Everything about him was gray, except for a splash of floppy silk bow tie that, in his universe, amounted to almost raffishness. His only passion, aside from billable hours, was said to be wine, which he didn't drink but only collected.

  "People make the same mistake with lawyers," he continued, "that they do with doctors. They wait too long. And by then the tumor has… "

  "I didn't call you," Nick said. "And how did tumors get into this?"

  "I apologize. That was insensitive. In your business, I'm sure you hear more than you want to about tumors. Now, tell me everything. The more I know, the more I can help you."

  It was a bit like therapy, only at $450 an hour, more expensive. Carlinsky was a perfect Freudian analyst. He said nothing. When Nick had finished, Carlinsky said, "Though I never would have allowed you to let FBI agents onto your premises without a search warrant, in a way I'm glad you did, because we can use that against them when the time comes."

  "When what time comes?" Nick said.

  "For a rainy day. Would you like to smoke? I have no objection. Though I never smoked myself, candidly, I think the anti-smoking lobby has accumulated far too much power."

  "I haven't been able to smoke since the incident," Nick said.

  "We can use that, too. In your line, that's a disability. Now I want you to go back to work, forget about all this, and if the FBI shows up again, would you do me a personal favor and call me? In the meantime, let me make a few calls and see what I can find out."

  That wasn't so bad, Nick reflected as he walked the three blocks from Carlinsky's office to the Academy. A perfectly decent fellow, and sensitive.

  When he arrived back at ATS, Gazelle came rushing up to him with a phone slip. It said, "Heather Holloway, Moon, URGENT!!!"

  "Heather? Nick."

  "Nick, can you hold? Okay, I understand you've hired Steve Carlinsky? Hello?"

  "I'm here."

  "I need a comment. Nick."

  "Still here."

  "That's not a comment."

  Think, man. "What gives you that idea?" Oh, brilliant. "You just spent an hour with him at his office." Self-promoting swine. "Yes," Nick said, reeling, "in fact I did, but we were discussing a private ATS matter and I'm hardly at liberty to discuss that." He heard the sound of fingers — fingers that should have been doing other things — taking it all down.

  "You mean," she said, "pertaining to the FBI's investigation of you?"

  "You're referring to their so far inconclusive investigation into my torture-kidnapping?" Clickety clack.

  "You deny, then, that Steve Carlinsky has been retained to act on your behalf in connection with the FBI investigation of your recent disappearance and reappearance on the Mall, covered with nicotine patches?"

  "That's an artfully crafted question, I must say."

  "Come on, Nick, it's me."

  "I assume Ortolan Finisterre is behind this?"

  "Wha
t?"

  "Frankly," Nick said, in a world-weary voice, "I didn't think he'd stoop quite this low."

  "What on earth are you talking about?"

  "Using the FBI to pursue his private vilification agenda, in order to get everyone's mind off the real problem, which is his cheese. I find it very sad. A sad day for Vermont, a sad day for the U.S. Senate, and a sad day for the truth."

  Nick was staring at the Lucky Strike doctor, trying to wonder how that canard was going to play when Sven arrived with the designs for the new warning label. He was grateful for the distraction.

  "This was a challenge," Sven said, unzipping a snappy black and burgundy suede portfolio. "But we like a challenge. You all right? You look a little pale."

  "Fine. What do you have for me?"

  "Let's start with our base line." Sven pulled out a large photo of a package of Death cigarettes. "As you say, a brilliant concept. And prescient. I doubt the makers of Death cigarettes are sweating out this Finisterre bill. Okay. We tried a couple of different approaches, taking into account the size requirements specified in the bill, positioning on the packs, etc., etc. To keep each one straight, we gave them nicknames. This first one we call 'Jolly Green Roger.' " Sven revealed a pack of Marlboros with lime-green skull and bones on the side. "Our PCT people tell us—"

  "Who?"

  "Psychological Color Theory. They swing a big dick these days. Anyway, we know that green registers as soothing — lawns, money, mint, pool tables—"

  "Surgical garb, pus. "

  "The specifications in Finisterre's bill don't say what color the skulls have to be, so we'd be okay, legally speaking. We did a quick and dirty focus group on all of these, and the Jolly Green Roger did pretty okay. Only forty percent said, 'I would not under any circumstances smoke if this was on the pack.' "

  Nick sighed. "Forty percent?"

  "That leaves sixty percent. What do you think?"

  "I think it looks like a green skull and bones."

  "This next one," Sven said, "is 'Have a Nice Death.' Basically, we took the Have a Nice Day face, made the eyes bigger, added teeth, contoured the jaw, and made the bones look like crossed arms across his chest."

  "Jesus. It's awful. It's frightening."