Thank You for Smoking (29 page)

"Thirty seconds," Nick heard in his earpiece. He was nervous. He'd been on
Nightline
before but the stakes had never been this high. He could
feel
himself being watched, could sense on the other side of the lens the Captain, BR, Polly, Jeannette—watching in the greenroom, a few doors away—Heather,
Lorne
Lutch, Joey, his proud mother—my son, the tobacco spokesman—Jack Bein and maybe even Jeff Megall, who would be hoping that Nick would fail miserably, for the
Le
se majeste
of having declined his meal of transparent raw fish.

Be cool,
he told himself. In a hot medium, coolness is all, limpidity
is better, and not picking your nose is
key. He did his breathing exer
cise, a ten-second breath let out in
twelve. He closed his eyes and
tried to empty his mind. Somewhere he
had read that it takes Japanese
monks twenty years of silence, green tea, and brown rice to empty
theirs. Tonight, however, he wasn't looking for enlightenm
ent, just a reduced pulse rate.

Suddenly through the earpiece he heard—violent coughing. Was it the engineer?

Oh no, for up came the familiar voice-over: "Cigarettes . . . some estimates are that as many as half a million Americans will die this year from smoking."

Swell, Nick thought, we're off to a fine start: an image of a terminal cancer patient spitting up burst alveoli.

"Yet despite," Koppel continued, "the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 requiring stiff warning labels on cigarettes, people continue to smoke. Now, a U.S. senator . . ."

Nick did another breathing exercise.

"Good evening. From Washington, I'm Ted Koppel and this
...
is
Nightline."

That trademark pause reminded Nick of the beat that Edward R. Murrow used to insert in his famous wartime radio dispatches from London during the blitz. "This
...
is London." Dear old chain
-
smoking old Edward R. Murrow. Dear old, dead old Edward R. Murrow.

". . . later, we'll be joined by V
ermont Senator Ortolan K. Finis
terre, author of the Senate bill, and by Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the tobacco lobby. But first, this report from correspondent Chris Wallace. . . ."

Wallace's wretchedly thorough report brought up the
Lancet
study predicting 250 million deaths worldwide from smoking by the end of the century—one in every five people in the industrialized nations. Bitch of a study, that one. Nick made a mental note to try, anyway, to cast aspersions on the world's most respected medical journal.

"Let me start with you, Senator. Cigarettes already carry explicit warnings. Why do you need this additional label?"

"Well, Ted, as you pointed out in your excellent introduction
..."

Brown-nose.
But—a miscalculation! Koppel was too proud to be blata
ntly
sucked up to, especially by a politician.

"But surely the warning is
already
dramatic," he riposted. Nick cheered him on. "It states the risks. 'Lung cancer,' 'emphysema,' 'heart disease,' 'fetal asphyxiation.' Why do we need a skull and bones?"

"Unfortunately, Ted, many people in America can't read, or can't read English, so this measure is very specifically intended for their benefit. I think we have a responsibility to those people."

"All right. Mr. Naylor, and I should point out that however people feel about smoking, you've certainly been a front-line warrior for your industry, by virtue of having been rece
ntly
kidnapped and nearly killed by an apparently radical anti-smoking group—"

"Apparent to
me,"
Nick said.

"Perhaps I should start by asking you if you believe that cigarettes are harmful." A softball.

"Well, Ted, I take what I'd call the scientific position, namely that a lot more research is needed before we come to any responsible conclusion on the matter."

Good, excellent. In a single sentence he had allied himself with Responsible Science.

"Even though there have been to date more than sixty
thousand
studies showing a link between smoking and cancer alone?"

Nick gave a world-weary nod of the head to indicate that he was not surprised that this raggedy-ass canard had been dragged out. "I think I recognize that figure you just cited, Ted. If I'm not mistaken, it comes from former Surgeon General Koop's book, the one he got a rather substantial advance for."

"I'm not sure what you're suggesting."

"Just that Mr. Koop, like many other political figures, is not without his own agenda."

A bit tortured, perhaps, but he'd at least kicked a little putative dirt onto the shoes of a venerable doctor, a pediatric surgeon, at that. A man who saved the lives of. . . little children.
Don't think about that!
Thank God Koop looked like Captain Ahab with that scary beard of his.

He could sense Ortolan K. Finisterre frantically waving his arms in the air at Teacher. "Ted, may I comment on that?"

Koppel, however, was not about to yield his conch shell to a brown-noser who owed his political career to some nut who'd blown up his president-uncle thirty years ago at Disney World.

"I'm not sure if I understand, Mr. Naylor. You're saying that after tens of thousands of studies and, frankly
, an overwhelming amount of
scientific evidence that cigarettes are harmful, that it's
still
an open question as to whether or not they're harmful?"

"Ted, twenty years ago the scientists were telling us that we were all going to die of artificial sweeteners. Now they're telling us—we goofed, never mind. The more cyclamates, the better. So I think any scientist worth his or her salt—or in this case, sugar—would tell you that the first principle of science is—doubt."

Koppel sounded amused, in a disgusted sort of way. "All right, let's for the sake of argument suppose that it is still an open question. But would you agree that until such a time as there
is
conclusive evidence that smoking is harmful, that we ought to err on the side of prudence and protect society against the possibility—to use as
neutral
a term as I can—that it
might be
harm
ful, and therefore put Senator F
inisterre's labels on cigarettes?"

Subtl
e bastard.

"Well," Nick laughed softly, tolera
ntly
,
"sure,
but we're going
to have to print up an awful lo
t of warning labels to cover
all
the things in fife that might not be a hundred percent safe." But enough palaver. It was time to pull the pin on the hand grenade that the waitress had given him. "But the
irony
in all this, Ted, is that the real,
demonstrated
number-one killer in America is cholesterol. I don't know
any
scientists who would disagree with that. And here comes Senator Finisterre, whose fine and beautiful state is, I regret to have to say,
clogging
the nation's arteries with Vermont cheddar cheese, with this proposal to plaster us with rat-poison labels."

"That's absolutely absurd. Ted, may I—"

"if I might be allowed to finish?" Nick said, snatching back the mike. "I was merely going to say that I'm sure that the tobacco industry would consent to having these labels put on
our
product, if he will acknowledge the
tragic
role that
his
product is playing, by putting the same warning labels on these deadly chunks of solid, low-density lipoprotein that go by the name of Vermont cheddar cheese."

"Ted!—"

21

H
e picked up Jeannette in the greenroom after the show. There were other people milling around, mostly trying to get her phone number. She was looking very sleek tonight. With Nick she was the soul of cool professionalism, confining herself to complimenting him on having made "some very important points." Then when they were alone in the elevator, she grabbed him by the neck and put a kiss on him like a NASA air lock.

"You were incredible. I'm going to make you
moan."

Jeannette sure knew how to make a guy feel like he'd done an honest day's work. She kept attacking him in the car on the way back to Nick's place. Disinformation was certainly an aphrodisiac to Jeannette. They tumbled through the door and onto the bed. As usual, the lights stayed out and Jeannette did her kinky latex number with the gloves and condoms.

Just as things were getting truly sweaty, the phone rang. Polly's voice came over the answering-machine speaker. It was distracting, making love to one woman while listening to another.

"Killer
cheese?"
Polly laughed. "Well done. Finisterre looked like he was having an outbreak of shingles. Bobby Jay said to tell you that you did the Mod Squad proud tonight. Congratulations. Give me a call when you get back. I have to do a panel tomorrow, so I'm cramming about the effects of alcohol on neural function. Did you know that alcohol actually
strengthens
the flow of ions through the GABA
A
ion channel and produces a calming effect, much like Valium? In
moderate
doses of course, but I can fudge
that. If it's one thing the
Moderation Council hates, it's moderation. Anyway, kiddo, you were really great. You made my ion channels hum. Bye."

"Who was that?" Jeannette said.

"Don't stop.
Oh."

"She sounded kind of friendly."

"Polly Bailey. Just a friend."

"What's the Mod Squad?"

"Merchants of Death. We do lunch. Oh,
yes, definitely. Ohhh."

The phone rang again. "Hi Nick, it's Heather.
Cheese?
I gotta hand it to you. You could make the Serbs sound like humanitarians. Give me a call, okay? We need to talk about this piece. Can you do dinner tomorrow night?"

"Was that Heather Holloway?"

"Ohhhhhhhhh. Yeah."

"Aha. I
knew
you were her Deep Throat. Naughty boy. You should be spanked.
Do you want me to spank you?"
"No."

"So, are you fucking her?" "Who?"

"Heather Holloway."

"Can we talk about this later? Ow! Hey!"

The next call was from the Captain. "Nick, son. You were magnificent! That buck-tooth, pimply-assed son of a bitch looked like he was going to shit his britches. In fact I think I heard him do just that. Well
done,
sir. You're the only good thing's happened to tobacco in the last ten years. And don't you thin
k I don't plan to show my appre
ciation."

"Was that—the Captain?"

"Oh, oh, oh, oh
..."

"Ni
ck."

"What?
Yes."

"He certainly sounded happy." "Mrrmph. Baby, baby—"

"What did he mean by showing his appreciation?"
"R
rmmm.
Oo, oo, oo. Yesyesyesyesssssss."

She was gone, as usual, by the time he woke up, and once again had cleaned up, sparing him having to disp
ense with nookie detritus. Very
orderly woman, Jeannette. Probably went with the S&M fetish. What a littered scene it would have been this morning, boxes, wrappers, little limp love zeppelins lying all over the floor. Five times! Reassuring, in your forties, to know that the old cobra could still stand up and hiss five times in one night.

The phone rang. It was Gazelle, panicking because it was 9:15—he hadn't gotten to sleep until after four—and his phone was already in meltdown from outraged calls, mo
stly
from Vermont, including from the governor's office. "You better tell those dykes they got protecting you to look sharp," she said, " 'cause these people sound like they're going to drive down here in their cheese trucks and park them on top of your
ass."

When he got to the office, it was high-fives in the hallway and hurrahs for the conquering hero. Tobacco might be going down in flames, but its paladin was wielding a sharp lance.

BR was a tad subdued. A tad cool, even. "I just got off the phone with the Governor of Vermont," he said. "I would not describe him as a happy camper."

"That'll teach him to ban smoking in his prisons." Nick shrugged, pouring himself some coffee. After intense internal debate, the Academy of Tobacco Studies had decided
not
to go to court on behalf of the smoking rights of the Green Mountain State's murderers, rapists, and thieves.