Thank You for Smoking

He looked up from his dissimulations to see Jeannette's head sticking out from behind the door. She looked much more relaxed than she usually did. She'd furloughed her ice-blond hair from its normal prison of a bun at the back and had it loosely ponytailed with a barrette. She was in her standard Don't Mess With Me dark blue suit, worn tightly so as to show off every minute of every sweaty hour at the health club; but she'd added an explosively colorful silk scarf from Hermes or Chanel that gave her the look of a rich woman on the prowl for fun. Nick had to admit that Jeannette was looking mighty fine this afternoon. Maybe one of her focus groups had told her to lighten up and lose the dominatrix look. After all, the whole idea of having a spokesbabe was to take the viewer's mind off cancer and heart disease and emphysema, not to beat back their own libidos with a chair and whip.

'Hi,' she said in a friendly way. 'Am I interrupting?'

'No,' Nick said. 'I was just making some op-ed mush.'

She closed the door behind her. 'God,' she said, 'I'd kill to have your touch with op-eds.'

'Ah,' Nick said, 'easy as breathing.'

'I can recite the one you did for Jordan when Deukmejian banned smoking on flights in California. 'I have a lot of respect for Governor Deukmejian. It's his respect for the Constitution that concerns me.' October eighty-seven, right?'

Nick blushed. 'Lot of good it did.'

She sat down, crossed her stockinged legs, which, Nick noticed, looked very sleek today. He looked up and saw that she'd seen him purloining a glance at her gams. He looked down at his op-ed and frowned as though he were trying to think of the right word.

'What's up?' he said in a businesslike way, though it was by now obvious to both of them what, precisely, was up.

'I've got this idea that I'm really excited about.'

'Oh?' Nick said, still looking down at his op-ed piece.

'A magazine for smokers.'

'Hm,' Nick said, sitting back and looking at her, careful to keep his eyes above the waist. 'Couple of the companies tried it. Controlled circulation, no newsstand.'

'Precisely,' Jeannette said, 'where I think they went wrong. I want this on the newsstands. In their faces. Look at newsstands these days. Magazines for everyone, except smokers.'

'What would you call it?'

'Inhale!' Jeannette said, 'with the exclamation mark in the form of a cigarette, you know, with the ash. Dynamic, unapologetic, and hot.'

'Hot?'

'Sexy,' Jeannette said. 'Dripping.'

' 'Inhale!' ' said Nick. 'Tell me more.'

'We've got fifty-five million customers out there, huddling outside in doorways, feeling persecuted. Why wouldn't they want a magazine all their own? We're talking more readers than TV Guide. A magazine for the smoking lifestyle. Overweight women, minorities, blue-collar workers, depressives, alcoholics—'

'Rugged individualists,' Nick said. 'Independent spirits. Risk takers. Which is quintessentially American. I sometimes think that our customers are the most American people left.'

'And dying out fast.'

'Feature stories on the American West, fast, sexy muscle cars—'

'Bungee jumping.'

'Yes.'

'Listings of smoker-friendly restaurants. A real service magazine.'

'But sexy.'

'Hot. Sports Illustrated-type babes in swimsuits, only holding cigarettes. So much of the sex has gone out of smoking.'

'But with substance.'

'Absolutely. Interviews with prominent smokers.'

'Are there any?'

'Castro.'

'He gave up. Anyway, I'm not sure Caribbean Commies are sexy anymore. Nixon. Nixon smokes. Not many people know that.'

'Is Nixon sexy?'

'Clinton. Cigars.'

'He doesn't light them.'

'We'll find someone.'

Gazelle came over the intercom. She sounded amused. 'Nick, the two gentlemen from Modern Man magazine—'

'Young Modern Man,' corrected a Japanese voice in the background.

'Sorry. To see you.'

Nick rolled his eyes. 'BR's idea.'

'Later,' Jeannette said.

'Later when?' Nick said.

'Later-later? I'm crashing on sick building syndrome, but I'd really want to get with you on this.'

'You want to grab a drink later-later? Or a bite later-later-later?'

'Perfect. BR wants me to do a drop-by at the Healthy Heart 2000 thing at-the Omni-Shoreham. You know, show the flag.'

'Uch. Bring your flak jacket.'

'Believe me, I'm not sticking around. Eight?'

'Great. You like soft-shell crabs?'

'I love soft-shell crabs.'

Heather called in the middle of his session with the reporter and photographer from Young Modern Man, who, to judge from the questions—'Who do you consider are the true smoking heroes in America today?' — were on the side of the angels. But then the Japanese were amazingly tolerant where it came to smoking: they allowed cigarette advertising in children's TV programming. Maybe he should ask for a transfer to Tokyo.

'I can't do dinner tonight,' said Heather, sounding busy, sounds of the newsroom about her. Thank God. Nick realized that he had asked two women to dinner.

'No sweat. By the way, we're going to roll out the new anti-underage smoking campaign next week, and I wondered if the Moon wanted an exclusive preview.'

'Nick, I told you I don't do propaganda.'

'Look, we're committing economic suicide. Tell me that's not news?'

'Maybe to Oprah.'

'What's the matter, are you worried that jerk at the Sun will think you're soft on tobacco?'

'Hardly.'

'All right,' Nick said, 'but don't blame me if something interesting happens at the press conference.'

'Like what? An announcement that smoking cures cancer?'

'You laugh,' Nick said, 'but we've just seen a study showing that smoking retards the onset of Parkinson's.'

'In what? Tobacco Farmer's Almanac?'

'Half my job,' Nick said to Young Modern Man after hanging up, 'is maintaining good communications with the media. Information doesn't do any good if you don't get it out there. Right?'

The maitre d' at Il Peccatore led Nick to the same corner booth where he'd had the first lunch with Heather. It made him hope Heather didn't show up; though what the hell, to her it would just look like he was having dinner with a co-worker.