Thank You for Smoking

A bit tortured, perhaps, but he'd at least kicked a little putative dirt onto the shoes of a venerable doctor, a pediatric surgeon, at that. A man who saved the lives of. little children. Don't think about that! Thank God Koop looked like Captain Ahab with that scary beard of his.

He could sense Ortolan K. Finisterre frantically waving his arms in the air at Teacher. "Ted, may I comment on that?"

Koppel, however, was not about to yield his conch shell to a brown-noser who owed his political career to some nut who'd blown up his president-uncle thirty years ago at Disney World.

"I'm not sure if I understand, Mr. Naylor. You're saying that after tens of thousands of studies and, frankly, an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that cigarettes are harmful, that it's still an open question as to whether or not they're harmful?"

"Ted, twenty years ago the scientists were telling us that we were all going to die of artificial sweeteners. Now they're telling us — we goofed, never mind. The more cyclamates, the better. So I think any scientist worth his or her salt — or in this case, sugar — would tell you that the first principle of science is — doubt."

Koppel sounded amused, in a disgusted sort of way. "All right, let's for the sake of argument suppose that it is still an open question. But would you agree that until such a time as there is conclusive evidence that smoking is harmful, that we ought to err on the side of prudence and protect society against the possibility — to use as neutral a term as I can — that it might be harmful, and therefore put Senator Finisterre's labels on cigarettes?"

Subtle bastard.

"Well," Nick laughed softly, tolerantly, "sure, but we're going to have to print up an awful lot of warning labels to cover all the things in fife that might not be a hundred percent safe." But enough palaver. It was time to pull the pin on the hand grenade that the waitress had given him. "But the irony in all this, Ted, is that the real, demonstrated number-one killer in America is cholesterol. I don't know any scientists who would disagree with that. And here comes Senator Finisterre, whose fine and beautiful state is, I regret to have to say, clogging the nation's arteries with Vermont cheddar cheese, with this proposal to plaster us with rat-poison labels."

"That's absolutely absurd. Ted, may I—"

"if I might be allowed to finish?" Nick said, snatching back the mike. "I was merely going to say that I'm sure that the tobacco industry would consent to having these labels put on our product, if he will acknowledge the tragic role that his product is playing, by putting the same warning labels on these deadly chunks of solid, low-density lipoprotein that go by the name of Vermont cheddar cheese."

"Ted! — "

21

He picked up Jeannette in the greenroom after the show. There were other people milling around, mostly trying to get her phone number. She was looking very sleek tonight. With Nick she was the soul of cool professionalism, confining herself to complimenting him on having made "some very important points." Then when they were alone in the elevator, she grabbed him by the neck and put a kiss on him like a NASA air lock.

"You were incredible. I'm going to make you moan."

Jeannette sure knew how to make a guy feel like he'd done an honest day's work. She kept attacking him in the car on the way back to Nick's place. Disinformation was certainly an aphrodisiac to Jeannette. They tumbled through the door and onto the bed. As usual, the lights stayed out and Jeannette did her kinky latex number with the gloves and condoms.

Just as things were getting truly sweaty, the phone rang. Polly's voice came over the answering-machine speaker. It was distracting, making love to one woman while listening to another.

"Killer cheese?" Polly laughed. "Well done. Finisterre looked like he was having an outbreak of shingles. Bobby Jay said to tell you that you did the Mod Squad proud tonight. Congratulations. Give me a call when you get back. I have to do a panel tomorrow, so I'm cramming about the effects of alcohol on neural function. Did you know that alcohol actually strengthens the flow of ions through the GABAA ion channel and produces a calming effect, much like Valium? In moderate doses of course, but I can fudge that. If it's one thing the Moderation Council hates, it's moderation. Anyway, kiddo, you were really great. You made my ion channels hum. Bye."

"Who was that?" Jeannette said.

"Don't stop. Oh."

"She sounded kind of friendly."

"Polly Bailey. Just a friend."

"What's the Mod Squad?"

"Merchants of Death. We do lunch. Oh, yes, definitely. Ohhh."

The phone rang again. "Hi Nick, it's Heather. Cheese? I gotta hand it to you. You could make the Serbs sound like humanitarians. Give me a call, okay? We need to talk about this piece. Can you do dinner tomorrow night?"

"Was that Heather Holloway?"