Thank You for Smoking

him a magnetic card to operate his own private elevator, and led him up in the outside glass elevator to a huge penthouse suite with sunken marble bathtub, fireplace, balcony, waterfall, and immense bed already turned down. There were Hockneys on the wall; originals. Nick's very own butler, an immaculate young Asian fellow, was standing there in white tie holding a silver tray with a vodka negroni on the rocks in a Baccarat tumbler. Nick's drink. Now this was good advance.

'We took the liberty of calling your office this morning as soon as we knew you were coming,' explained the assistant manager.

'May I pour your bath?' the butler said.

The phone rang.

'May I get that for you? Mr. Naylor's suite. Yes, please hold. It's for you, sir. Mr. Jack Bein of ACT.'

'Nick, Jack. Is everything all right?'

'Yes, Jack,' Nick said. 'Everything is fine.'

'You're sure?'

'I think so.'

'Just sign for everything. Don't worry about it.' All this was — free? What a great town.

'I want you to call me if you're not happy,' Jack said, 'for whatever reason. If you wake up in the middle of the night and you just want to talk. I'm here. I know what it is to be alone in a strange town. Take this number down, it rings on my bedside table. Only three people in the world have this number, Michael Eisner, Michael Ovitz, Jeff, of course, and now you. And my mother makes five. Do you have a mother? They're great, aren't they? I'll see you for breakfast. Is Haiphong there?'

'Who?'

'The butler. They did give you a butler, didn't they? Jesus Christ on Rollerblades, what's going on there?'

'Is your name Haiphong?' Nick asked the butler. 'Yes, Jack, he's here.'

'Put him on.'

'He wants to speak with you,' Nick said, handing over the phone. Haiphong said 'yes sir' crisply many times and hung up. 'May I send up the masseuse, sir? She's very good. Highly trained.'

'Well, I… '

'I'll send her right up.'

'Haiphong,' Nick said, 'can I ask you something?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Is Mr. Bein connected somehow with this hotel?'

'All ACT guests and out-of-town clients stay at the Encomium, sir.'

'Ah,' Nick said.

'I'll send Bernie right up.'

Nick sat back in a chaise longue and sipped his vodka negroni and looked out the window at the sun setting over Santa Monica and the ocean. The Campari and vodka was just starting to make him comfortably numb when Haiphong knocked to announce that Bernie had arrived. She was in her mid-twenties, pretty, muscular, and blond, with a big California smile—'Hi there! — in a white V-necked leotard.

The few times he'd indulged in massage — never in a 'massage' parlor — Nick had always felt a little awkward, but Bernie put him at ease with her friendly, open manner and soon he was starkers on the slanted table, with a towel over his privies. She gave him a massage menu — Swedish, Shiatsu, hot oil, Tibetan, etc. — but strongiy recommended something called NMT, or Neuro-Muscular Therapy, which, she said, had been invented by a much-wounded Vietnam veteran who, fed up with Western medicine, had studied Oriental healing techniques. It wasn't very relaxing; in fact it caused Nick significant, groaning, teeth-clenching pain as she knuckled into his vertebrae, kneaded his sternocleidomastoids and traps, crunched his lumbar region with her elbows, and then pinched his skin till it burned — in order, she explained, to bring the blood up to the surface. This last torture she called 'bindegewebs,' a technique that had been invented by the Germans; naturlich.

She put on a tape called Pelagic Adagios. New Age muzak consisting of squealing humpback whales and synthesized musical gibberish. Actually, it was pleasant enough, since it took his mind off the pain. After pressing her thumb tips along the rims of his eye sockets, producing an aura of light — aggrieved signals from the optic nerve, no doubt — she maneuvered his head off the edge of the table and put his face down into a 'face cradle.' With the table slanted up at his legs, the blood was soon puddling in his sinuses, making him feel as if he had a severe head cold. She stood, bending over his head as she attacked his lower back, her breasts grazing the top of his head. Back and forth, back and forth. After a few minutes of this he had to start counting backward from one hundred in intervals of seven, a delaying tactic that he'd learned many years ago. He lay there, facedown, snuffling through his clotted nasal passages like a truffle pig, listening to humpbacks squealing and gamboling in the deep.

'Do you like the music, Nick?'

'Urhh.'

'I love whales. They're the most majestic of the creatures, don't you think?'

'Rhhh.'

'I can't believe that the Japanese are going to start hunting them again.'

'Wrrh!.'

'You kind of have to be sort of careful saying that here.'

'Nrrll mhh?'

'Have you ever swum with dolphins, Nick?'

'Nmh.' Where was this going?

'My boyfriend and I did, a couple of weekends ago.' Aha. Boyfriend. Code for Don't get any ideas. This is strictly professional.

'There's a place north of San Diego where you can swim with dolphins for ten dollars. Mark and I were out riding on his motorcycle. He has a Harley-Davidson. A big one?' She had the habit of turning everything into a question, even the most basic declarative sentences, just in case you weren't able to follow along? 'He's in the navy, stationed there. He's a SEAL? He can't talk about what he does. Anyway, he didn't want to swim with the dolphins, but I really wanted to, so we did. Their skin is really incredible and soft, and when they breathe, it's like they're sighing? They go, Poosh. That's what they sound like. It was so sensual, you know? Riding on them, holding on to the fin? It was almost..' She sighed. 'Mark didn't like them. He kept punching them whenever they came up to him. The man who owned the place got angry and told him to get out, then Mark said he was going to throw him in with the dolphins.'

More code: My boyfriend is a short-tempered, highly trained professional killer. What was that about a hand job?

'But I stayed in,' she continued, 'I could have stayed in there forever, it was so wonderful? The other night I even dreamed about it. I was riding dolphins in the moonlight, leaping up and down over the waves. No swimsuit on or anything, and the amazing feel of his skin on mine. And him sighing? Push … I woke up all excited? And there's Mark next to me, snoring. Mark really snores? And when I tell him about it, he gets angry? I bought him this thing for his birthday, it's like a microphone that you clip on to your jammy tops and it goes to this thing like a wristwatch, only you strap it to your arm, and every time you snore it like zaps you with a little electricity? And he got so angry? It ruined the evening. Everyone went home early. Mark can get so angry at times? You'd think a Navy SEAL would get all his anger out at work?'

'Yurnh.'

She was working on his neck muscles with her thumbs and forefingers… 'Your bands are hypercontracted, Nick. You're kind of tense.'

'Urnh.' Her breasts were pressing against his head again. 100… 93… 86.

'Would you like me to relax you totally, Nick?'

'Hurnh?' Was this an honest-to-goodness question?

'Mr. Bein said to take real good care of you.'

He saw a large Navy SEAL — a large, angry Navy SEAL — dripping wet, face blackened, framed in the doorway, a gigantic Ginsu knife in his hands 79… 72… 65..

'Would you mind if I took this off? I feel real warm all of a sudden?'