Thank You for Smoking (23 page)
He reelingly stuck around to sign a few autographs, mostly on cigarett
e packs, and fled for the shuttl
e, 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 women bodyguards couldn't follow him into. He was standing in front of the urinal minding his business when he heard a voice behind him say, "Hello, Neek!"
Peter Loire!
Nick whirled around, still holding his spigot, which was at this point in full flow, only to find himself spraying the pants leg of an innocent and very aggrieved businessman.
"Hey!
Damnit!"
"Sorry. Sorry," Nick stammered. "I . . ."
The businessman furiously cleaned himself. Nick looked around. There was no one else in the bathroom. Nick spent most of the flight up staring at the back of the seat in front of him. He called Dr. Williams on the Airfone and described the episode. In his sympathetic way, Dr. Williams reiterated that Nick had undergone great trauma, and offered the number of a psychiatrist. Nick said he'd think about it, hung up, and went back to staring blankly at the back of the seat.
Lady Bent was installed on a high floor of the Hotel Pierre. To get to her floor a special key had to be inserted into the control panel by an assistant manager, and as you rode up you had the feeling that sensors were examining your body; every part of it.
The door
dinged
open to reveal three athletic men with bulging
armpits; Nick recognized them immediately as Security, and they
fixed him with the usual evaulating stares. Though out of power, Lady Bent was still under Special Branch protection on account of what she'd done to the IRA after they blew up her bulldogs. They'd vowed to get her, someday.
He
r bodyguards did not like the fact that Nick had arrived with some of his own armed guards—thank God they hadn't brought their sawed-off shotguns. A Mexican standoff developed, because Nick's Valkyries were under strict orders not to let him out of their sight, and Lady Bent's people weren't about to let them get near Lady Bent. A factotum arrived and made diplomacy between the two armed camps and asked Nick to follow him.
They went into a vast and endless
suite. The factotum knocked softl
y on a door, which opened to reveal not Lady Bent but her private secretary, a man of viceregal air, tall, thin, exquisitely tailored. He had strange, transparent skin—you could almost see his skull underneath—and a nose so aquiline that Nick was tempted to offer it a fish to eat.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Naylor," he said, unsmilingly offering a hand. "I'm afraid we're running a bit over this morning so if you wouldn't mind having a seat I thought we could use the time to talk about what it is, exa
ctly
, you'd like to discuss with Lady Bent."
"Sorry?" Nick said dumbfoundedly.
The viceroy gave a brief show of pain, suggesting that he had not achieved a double first at Cambridge in order to waste his time repeating his beautifully crafted questions for the benefit of mentally defective post-colonials. He repeated himself word for word, slowly.
Clearing his throat, Nick asked, "I meant, what were you under the impression I was here to discuss with Lady Bent?"
"We were
told,
simply, by Mr. Boykin's people, that you desired to speak with the former prime minister in connection with her arrangements with Agglomerated Tobacco. The precise nature of the discussion was never in fact specified, despite our, I must say, repeated requests for clarification on the matter. So here, as it were, we are; though I certainly hope, not at odds."
Enough words there to choke a giraffe, but it was gradually dawning on Nick that the Captain, titan of industry and leader of men that he was, was completely
cowed
by this woman, despite the fact that he was paying her a small fortune and flying her around in his Gulfstream at $15,000 an hour. He couldn't quite bring himself to come right out and tell her:
"Damnit, start saying nice things about my cigarettes!"
And from the looks of it, the viceroy wasn't even going to give him any face time with old Cement Knickers unless he was first satisfied that the topic was worthy of her precious time.
"Uh," Nick said, trying desperately to think of something to say. The viceroy stared. Nick whispered, "Is this room clean?"
"I
beg
your pardon?"
"Has it been, you know, swept?"
"Swept? What do you mean? For
bugs?"
Nick nodded.
"I . . . should think not, in all likelihood. But why on
earth
would you be concerned about that?"
Nick took out his notepad and wrote, "Is there a bathroom where we can talk?"
"A
bathroom?"
the viceroy said. "What
are
you talking about?"
Nick wrote: "Concerns L.B.'s personal safety."
The viceroy looked up, confused, and said impatie
ntly
, "Very well, then." Nick followed him into the bathroom and after making a show of examining it for listening devices, opened up all the faucets so that it sounded like Niagara Falls. He whispered, "As you may already know, I was the target of an attempt by a radical anti-smoking movement."
"Oh. Yes, I thought you looked a bit familiar. But what on earth has all this to do with Lady Bent?"
"We don't know how far this group might prosecute their agenda. If you see what I mean."
"But this has nothing to do with her. Her connection with your business is extremely remote. A few appearances at board meetings, the occasional dinner, that sort of thing."
"She
is
accepting money from the industry."
"Well, yes, but . . ."
"And traveling in Ag Tobacco's plane."
"Yes, but she's hardly . . ."
"All the same, we're very concerned for her."
"I think you're overreacting, frankly. I can't see how this affects the prime minister."
"If you're willing to take that risk on her behalf, fine. You're probably right. They probably wouldn't go after her. I'll just go back and make my report, in writing, that you didn't think it was a problem."
"Perhaps you should speak with her. But only
very
briefly, please. We are very pressed this afternoon."
He opened the bathroom door and there was Lady Bent, standing in the middle of the room. She was a handsome old girl with a great matronly bosom, mongoose eyes, and a helmet of hair that looked as if it could deflect incoming nuclear missiles.
"Ah," she said, "I've been looking all over for you. What on
earth
were you both doing in
there?"
The viceroy blushed.
Lady Bent offered Nick a chair and said, "What may I do for you?" making it clear that she did not want to engage in small talk about the Pierre, New York, or her private secretary's penchant for luring younger men into toilets. Before Nick could answer, she looked at him curiously and said, "You're the cigarette man who was attacked, aren't you?"
"Yes ma'am," Nick said.
She insta
ntly
warmed. "You needn't call me ma'am. I'm not the queen. It must have been quite gha
stly
."
"Well, it wasn't
fun,"
Nick said. "But nothing like what you've been through."
"We have something in common, then. We know that terrorism must never, ever, be countenanced."
"You bet," Nick said. "However, Lady Bent, our people are very concerned that this group—which is still very much at large—might target you, and we would obviously feel awful if anything happened. So I've come to ask that in all your public and even private statements, you absolutely
refrain
from mentioning tobacco. Or, God forbid, from saying anything positive about it."
She drew herself up like an aroused lioness and fixed him with a withering look. Nick thought, it sure must have been fun to be in her cabinet and face that look across the table.
"Mister Naylor," she said, like an arctic wind, "I have never been one to shrink from principle out of fear for my own personal safety."
"Of course not," Nick said. "And I certainly didn't meant to imply that you were. It's just that we feel—"
"If we let terrorists dictate what we do not say, then we are as good as letting them dictate what we do say. And when we do that, we are finished as a civilized people."
"Nicely put," Nick said. "Still, I must insist that you not mention tobacco. You don't want to get these people mad. I don't know about the I
RA, I know they're bad news bears
and all—and that was a terrible thing they did to your dogs—but things can get pretty nasty in America."
The color rose in Lady Bent. She stood, signaling that their interview was at an end, and proffered her hand. She said tersely and without smiling, "Good to see you," and with the viceroy following, walked out of the room, whose doors opened as if by magic.
Two days later, back in Washington, Nick was getting ready for his trip out to California when BR called him in.
"You see this?" he said, tossing him
The Wall Street Journal.
Nick hadn't. He read:
After the dinner at the Pierre, Lady Bent spoke for an hour and twenty-five minutes, lengthy even by her standards. The theme of her speech was free enterprise in the post—Cold War era. It surprised no one at the dinner, consisting largely of business and international commerce officials, to hear the former British Prime Minister issue a ringing defense of open trade and a stinging attack on protectionism; she also included an unusually passionate endorsement of the right of American and British cigarette companies to compete in Asian markets.
Lady Bent serves on the board of Agglomerated Tobacco, which has been especially aggressive in trying to break down Pacific Rim trade barriers to U.S. tobacco products. In an informal exchange with a reporter after the dinner, Lady Bent said that her remarks on tobacco were unrelated to her connection with Agglomerated. "My views on the tobacco business are the same as my views on the ice cream business," she said, "and they have been consistent throughout my career." She went on to rebuke the anti-smoking movement for being "anti-business."
"I don't know what you told her," BR said, "but it sure worked. I've been instructed to give you another raise. To two-five-oh." Nick ran into Jeannette in the hallway. She was all smiles. "We still never talked about
Inhale!"
she said.
"I have to go to California tomorrow."
17
H
e flew First Class, which BR had okayed since he was carrying an attache case containing a half million dollars in fifty- and hundred-dollar bills.
Lorne
Lutch's hush money. It was a strange sensation, carrying all that money. It made him feel like a drug dealer or a Watergate bag man. Going through the X-ray machine at Dulles, the eyes of the guy monitoring the screen went buggy when he saw all that cash. No law against carrying around money, but there was a minor scene whe
n his three women bodyguards de
clared their 9-millimeters. But once he was seated up in First and hovered over by stewards dispensing hot towels and Bloody Marys, he began to relax. Nick liked airplanes, even if the airlines were circulating less fresh air in the cabins to make more money. In a way, he mused, he and they were in the same business.
First Class was full. There was a lot of traffic back and forth between D.C. and L.A. these days. He recognized Barbra Streisand's issues person, whom he'd read had flown in to brief the National Security Council on Barbra's position on the developing Syrian situation. Richard Dreyfuss's issues person was also on board, having given a presentation to the cabinet on Richard's feelings about health reform.
It wasn't until two hours into the flight that Nick realized that the woman sitting next to him, underneath Jackie O—sized dark glasses, was Tarleena Tamm, the television p
roducer friend of the First Fam
ily. Nick didn't introduce himself
, knowing how celebrities, especial
ly controversial ones, value their
privacy in the air. But then he
became aware that she was sneaking furtive glances at him. When their eyes connected for the third, embarrassing time, he smiled at her. She said, "Aren't you the tobacco person who was kidnapped?"
"Yes," Nick said, flattered at being approached by a celebrity. He was about to reciprocate when she set her jaw and said, "I know a lot of people who died of lung cancer.
Good
people."
Nick said to her, "No
bad
people?"
She gave him a fierce look, craned about to see if there was an empty seat, and finding none, went back to angrily marking up the script on her large lap with a big, angry red pen. Some screenwriter would pay for Nick's insolence.
Nick loved L.A. Arriving there always made it feel like Friday, even in the middle of a week facing a full workload. He felt exhilarated walking off the plane and imagined himself at the wheel of the sporty red Mustang he'd had Gazelle rent for him, driving along Mulholland Drive at night and looking down on all the lights of the city, spreading out as far as the eye could see. Too bad Heather or Jeannette wasn't here. Maybe he could entice Heather to fly out. Or Jeannette.
Shattering this pleasant reverie was the sight of a Middle Eastern-looking chauffeur with a hundred-dollar haircut waiting for him at the gate holding up one of those signs:
mr. naylor
. When he inno
ce
ntly
reached for Nick's attache case, Nick's bodyguards nearly wrenched his arm out of its socket.
The chauffeur apologetically in
troduced himself as Mahmoud and said that he'd been sent by Mr. Jack Bein, of Associated Creative
Talent, and handed Nick an enve
lope with a note inside from Bein asking Nick to call him immediately.
Nick was sorrier still for his c
anceled Mustang when he saw Mah
moud's vehicle, a white stretch limousine the length of a lap pool. People standing on the curb nearby waiting for the shuttle bus saw Nick with his entourage and Moby Dick limousine and demanded his autograph, which made the bodyguards nervous. Nick signed one and the person who'd asked for it examined it, frowned, and said, "It's not him." The small crowd dispersed.
It was cool and cavernous inside and lit with scores of tiny Christmas tree lights. A huge TV screen in front displayed computerized fireworks that formed the words "Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Naylor." A microwave oven beeped open with a bowl of hot towels; a wet bar opened with four kinds of freshly squeezed juice, as well as liquor. On the seats were fresh copies of the
L.A. Times, Variety,
and
Asahi Shinbum.
So where, Nick wondered, was the terry cloth bathrobe?
Suddenly the fireworks display vanished from the screen and was replaced with a huge face: deeply tanned, teeth so white they hurt to look at, eyes masked by tinted aviator glasses. Nick was trying to figure why the TV had gone on and what game show host this was when the face said:
"Nick!"
Nick started.
"Jack Bein. Is everything okay?"
It was asked with urgency, with fear, as if he expected Nick to tell him,
No, everything is
not
okay, Jack. Things are very un-okay. And you, your family, and your dog are going to suffer for it.
"Yes," Nick said, recovering his composure. "Fine. Thank you."
"I can't believe I'm not there to greet you personally." Nick was left to interpret this as he chose. "Jeff is really looking forward to meeting you. I'll pick you up at the hotel first thing. Here's my home number, call me anytime, in the middle of the night, whenever. Whatever you need. I mean that, okay?"
"Okay," Nick said.
A half hour later they pulled up in front of a hotel. It was not the Peninsula, where Gazelle had made reservations, but the Encomium, very palmy, open, and grand, with an enormous Yitzak McClellan fountain
bleu
outside. An assistant manager was waiting for him at the curb.
"Yes,
Mr. Naylor, we've been expecting you. The manager asked me to relay his sincere regrets that he couldn't be here to greet you personally. Are these," he said, regarding the three brutish women surrounding Nick, "ladies in your party?" Nick said that they were.
"Will you all be staying together?"
"No, no," Nick said.
"If you'd follow me, please."
Nick's bags were whisked away. Check-in formalities were dispensed with. The assistant manager handed 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 butl
er, 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 butl
er 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 relax
ing; in fact it caused Nick sig
nificant, 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?" "R
hhh."
"I can't
believe
that the Japanese are going to s
tart 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 moonligh
t, 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."