Thank You for Smoking

places like Huntsman or Gieves & Hawkes where you need a social reference from three dukes and a viscount just to get in the door. Pinned to the lapel, Nick noted, was a brightly colored military rosette. The man radiated authority. Porters rushed to relieve him of his hat and silver-tipped cane — did it conceal a sword? — with such solicitude as to suggest that these objects were insupportable burdens. Another porter materialized with a small whisk and began gently to brush the shoulders of the suit. Disencumbered and dusted, this gentleman looked in the direction of the waiting room as a porter inclined to whisper into his ear and to point in Nick's direction.

He turned and strode, smiling, toward Nick with outstretched hand.

'Mister Naylor,' he said with delight and a sense of moment, 'I am Doak Boykin and I am extremely pleased to meet you.'

Faced with such grandeur, Nick mumbled, 'Hello, Mr. Boykin.'

'Please,' the old man said, 'call me Captain.' Taking Nick's elbow he steered him to the table in the corner.

'Punctuality,' he grinned, 'is the courtesy of kings. Not many northerners appreciate that.' One servant pulled his chair out for him as another swiftly removed the starched white napkin from its place setting and in one graceful motion snapped it open and eased it down onto the Captain's lap.

'Will you join me in a refreshment?' He did not wait for Nick's response. Nothing was said to the waiter, who merely nodded while another momentarily appeared with a tray with two silver cups beaded with condensation and overflowing with crushed ice and fresh sprigs of mint.

'Mud,' the Captain said. He sipped, closed his eyes, and let out a little ah.

'Do you know the secret to a really good julep? Crush the mint down onto the ice with your thumb and grind it in. Releases the menthol.' He chuckled softly. 'Do you know who taught me that?' Nick did not, but he supposed some descendant of Robert E. Lee. 'Ferdinand Marcos, president of the Philippines.'

Nick waited for elaboration; none came. Another prerogative of the really rich.

'What year were you born, Mister Naylor?' Should he tell him, Call me Nick?

'Nineteen fifty-two, sir.'

The Captain smiled and shook his head. 'Nineteen fifty-two! Good Lord. Nineteen fifty-two.' He took another sip of his julep, crunched down on a chunk of ice, bared his teeth, which were white. 'I was in Korea shooting Chinese in nineteen-fifty-two.'

'Really,' Nick said, unable to think what else to say.

'Today, the Chinese are my best customers. There's the twentieth century for you.'

'Seventy percent of adult Chinese males smoke,' Nick observed.

'That is correct,' the Captain said. 'Next time we won't have to shoot so many of'em, will we?'

He sat back in his chair, chuckling. 'Will you join me in another?' Another tray appeared with more drinks. What was the protocol? Should Nick drain his first one? He did, spilling ice chunks onto his lap.

'Nineteen fifty-two was a significant year for our business,' the Captain continued. 'Do you remember what Mr. Churchill said?' The Captain did a growly imitation: ' 'It is not the end, or even the beginning of the end. But I believe that it may be the end of the beginning.' Nineteen fifty-two being of course the year the Reader's Digest published that article about the health… aspect.' Tobacco executives avoided certain words, like 'cancer.'

'That was, you might say, the end of our beginning.'

Lunch was served, much to Nick's relief as he was now woozy with mentholated bourbon. The Captain talked about what the new leadership in Korea meant for the industry. They began with chilled spiced shrimp and moved on to filet mignon and baked potatoes with globs of sour cream. The Captain told the maitre d' that he must never reveal to Mrs. Boykin what he had eaten or, he warned direly, 'she'll skin both of us alive.' Rich men delight in displaying an exaggerated fear of their wives. They think it humanizes them.

'Yes sir, Captain!' the waiter said, enjoying his part in the conspiracy of silence.

'May I?' Nick said, taking out his pack when the plates were cleared.

'Please, thank you. I'm always so grateful when members of the younger generation smoke.' He seemed wistful. 'I would join you, but since my recent… experience Mrs. Boykin has become quite vehement on the subject, so I will forgo and forbear, for the sake of domestic tranquillity. My eldest daughter asked me the other day what, at my age, I enjoy, and I told her, 'Voting Republican and being left alone by your mother.' '

Coffee was served. Other club members stopped by their table to pay court to the Captain, who graciously introduced Nick to them.

'The Nick Naylor?' one said, grasping Nick's hand. 'Well, I am pleased to meet you, sir. Fine job, fine job!' They made quite a fuss over him. It was all very gratifying. Yes, indeed, this was most pleasant. Nick could see living in Winston-Salem, lunching at the Tobacco Club, not having to apologize or justify his existence all the time. 'Tobacco takes care of its own,' went the saying. Yes it did, it certainly did.

'I'd say you've made a splendid impression, Nick,' the Captain glowed as the last of Nick's admirers had receded. 'May I call you Nick? I do not usually engage in diminutives, but in this case I would like to. You remind me just a little bit of myself when I was your age.'

'Please,' Nick said, embarrassed, 'by all means.'

'You were a television reporter, before?'

Nick flushed. Well, there was no escaping it. It would be in his obituary. It was Naylor who, as a local Washington TV reporter, announced on live television that the President had choked on a piece of meat at a military base and died, causing the stock market to drop 180 points and lose $3 billion worth of value before the White House produced the President, alive. The best he could hope for was to accomplish something else in life that would relegate that to the second paragraph.

'That was a long time ago,' Nick said.

The Captain held up his hand. 'You don't have to explain it to me. In your shoes I probably would have done the same thing. One does have to seize the day. JJ told me all about it. That's why he hired you. Knew exactly what he was doing.'

'He did?'

'Damn right. Whatever else JJ was, and I regret that I had to let him go, he was a student of the human condition. He said to me, 'That boy is going to work his behind off putting this thing behind him, making a new name for himself.' '

'Other than the Three Billion Dollar Man.'

'He said something else. He said, 'That boy is going to be one angry young man.' I didn't realize just how angry until I watched you yesterday on that colored woman's show, Obrah. Son, you were magnificent.'

'Thank you.'

'I was angry, too, when I got back from Korea. Do you know why, Mister Naylor?'

'No sir.'

'Because I resolved that I would never — ever — again be put in a situation where I had to submit to the authority of incompetent men. I started in the flues and within five years I was a vice president, the youngest vice president in corporate tobacco history. That, sir, is what anger can do for you. Join me in a brandy, won't you.'

Once again the drinks materialized out of air, borne on a silver tray. What a club! And the waiters didn't introduce themselves to you by their first name. They were everything waiters should be: subservient, efficient, taciturn.

'Do you enjoy your work, Nick?'

'Yes,' Nick said. 'It's challenging. As we say around the office, 'If you can do tobacco, you can do anything.' '

The Captain snorted into his snifter. 'You know, your generation of tobacco men — and women, I'm always forgetting to add 'and women'—think they have it harder than any generation who came before. You think it