Thank You for Smoking

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 bulldogs?'

'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.

'What we did was to take the 'Some People Want You to Smoke. We Don't' concept, which avoided the whole health issue, and instead tapped into the adolescent's innate fear of being manipulated by adults. You didn't like it.'

'Right. Because it was effective.'

'It's gone. So now we're going to be blunt, we want to speak to them with the voice of despised authority, nag them, tell them to go to their rooms, turn them completely off.'

'I like it already,' Nick said.

'Okay.' Sven said. 'Here we go. He pulled the board into video camera range. All it had on it was type. It said, 'Everything Your Parents Told You About Smoking Is Right.'

'Hmm,' Nick said.

'You know what I love about it?' Sven said. 'Its dullness.' 'It is dull,' Nick admitted.

'It's deadly. Kids are going to look at this and go, 'Puuke.' ' That would probably be Joey's reaction, Nick mused. 'And yet,' Sven said, 'its brilliance, if I may say so, is in its