Thank You for Smoking

"What's the focus of her piece?" Polly asked. "Tobacco fighting back?"

"She says it's for a series on the New Puritanism. Maybe the Moon's looking for some tobacco advertising."

"You be careful," Bobby Jay said. "Just pretend it's some ugly old harelip interviewing you."

"Bobby, I think I can handle a good-looking girl reporter."

"Seen it happen again and again. They come in, bat their pretty eyes at you, cross their legs a few times, and before you know, it's 'I shouldn't really be telling you this' and 'Would you like to see our confidential files?' Beware of Jezebels with tape recorders."

"Bobby Jay, you've got to lay off the breakfast prayer groups. You're getting kind of weird."

"All I'm saying is that most men, confronted with a babe reporter, talk too much."

"Well thanks for the advice."

"Hundred bucks says you end up spilling the company beans all over the floor so bad you need a Wet-Vac to clean up. You in for a piece of the action, Ms. Steinem?"

"I think Nick can manage."

"A hundred each says he commits at least one major indiscretion." "You're on," Nick said.

"Done," Polly said. "Damnit," she said, "I've got a two-thirty meeting. Prime Time Live is doing a segment on fetal alcohol syndrome next Thursday."

"Um," Nick said, sipping coffee, "that's a tough one."

"We're going to get creamed."

"I saw this piece on CNN about a woman who drank a gallon of vodka every day in her third trimester. Oddly, her child has problems."

"Got any ideas for me?"

Nick thought. "I don't know. Deformed kids are tough. I'm lucky. My product only makes them bald before it kills them." "That's a big help."

"Challenge their data. Demand to see the mothers' medical histories. Her mother's m.h., her mother's mother's m.h. Say, 'Look, where's the science here? This is just anecdotal.' "

"Maybe you could hug the kids," Bobby Jay said, "like Mrs. Bush

and the AIDS baby."

"They're not going to let me hug the kids, for Christsake, Bobby."

"Who's doing the segment? Donaldson or Sawyer?"

"Sawyer, I think. They're being cagey about it, but the producer we're dealing with is one of hers, so I'm pretty sure." "That is tough." "Why?"

'"Cause she's going to hug them. Look, if it looks like, if you see her reaching to hug one, try to get in a hug first."

"God, I'm really not looking forward to this."

"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 bottles 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.