Thank You for Smoking

Nick added companionably, "Nothing's, you know, happened, anyway. I've had other things on my mind these last few weeks, like wondering if I'm ever going to get the feeling back in my fingers. Or am I going to need a liver transplant."

"You better get to work if you're developing her as a mouthpiece," Polly said. She looked at her watch and said she had to go. Her wine people were in town from California to work the Ag Committee on phylloxera. Also to brainstorm with their ad agency on how to counter the disastrous misimpression that only French red wine kept you from getting a heart attack.

Nick and Bobby Jay watched her walk out, her bag slung over her shoulder, cellular antennae sticking out of it, heels going clickety-click on the floor. She was wearing a shorter skirt than usual, Nick noticed; sexy, with pleats.

Nick said to Bobby Jay, "Something going on with Polly? She seemed kind of bent out of shape."

Bobby Jay said, "She got a letter from Hector. He wants to try again. But he wants her to come live with him in Lagos."

"Oh, well, hell," Nick said, "no wonder."

Back in his office, Nick was squirreled away with a stack of paperwork when Gomez O'Neal came in and shut the door behind him. "What's up?"

"I don't know," Gomez said gravely.

At a loss, Nick said, "Is this some Zen thing?"

"Watch your back, kid," Gomez said, and left.

14

Nick put in a call to the Captain. He was alarmed when his secretary told him that the Captain was in the hospital. "Nothing to worry about," she told him, "just in for repairs." Apparently some of the fetal pig valves that had been installed in other people had been giving out, and the Captain's doctors didn't want to take any chances. He did not sound well.

"Hello? No, goddamnit, I do not

wish to move my bowels. Told you that four times already, it's none of your business. Hello? Nick, son! Bless my heart but it's good to hear your voice. How am I doing? I was doing fine until I was dragooned into this medieval house o' horrors. I'll tell you what's wrong with health care in this country. Hospitals."

In the background Nick could hear the Captain's nurse, who sounded like a large, middle-aged black woman of supreme authority, demanding that he postpone his phone call until he had transacted more urgent business. Being a southerner, the Captain was helpless before her. It made no never mind to her that he was the Captain, titan of industry, the most important man in Winston-Salem. "I'll call you right back," he said, "after I have dealt with this female."

He called back ten minutes later. "It'll be a cold day in the infernal regions before she gives another order." In the background Nick heard, "I'm not going anywhere until you take that pill."

"I took the damn pill. I watched you on the Larry King show last night. You did fine. Superb job. Too bad that fellow kidnapped you didn't call in."

"He probably figured the FBI had a tap on all incoming calls. Say, I'm calling about two things, Lady Bent and Lorne Lurch."

"Yes," the Captain said, "the gas guzzler and the nematode." The latter was a reference to the tobacco plant-eating worm. The first turned out to refer to the former British PM's liberal use of the Captain's Gulfstream. A man with a Gulfstream jet is always in demand.

"BR says you want me to read her the gospel?"

"That's right. You're young, good-looking, you been kidnapped. She'll listen to you. She won't listen to me, I'll tell you that."

"Uh-huh. He also told me you want me to bribe Lutch when I go out to California on that movie project. I think that's not a good idea."

"It was my idea."

"I see some downside potential."

"Every time I turn on the television, there he is croaking through that device to some bleeding heart talk show host about how he's only got two months left and he wants to spend every last minute of it pleading with the youth of this nation not to start smoking. For a man who's running out of breath, he does a lot

of talking. Be a whole lot easier if he'd just died from smoking in bed like those others who were suing us, but we can't rely on that kind of luck every time."

Recently, three people who were suing the tobacco companies because they'd gotten cancer had managed to fall asleep with lit cigarettes and die.

"I don't think he's doing us any serious harm," Nick said. "He's just blowing off steam."

"Tell that to my senior VP for sales. Lutch was on Donahue—the thought of those two cozying up to each other gives me the rickets— three weeks ago and sales of Tumbleweed dropped off six percent. Six percent."

"It'll go back up after he goes."

"I wouldn't count on it. This is a very high-level defector. The gaspers are fixing to make a martyr out of him." The Captain lowered his voice to a whisper. "Gomez O'Neal's information is they're gonna start a foundation. The Lorne Lutch Foundation. They're going to build a ranch, for kids with. "He couldn't bring himself to say it.

"Cancer?"