Thank You for Smoking

"Yet," they chimed in unison. It was understood among them that at any given moment, somewhere, someone in the "vast federal bureaucracy" was issuing regulations against them. They were the Cavaliers of Consumption aligned on the field of battle against the Roundheads of Neo-Puritanism.

Polly said, "My beer wholesalers convention next week. I'm worried."

"Why?" Nick asked.

"I'm scheduled to debate with Craighead in front of two thousand of them." Gordon R. Craighead was the chief "unelected bureaucrat" in charge of the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention at the Department of Health and Human Services, "Helpless, Hopeless, and Stupid" to those in the alcohol and tobacco industries. Craighead's office dispensed about $300 million a year to anti-smoking and anti— drunk-driving groups. Though it had been calculated that the tobacco industry spends $2.5 billion a year, or $4,000 per second, promoting smoking, Nick nonetheless railed against OSAP's "runaway budgets."

"Oh, you can handle Craighead."

"I'm not worried about that. It's my beer wholesalers. These are not subtle people. Most of them started out driving their own trucks. I'm worried that if Craighead starts talking about raising their excise taxes again, or if he gets into the recycling deposit, they'll start throwing things at him. They'll get abusive. That's not going to help anyone."

"Are you doing Q and A?" Polly said yes, there would be a question and answer after the debate.

"Make them write down the questions. We did a panel once with Mothers Against Smoking at a vending-machine owners' convention. We took spoken questions. A nightmare. The vendors were wrestling the microphone away from each other, shouting at the mothers, 'You're stealing bread outa my kid's mouth and you call yourself a mother!' I was a little surprised. I always thought the mafia was traditionally more respectful of mothers. Now I can't get Mothers Against Smoking even to return my calls. After that I made it a policy, only written questions. Have you got a slogan for the meeting?"

" 'We're Part of the Solution,' " she said. "What do you think?"

Nick considered. "I like it."

"We had a hard time with it," Polly said. "They wanted something more aggressive. They're very feisty, the wholesalers."

"I've got a slogan for you," Bobby Jay said. "I saw it on a T-shirt. 'A Day Without a Buzz Is a Day That Never Wuz.' "

"Our first choice," Polly continued, ignoring him, "was 'In the Spirit of Cooperation,' but they said it sounded too much like 'spirits.' I spend half my time keeping my beer people from killing my spirits people, and my wine people from trying to kill the other two. The whole idea behind the Moderation Council was strength through unity at a time of volumetric decline, but it's like trying to unify Yugoslavia." She sipped her iced cappuccino. "It's tribal."

Polly lit a cigarette. Nick appreciated a woman who smoked sexily. She leaned back and tucked her left arm under her breasts to support her right elbow, the arm going straight up, cigarette pointing at the ceiling. She took long, deep drags, tilted her head back, and let the smoke out in long, slow, elegant exhalations, with a little lung-clearing shot at the end. A beautiful smoker. Nick's own mother, in her day, had been a beautiful smoker. He remembered her by the pool, summers in the fifties, all long legs and short pants, pointy sunglasses and broad straw hats and lipstick that left bright, sticky smudges on the butts that he filched and coughingly relit behind the garage.

Nick was rousted from the reverie by the shrill cricketing of Bobby Jay's cellular phone. Bobby Jay flipped it open with practiced cool, like it was a switchblade. "Bliss. Yeah?" Bobby said. "Great." He said to Nick and Polly, "The postal worker. They got him. Uh-huh. uh-huh. Missouri. uh-huh. uh-huh. what?" His brow beetled. "Well how the hell does CNN know? It was on him? FBI. what did, you didn't say anything to them, did you? Look, did you check with Membership?" Nick watched Bobby's face sag and thought, This face is infreefall. "Sustaining? Was he paid up? Well, yes, check, right away, before you do anything. No, don't call CNN or the FBI back. I don't care. I'll be there in three minutes."

Bobby Jay folded up his phone. Nick and Polly stared, awaiting explication.

"I got to go," Bobby Jay said, tossing a twenty onto the table. It landed like a fall leaf in a little puddle of melting ice.

"Do we have to find out what happened from CNN?"

Bobby Jay looked like he was about to break a sweat. "Take deep breaths," Nick suggested.

"The son of a bitch was a member," Bobby Jay said. "Not just a member, but a sustaining life member."

"How did CNN find out?"

"He had his membership card with him. CNN got a shot of it lying with the rest of his wallet. In a pool of blood."

"Hm," Nick said, no longer jealous about Bobby Jay's incredible

good luck. At least with tobacco the casualties were tucked away in hospital wards.