Thank You for Smoking

deconstructability.'

'How's that?'

'Say the last three words out loud.'

' 'Smoking Is Right.' '

'Gobbles on the outside, grabs you on the inside. A Trojan turkey.'

'I think,' Nick said, 'that I can sell this to my people.'

Nick was looking forward to lunch, an hour or two of normalcy with Polly and Bobby Jay. As a Ph.D. in Spin Control, he could certainly understand why the Captain and BR were eager to suction every golden egg from the goose before it died, but fame has its price. As Fred Allen used to say, a celebrity is someone who works hard in order to become well-known and then has to wear dark glasses in order to avoid being recognized. On his way from the Academy to Bert's, he became aware of people staring at him as he passed, saw people nudge each other, whisper, 'Isn't that him?' At the corner of K and Connecticut, while waiting for the light, he heard a woman murmur, 'You deserved it.'

He whirled but the woman kept going and he didn't feel like running after her to ask her if he'd heard correctly. It sent a chill up his spine. Nick was no wimp, he'd been called 'mass murderer' and worse by entire crowds of people, often simultaneously; but that was heckling, and usually by card-carrying gaspers or 'health professionals.' But when pedestrians, total strangers, started coming up to you — at Washington's busiest intersection, in the middle of the day— and expressing solidarity with people who had kidnapped and tortured you, it could be taken as a sign that somewhere along your career path you had taken a wrong turn.

He ducked into the Trover Shop and bought some cheap sunglasses. He made it the rest of the way up Connecticut and down Rhode Island without anyone else wishing him dead.

Once inside Bert's he felt secure again. Bert came over and hugged him and made a big fuss; the regular waiters came over to shake his hand and congratulate him and tell him how well he looked. He was hearing that a lot these days: 'You look good, Nick,' despite the fact that he had lost ten pounds and his skin was fish gray.

Bert told him that lunch today was on the house and led him personally to his regular table by the fake fireplace, which was flickering away, casting its comforting acetate flames onto the chimney brick.

Bobby Jay and Polly were already there. They both got up to greet him, unsettling Nick. Here of all places he valued the comfort of routine, and no member of the Mod Squad ever got up to greet the other. Among merchants of death, equality rules. Polly actually kissed him and hugged him. It was unsettling. He was tired of being fussed over.

'I'm fine,' Nick said. 'It's no big thing.'

'You look great,' Bobby Jay said.

'Yeah, you really do,' Polly said.

'You look great.'

Nick stared at them. 'What are you two, from Hallmark Cards? I look like shit.'

Bobby Jay and Polly exchanged glances. Polly touched his forearm. 'We're just glad to have you back.'

'Don't patronize me.'

'Sorry,' Polly said, withdrawing her arm, 'I didn't realize you were having a bad hair day.'

'BR just told me the Captain wants me to go bribe the Tumbleweed Man, who's dying of throat cancer, so he'll stop badmouthing us. I have to accept every goddamn interview request — I'm on Larry King tomorrow night, he and the FBI want to use me as bait to draw out this Peter Lorre maniac — and some woman on the street just hissed at me that I deserved to get kidnapped. Yes, I'm having a bad hair day.'

'It's a tough town,' Bobby Jay said.

'Tell me about it. Check out my new bodyguards.'

'Where?'

'Fooled you, didn't they? The one in the jeans and the woman with the handbag the size of a duffel? Former Secret Service. Do you know what she's got in there? Sawed-off shotgun. I hope they'll try it again. Do you have any idea what a ragged hole a fistful of double-ought buckshot makes?'

'Yeah,' Bobby Jay said, 'I do.'

'They're supposed to blend. Unlike my former bodyguards with the suits and earphones. 'Attention everyone! We're bodyguards! Come attack our client.' Lot of good they were.'

'I thought you kept trying to lose them,' Polly said.

'Polly,' said Nick condescendingly, in tones suggesting that security matters were beyond women, 'good bodyguards don't get lost by the people they're supposed to be protecting.' He sighed. 'Jesus. Look at me. Bodyguards.'

'We're all going to need bodyguards soon,' Polly said, 'the way things are going. Did you see the coverage the fetal-alcohol people got themselves over the weekend?'

'Pathetic,' Bobby Jay said.

'Don't you think the Sun sort of debased itself giving that kind of space to those people? I spoke to Dean Jardel over at S and B. They distribute two-thirds of the liquor in the D.C. area, and he says the Washington Sun is going to find itself without any liquor advertising for the next month.'

'I wish we had that kind of leverage,' Bobby Jay said, 'but they don't take gun ads. Not that you can buy a gun in D.C.'

'They made it sound like we encourage pregnant mothers to drink. It was so… pc I wanted to. '

'Frow up.'

'I'm surprised I didn't get kidnapped on the way to work this morning.'

Nick, taking all this in, brooding over the woman on the street, felt suddenly that his nicotine patch of courage was being co-opted.

'Polly,' he broke in, 'I don't think people who work for the alcoholic beverage industry have to worry about being kidnapped, just yet.'

Awkward silence. He'd made alcoholic beverage sound like laxative or pet supplies. Polly did a slow burn, blew a deep lungful of smoke out the side of her mouth in a cool, focused way, her eyes never leaving his, tapped her toe against the floor a few times. 'Aren't we unholier than thou, today.'

'Look,' Nick said, 'nothing personal, but tobacco generates a little more heat than alcohol.'

'Oh?' Polly said. 'This is news.'

'Whoa,' Nick said. 'I'll put my numbers up against your numbers any day. My product puts away 475,000 people a year. That's 1,300 a day—'

'Waait a minute,' Polly said. 'You're the one who's always saying that 475,000 number is bull—'

'Okay, 435,000. Twelve hundred a day. So how many alcohol-related deaths a year? A hundred thousand, tops. Two hundred and seventy something a day. Well wow-wee. Two hundred and seventy. That's probably how many people die every day from slipping on bars of soap in the bathtub. So I don't see terrorists getting excited enough to kidnap anyone from the alcohol industry.'

Bobby Jay said, 'You two sound like McNamara, all this talk about body counts. Let's just chill out here.'

Nick turned to him. 'How many gun deaths a year in the U.S.?'

'Thirty thousand,' Bobby Jay said, 'but that's gross.'

'Eighty a day,' Nick snorted. 'Less than passenger car mortalities.'

'It nets out to even less,' Bobby Jay said mildly. 'Fifty-five percent of those are suicides, and another eight percent are justifiable homicides, so we're really only talking eleven thousand one hundred.'

'Thirty a day,' Nick said. 'Hardly worth counting. No terrorist would bother with either of you.'

'Would you like to see some of my hate mail,' Polly said, flushing. Nick hadn't seen her look this up since she went on Geraldo with the parents of an entire school bus that had been wiped out by a drunk driver.

'Hate mail? Hate mail?' Nick laughed sarcastically. 'All of