Thank You for Smoking (12 page)

"Set up a fund," Bobby Jay suggested. "The Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Foundation. F-A-S-F. Fasfuff."

"Bight, I can just see Arnie Melch's face, or Peck Gibson's or Gino Grenachi's faces, when I tell him I want money for the kids of drunken mothers. And we're going to have the words 'Fetal' and 'Alcohol' in the name. That's a brilliant goddamn idea. But excuse me. I forget I was talking to the master spin doctor of the Carburetor City Church Choir Massacre."

"Why not? It would show compassion, generosity of heart."

"Do you set up funds for people who get shot?" Polly said testily. "No, because you'd go broke."

"Guns don't kill people, Polly."

"Oh,
yeah."

"No, he's right," Nick said. "Bullets kill people." "I've got to go," Polly sighed heavily. "Jesus, this is going to be just
awful."

Nick walked with her part of the way back to the Moderation Council. It was a beautiful Washington spring day—the hideous Washington summers are Nature's revenge for the loveliness of Washington's springs—and the magnolia tree on the corner of Rhode Island and Seventeenth was blooming. Nick noticed that Polly was wearing white stockings with a bit of silver sparkle in them that gave her long legs a shimmer of frost as they disappeared up into her pleated blue skirt. He found himself looking down at her legs. All that talk about Heather Holloway's tits, Gazelle at the Madison Hotel, the spring weather, it had Nick thinking. The white stockings, boy they were nice, reminded him of the night ten, no, twelve years ago, after he'd first come to Washington, in the summer, and he
and Amanda had put away two bottl
es of crisp, cold Sancerre between them and strolled on down to the Lincoln Memorial. It was one of those steamy Washington July evenings. She was wearing this cotton, floral print dress that with all the humidity clung to her and, well, he couldn't say about Heather Holloway, but Amanda's body had no apologies to make, the way, um, and she was wearing white stockings, thigh-highs, the kind that didn't need garters, but allowed easy access to the dreamy area above, and um, yes, well, Nick had a definite thing about white thigh-highs. They went around to the back of the Lincoln, where it looks out onto Arlington Cemetery, and Amanda was leaning up against one of the massive granite columns, giggling about how the ridges were digging into her back. Nick was down on his knees, which wasn't so comfortable on the marble but he wasn't thinking about his knees, and lifting the floral print dress slowly, slowly, planting kisses until the cool thighs appeared, then a triangle of white— white again!—silk panties and . . .

"Do you want to have a drink tonight later, after the King show?" Nick asked.

Polly looked at him. "A drink?"

"The studio's down on Mass and whatever, Third
or something. We could go to Il
Peccatore." Senator Finisterre, nephew of the slain president, had recently made it famous when a waitress walked into the private back room with the food a
nd found the senator filibuster
ing a young female aide on the table. The incident made print and ever since the tour buses had been stopping there next to
the sidewalk in front, where Il
Peccatore's outside tables were set up and the tour guides would say over the loudspeakers, "That's where the incident involving Senator Finisterre took place," and people from Indiana wo
uld take their pictures while Il
Peccatore's sidewalk patrons tried to eat their arugula and calamari without feeling that they were background in some live sex act show.

"I .
.."

"Aw, come on." "I better not." "Why?"

"I've got a Designated Driver Committee dinner."

"After the dinner, then. How l
ate can a Designated Driver Com
mittee dinner go?"

For a second there it looked like she was going to say yes, yes I will, yes. Then she said, "I really can't. Maybe some other time."

8

Sa
mmy Najeeb, Larry King's producer and a force of nature, six-foot-something, big, hearty, came to fetch him in the reception area and take him to makeup. "I used to smoke like a chimney," she said.

"It's never too late to take it back up again. By the way, who's on the second segment?"

"You don't want to know," Sammy said.

Nick stopped. "Not the cancer kid?"

"No. This isn't Oprah. But you're in the right ballpark."

"Who?"

"Trust me, you won't have to be in the same room at the same time, I promise. It's all fixed. I gave instructions."
"Who?"

"It's
Lorne
Lutch."

"I'm on with the Tumbleweed Man? Are you
nuts?"

"You're not on with anyone. It's two completely different segments. Look, it's not a setup, Larry wanted
you
on, then Atl
anta said he had to put someone else from the other side on after, for balance."

"Balance," Nick muttered.

"It's gonna be fine. Larry
loved
what you did on Oprah. He's a fan.
He used to smoke three packs a day."
"Hi there," said the makeup lady.
Fuming, Nick took his seat. "I take Innocent Bisque?"
"I'm out of Innocent," she said. "But Indigo is close."
"All right. And Tawny Blush highlight."

Jesus, the Tumbleweed Man. For over twenty years the very symbol of America's smoking manhood in the saddle, his rugged, granite face on the back cover of every magazine, on billboards, on TV, in those happy bygone days. Now he was breathing through a hole in his throat and with every breath he had left—which was not many, thank God, according to Gomez O'Neal, the head of the Academy's intelligence unit—paving his way to the Pearly Gate by warning everyone about the evils of smoking. Ironically, it was Nick who had talked Total Tobacco Company management out of suing him for breach of faith, on the grounds that it would do no good to the industry's image to sue a dying man with three kids and twelve grandchildren, especially since his croaky pleas to the nation's youth had made him a media darling (at least with the broadcast media since they couldn't accept cigarette ads anyway). Maybe, thought Nick, he could trot out this pathetic little detail in his defense tonight.

Sammy was hovering, as if she didn't trust him not to flee down the fire stairs with his makeup bib still on.

Larry King was very welcoming. "Good to see you. Thanks for coming."

"Pleasure," Nick said tightly. His trapezius muscles were hyper-contracting. He was going to need a session with Dr. Wheat soon. He could use a session with Dr. Wheat right now.

"I used to smoke three packs a day," Larry said. "And you know something, I still miss it. We're gonna have a good show tonight. Lot of calls. Very emotional issue."

"I understand
Lorne
Lutch is on the second segment," Nick said.

Larry shrugged. "What can you do? I'll tell you something, though."

"What's that?"

"He's a nice guy."

"Yes, that's what we hear."

"By the way, you know what that hole is called? The one in the throat. Stoma. Must be Greek, right?"

"Undoubtedly." Nick screwed in his earpiece.

"Good evening everyone. My first guest tonight is Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby here in Washington, D.C. Good evening, Nick."

"Good evening, Larry."

"A couple of days ago you were on the
Oprah
show and stirred up quite a fuss, right?" "Appare
ntly
, Larry."

"And now the secretary of Health and Human Services and the surgeon general are calling for you to be fired, I understand. Kind of rare, isn't it?"

"Well, those two aren't exa
ctly
unbiased when it comes to tobacco. Actually, I would have thought that they would have been pleased by our announcement that our industry is prepared to spend five million dollars on a very high-level campaign to keep underage kids from smoking. But I guess politics got in the way. Too bad."

"Lot of money, five million."

"You bet it is, Larry."

"Let me ask you something, Nick. Smoking's bad for you, right? I mean . . ."

"No, Larry, actually that's not really true."

"I used to smoke a lot and I had three heart attacks and bypass surgery. My doctor told me I could either go on smoking or die."

"I wouldn't be comfortable discussing your medical history, Larry. I don't know what the incidence of heart disease is in the King family. I'm certainly happy that you're feeling better. But if I could steer us a little away from the anecdotal and toward the more scientific, the fact is that ninety-six percent of heavy smokers never get seriously ill."

"Isn't that a little hard to believe?"

"They get colds and, you know, headaches and the normal sort of things, bunions"—
Bunions?
—"but they don't get seriously ill." "Where does that figure come from?"

"From the National Institutes of Health, right here in Bethesda, Maryland." Let NIH deny it tomorrow; tomorrow people would be on to the next thing—Bosnia, tax increases, Sharon Stone's new movie, Patti Davis's latest novel about what a bitch her mother was. As long as he was at it, he threw in: "And from the Centers for Disease Control, in
Atlanta
, Georgia."

"That
is
news." Larry shrugged. Larry was basically too polite to accuse his guests of being shameless liars. It was probably why Ross Perot liked him so much. With any luck, no one from NIH or CDC would be watching.

"Of course," Nick said, "neither Secretary Furioso nor the surgeon general, both of whom continue to refuse to debate with me on the issues, want you to know that or their budgets will go down. Sad, but true."

"Interesting."

"There are a lot of things," Nick sighed, "that the government doesn't want people to know about tobacco. Such as . . ."—
What?
—". . . the indisputable scientific fact that it retards the onset of Parkinson's disease."

"So we should wait till we're sixty-five and then start smoking like crazy?"

"Well, Larry, we don't advocate that anyone should take up smoking. We're just here to provide the scientific facts. Like the report that just came out showing that tobacco smoke is replenishing the ozone that has been lost due to chlorofluorocarbons."

"Really?" Larry said. "Well, maybe I should take it up again, do my part for the ozone hole. I better check with my doctor first."

"Doctors tend to have their own agendas. I'd also like to call to your attention the report last week that smokers who are clerical workers tend to get less carpal tunnel syndrome, you know, the wrist thing, because they take more breaks. There's something else the quote medical science establishment unquote doesn't want you to know about."

"We're going to take some calls. Spokane, Washington, you're on the air. "Hello?"

"You're on
Larry King Live."
"Oh. Uh, yes, hello." "Do you have a question?"

"Yes. I would like to ask your guest how he can live with himself." "I take it you don't approve of what he does." "I think he's a criminal, Larry. He should be locked up. Or worse. There should be a death penalty for what he does." "Nick, care to comment?" "Not really, Larry." "Blue Hill, Maine, you're on the air."

"Yes, I smoked for many, many,
many
years. And then I developed these like, lumps?" Uh-oh. "And t
he doctor said it was from smok
ing, so I gave it up, but the lumps still didn't go away, so I'm thinking about taking it up again."

"Uh-huh," Larry said. "And your question?"

"The doctor who told me that was a young fellah and I think he just told me that to get me to give up. I don't think the lumps had anything to do with smoking."

"Okay, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, you're on the air."

"I smoke and it hasn't made me sick. I'll tell you what made me sick is drinking Milwaukee public water. I thought I was going to die."

"Thanks. No one has a question tonight?" Larry looked over at Sammy in the booth who gestured to say that the callers had
said
they had questions.

"Okay, we need a question.
Atlanta
, Georgia"—Nick's gut went into Condition Red—"you're on the air."

"Thank you, Larry. I work at the Centers for Disease Control and I would like to try to correct the
extraordinary
misimpression that this . . . individual is trying to create. While it may be true that as many as ninety-six percent of smokers never gets seriously ill, it simply does not follow that smoking is not dangerous. It is extremely dangerous. It is the number-one preventable killer in the United States. There have been so far over sixty thousand studies since the 1940s showing the link between smoking and disease. For this guy to claim that we're saying it's all right to smoke is j
ust beyond immorality. It's gro
tesque."

"Nick?"