Thank You for Smoking

"No no," BR said. "Nothing has to happen today. Jeannette will need you to show her where everything is. Why don't you go ahead and do the Oprah show."

Nick wondered if he was supposed to thank BR for being so magnanimous. "Oh," BR said, "if you see an opening, you can go ahead and announce that we've committed five hundred grand to an anti-underage smoking campaign."

"Five hundred. thousand?"

"I thought you'd be pleased," BR gloated. "It was your idea. It wasn't an easy sell in Winston-Salem. The Captain called it 'economic suicide,' but I told him you thought we needed a little earnest money so people will know that we care about kids smoking."

"Five hundred thousand dollars isn't going to impress anyone. That'll buy you a couple of subway posters."

"It's the idea that counts." BR smiled. "Better hurry or you'll miss your plane."

On the way out it occurred to Nick to buy some flight insurance in case BR had already canceled his benefits.

5

Nick just had time for a quick jog along Lake Michigan.

If you represented death, you had to look your best. One of the first smokesmen to get the axe was Tom Bailey. Poor Tom. Nice guy, didn't even smoke, until he'd boasted about that one time too many to a reporter, who put it in her lead. JJ had called him in on the carpet, handed him a pack of cigarettes, told him that as of now he was a smoker. So Tom had started to smoke. But he had not kept up at the gym. A couple of months later JJ saw him on C-SPAN wheezing and pale and flabby, and that was the beginning of the end for Tom. So Nick kept up: jogging, weights, and every now and then a tanning salon where he would lie inside a machine that looked like it had been designed to toast gigantic grilled-cheese sandwiches.

"You look good," Oprah said backstage before the show. She was very cheery and chatty. "You look like a lifeguard."

"Not as good as you." Nick was pleased to see that she had put back on some of those seventy-five pounds that she'd lost. As long as there were overweight women in the world, there was hope for the cigarette industry.

"We tried to get the surgeon general to come on, but she said she wouldn't come on with a death merchant." Oprah laughed. "That's what she called you. A death merchant."

"It's a living." Nick grinned.

"I can't understand what that woman is saying half the time with 42 that accent of hers." Oprah looked at him. "Why do you do this?

You're young, good-looking, white. Weren't you. you look familiar, somehow."

"I'm on cable a lot."

"Well why do you do this?"

"It's a challenge," Nick said. "It's the hardest job there is." She didn't seem to buy that. Better get on her good side before the show. "You really want to know?" "Yeah."

Nick whispered, "Population control."

She made a face. "You're bad. I wish you'd say that on the show." She left him in the care of the makeup woman.

Nick studied the sheet listing the other panelists, and he was not happy about it. There had been changes since Friday.

It showed: the head of Mothers Against Smoking — swell — an "advertising specialist" from New York, the head of the National Teachers' Association, one of Craighead's deputies from the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention. It irked Nick to be up against someone's deputy. What was Craighead doing today that was more important than trying to scrape a few inches of hide off the chief spokesman for the tobacco industry? Dispensing taxpayers' dollars to dweebish do-gooders? There was not much preshow banter between them as they sat in their makeup chairs.

They were taken onstage to be miked. Nick found himself being ushered to a chair next to another guest, a bald teenage kid. Who, Nick wondered, was he?

"Hello," Nick said.

"Hello," said the kid, friendly enough.

Now why would a bald teenage kid — bald, with no eyebrows — be on this particular panel? A technician wearing large earphones called out, "One minute!" Nick waved over a supervising producer, who rushed over to inform him that it was too late to go to the bathroom. A lot of first-timers were stricken with nervous bladders at the last minute and ended up sitting through the entire hour in damp underwear.

"I, uh," Nick said. "I'm fine." He whispered, "Who's the kid?" "Robin Williger," the producer whispered back. "Why is he on?"

"He's got cancer."

"Tell Oprah I need to speak to her right now." "Too late."

Nick pinched the little alligator clip on his lapel mike and undamped it from his Hermes necktie, the orange one with the giraffe motif. "Then she's doing this show without me."

The producer bolted. Oprah came hurrying, her admirable bosom jiggling under blue silk.

"What's the problem?"

Nick said, "I don't like surprises."

"He was a last-minute substitution."

"For who? Anne Frank? Well, he can substitute for me."

"Nick," she hissed, "you know we can't do the show without you!"

"Yes, I do."

"Fifteen seconds!" a technician shouted.

"What do you want me to do? Kick him off the set?"

"Not my problem."