Thank You for Smoking

"I interviewed Mick Jagger last year," she said, turning on the recorder, "when the Stones played at the Cap Center. When I got back all there was was hissing. I thought they were going to fire me. I had to reconstruct everything he said. I had to put it all in italics."

"Well," Nick said, "he's never said anything interesting." From the look Heather gave him he realized he was probably not going to score points with her by denigrating rock and roll's biggest icon. Not that being a Washington trade association spokesman wasn't incredibly sexy… "I mean," he said, "I am a Stones fan. It's just. " Move on, Nick.

"So," he said, "what's the focus of your piece?" Yes, let's talk about me. "You are."

"I suppose I should be flattered."

"I started out with the idea of writing about what I'm calling 'The New Puritanism.' "

"Oh yes. Lot of that going around. Olive?"

"No, thank you. I was going to talk to lobbyists for unpopular industries. Tobacco, guns, liquor, lead, asbestos, whaling, toxic waste dumpers, you know…"

"Your basic planet- and human-race — despoiling swine."

"Not necessarily," said Heather, blushing. "Then I saw you on the Oprah show and thought. something interesting going on in there."

"The idea being to find out how I'm able to live with myself." Nick tore into a bit of oven-hot bruschetta.

"No," she smiled, "I don't imagine that's a problem. Any more than it was for…"

"Goebbels?"

"I wasn't thinking of him," Heather said delicately, "but that is an interesting analogy. Is that how you see yourself?"

LOBBYIST SEES HIMSELF AS A GUCCI GOEBBELS.

"Not at all. I see myself as a mediator between two sectors of society that are trying to reach an accommodation. I guess you could say I'm a facilitator."

"Or enabler?"

"Beg pardon?"

Heather flipped through some pages of her notebook. " 'Mass murderer,' 'profiteer,' 'pimp,' 'bloodsucker,' 'child killer,' 'yuppie Mephistopheles,' here it is, 'mass enabler.' "

"What is that you're reading from?"

"Interviews. In preparation for our meeting today."

"Who did you talk to? The head of the Lung Association?"

"Not yet."

"Well, frankly, this doesn't sound like a very balanced article you're writing."

"You tell me — who else should I talk to?"

"Fifty-five million American smokers, for starters. Or how about some tobacco farmers whose only crime is to be treated like cocaine producers when they're growing a perfectly legal product. They might have a different view, you know."

"I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry. Actually, I was going to talk to a tobacco farmer."

"I know a lot of them. Fine people. Salt of the earth. I'll give you some phone numbers."

"I guess what I'm trying to get at is, why do you do this? What motivates you, exactly?"

"I get asked that all the time. People expect me to answer, 'The challenge,' or, 'The chance to prove that the Constitution means what it says.' " He paused thoughtfully. "You want to know why I really do it?" Another thoughtful pause. "To pay the mortgage."

This manful statement appeared to make no impression on Heather Holloway, other than mild disappointment. "Someone told me that's probably what you'd say."

"Did they?"

"It's a kind of yuppie Nuremberg defense, isn't it?" "What is it with the Y-word? That's a very eighties word. This is the nineties." "Excuse me."

"And, I mean," he said, looking offended, "are you calling me a Nazi?"

"No. Actually, you're the one making Third Reich analogies."

"Well, it's one thing to call yourself a Nazi. That's self-deprecation. For someone else to call you one is deprecation. And it's not very nice."

"I apologize. But a mortgage isn't much of a life goal, is it?"

"Absolutely. Ninety-nine percent of everything that is done in the world, good and bad, is done to pay a mortgage. The world would be a much better place if everyone rented. Then there's tuition. Boy, has that been a force for evil in the modern world."

"You're married?"

"Divorced," Nick said a bit too quickly. "Kids?"

"One son. But he's practically grown up."

"How old is he?"

"Twelve."

"He must be quite precocious. So how does he feel about what you do?"

"Frankly, twelve-year-olds don't care where the money comes from. I could be a vivisectionist and I don't think it would make a whole lot of difference as long as I keep him in Rollerblades and snowboards. Not that I equate vivisectionists and the tobacco industry. As a matter of fact, I feel very strongly about animals being, you know, used for dubious scientific purposes. The ones they torture out at NIH. My God, those poor little bunnies. It would break your heart to see them in their little cages, puffing away."

"Puffing?"

"Those smoking machines they attach to them. Criminal. Listen, if I had to smoke like seven thousand cigarettes a day, I'd get sick, probably. And I consider myself a heavy smoker."

"But doesn't it bother you being vilified like this? There are easier ways of paying mortage and tuition."