Thank You for Smoking

'The Captain thinks the sun rises and sets on your ass.'

'But what am I supposed to tell her? 'Mention cigarettes next time someone asks you about the Middle East'?'

'The Captain thinks she'll go for you because you're young, good-looking—'

'Oh, come on, BR.'

'And because you, like her, have been the victim of terrorism.'

'Look, I don't even speak British.'

'Okay, then call the Captain and tell him you refuse to meet with the former prime minister.'

Nick sighed. Two, alas, could play the old You tell the Captain game.

'All right. But I've got the puffers coming in at nine.'

'Fuck the puffers. Let Jeannette speak to them.'

'They're expecting me. I can't let them down.'

'They give me the creeps, those people. What a bunch of losers.'

'They're dedicated. Look, I can do both the puffers and Cement Knickers.'

'As long as you're on that ten o'clock shuttle. By the way, top security on this. If that Holloway broad or any other reporter finds out that Nick Naylor is giving motivational training to Penelope Bent, it'll be raining shit for forty days and nights, so not a word to anyone, even your staff.'

Nick got back into the shower and lathered. He felt curiously neutral about the prospect of meeting the most famous woman in the world — British princesses and Liz Taylor aside — because he knew exactly how it was going to turn out. She'd cut him into tiny, bite-size morsels, eat him, and afterward floss her teeth with his guts.

He relathered. Making the ten o'clock shuttle would be tight… but he couldn't let down the puffers. It was a big deal, to them.

These were the smokers' rights groups that had spontaneously popped up around the country as the anti- smoking movement had gathered momentum. They championed the rights of the oppressed smoker who couldn't find a smoking section in a restaurant, or who had to leave his desk and go stand in the snow to have a cigarette. They targeted local politicians who favored anti-smoking ordinances, attacked the surgeon general much more viciously than the Academy itself could, organized 'smoke-ins' — pathetic as they were, Nick had to admit — and 'seminars' — also pathetic — sent out form letters pre-addressed to anti-smoking congressmen and senators in Washington, gave out 'Smoker Friendly' awards, mostly to restaurants that didn't put their smoking sections in the back next to the Dumpster, and distributed morale-boosting T-shirts and caps with pro-smoking emblems modeled on the old Black Panther salute: upraised fists holding cigarettes. Ostensibly, these were grassroots, heartbeat-of- America (or heart-attack-of-America) citizens groups that showed just how committed and politically active the fifty-five million smokers were. Look at all the money they were able to raise to support all these activities.

In actual fact, there wasn't really anything spontaneous about the rise of these groups. They were front groups: the Captain's brainchild, modeled on the CIA-funded student organizations of the 1950s. They were almost entirely funded by the Academy, with the money being laundered — legally — by giving it to various middlemen who, posing as anonymous donors, passed it along to the groups as contributions. The whole operation cost next to nothing, relatively, and this way tobacco's friends in the House and Senate could stand up and point to them as evidence of a groundswell.

Also, every now and then, if it was a very slow news day, the local newspaper might send a reporter out to interview the local head of the Coalition For Smoking Indoors or Smokers United For Freedom, or the more militant Hispanic group, Fumamos!

Once a year all the groups came en masse to Washington to hold a smoke-in on the Mail and roam the halls of the Capitol building in search of health-conscious congressmen to harass.

Though the Academy naturally preferred to keep a low profile in its contacts with the front groups, Nick felt it was important to have them in for a pep talk. So what if they were stooges. They didn't know that. BR was right, in his snobbish way: they were all, as a rule, a bubble off plumb. Nick at least was paid to be passionate about smoking. These people did it for free. In a funny kind of way, the puffers were just like the gaspers: humorless, obsessive, pissed off.

And yet Nick felt that the least the Academy could do was spend half an hour with them. He wasn't about to shortchange them for some retainer-grabbing former British PM. This morning Nick was at peace with the world, despite the fact that he'd gotten almost no sleep the night before. Getting laid has that effect. And he had gotten laid. She'd put him through two boxes of her condoms. Jeannette definitely knew her way around the sack. She was thoughtful, too; he didn't want empty condom boxes strewn around for Heather to see, and when he went to throw them out, he saw that she'd taken them with her. Tidy; probably went along with the compulsion to want to tie people up.

As he walked in, Gazelle announced that Agents Monmaney and Allman were waiting for him in his office.

'Good morning,' Nick said grimly. 'Have you found them yet?'

Agent Allman returned his greeting. Agent Monmaney did not.

'What can I do for you?' Nick said, dispensing with further pleasantries. 'I've got a very full morning.'

Monmaney took out a notepad. 'Six years ago, when you were working for WRTK, you went on the air live and said that President Broadbent had died.'

'Uh-huh,' Nick said.

'How did that come about?'

'An honest mistake.'

This elicited one of Monmaney's slow-fuse stares.

'Does this have any bearing on finding my kidnappers?'

'No,' Agent Allman said. 'Well, you're busy. We can talk more later.' They left. Nick wondered: could you request a change of FBI agents?

They were all waiting for him in the small auditorium. Nick was taken aback at the atmosphere in there, which was so full of smoke he could hardly make out the back row. These people did love to smoke.

They gave him a standing ovation. It was gratifying. My people, he thought. The head of United Smokers of America, Ludlow Cluett, gave him a rousing introduction, making it sound like he'd fought off his kidnappers with bare fists, and said how much the Academy meant to them. Little did he know.

Nick took the podium and started in on the speech he'd composed in the shower, in which he likened them to a long line of American freedom fighters stretching all the way back to Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys. It required some rejiggering of American history, but it could be done.

He got as far as World War I and Pershing's urgent telegram to Washington saying the doughboys needed more cigarettes — leaving out the part about how that had produced the first cases of lung cancer in America — when all the smoke in the room started to get to him. His head spun and throbbed and he started to cough. Really cough, the kind where you have to hold a handkerchief in front of your mouth or people around you get sprayed.

'Excuse… ' he gasped, 'flu. harrrrrg …'

He managed to pull himself together and was in the midst of a little Lucy Page Gaston-bashing when he was struck by a hurricane-force coughing spasm that left him with stars in his eyes and his heart approaching paroxysmal atrial tachycardia. Tobacco Spokesman Suffers Fatal Heart Attack While Addressing Pro- Smoking Groups. People would laugh as they read his obituary. He had to get out of there.

'In conclusion,' he wheezed, 'let me leave you with the thought that. '

They were looking at him adoringly, hanging on his words. My people.

'… that it's people… like you… who are… righting the … harg harg… fires of freedom around this… harg harg harg… great nation of… wheeze… ours.'

He reelingly stuck around to sign a few autographs, mostly on cigarette packs, and fled for the shuttle, where he opened his New York Times to the front page and read: 'To save money, airlines in the United States are circulating less fresh air into the cabins of many airplanes.' And they were mad at the cigarette companies?

He ducked into the men's room at National Airport while waiting for the shuttle. It was the one place his