Christopher Buckley - Thank You for Smoking

"Oh?" Nick said.

"The Captain called me this morning. They're all still in awe of her and haven't been able to get in a word edgewise. She's quite a talker, apparently. Anyway, he thought you might take the opportunity to give her a little gospel so if she gets any hostile questions about the relationship, everyone will be singing off the same sheet of music. Stress diversity. Agglomerated isn't just tobacco, it's infant formula, frozen foods, industrial lubricants, air filters, bowling balls. You know the drill."

"Yes, I do," Nick said, miffed at being given advice on spin control. "I doubt that the Titanium Lady needs lessons on handling the press from me."

"She wants to meet you, Nick," BR said brightly. "You should be flattered."

"Okay, I'm flattered."

"Maybe you'll pick up some tips on how to deal with terrorists. Remember what she did to the IRA after they blew up her bulldogs?"

"Aren't I supposed to be going out to Hollywood?" "We're working on setting up a meeting with Jeff Megall's people. It's like getting an appointment with God." "The Jeff Megall?" Nick said.

"Himself. But the Captain says he wants you right here where the press can find you until they get tired of you. Frankly, if I'd known that a kidnapping would result in this kind of coverage, I'd have kidnapped you myself. Speaking of L.A., as long as you're going to be out there. "

"Uh-huh," Nick said suspiciously.

"Your friend Lorne Lutch."

"He's not my friend, BR. All I did was talk you people out of suing him. I ducked into a closet at the Larry King show to avoid running into him."

"He's been hitting us very hard lately," BR said. "Did you see the things he said about us last week? No, of course not, you were still in Intensive Care. Your pal Oprah had him on with the Silver-O's girl. You should have seen them, both talking through their voice boxes. A duet for two kazoos."

It was one Oprah appearance Nick was glad not to have been invited to share.

"It was pathetic. Her being a woman, I can forgive her. But him. The man has no sense of personal responsibility."

"He's dying, BR. We should probably cut the man some slack. If it was me, I'd slip him some money, help out with the expenses."

BR said, "I'm not sure that's the approach I'd take, but you and the Captain think alike on this one."

"Okay," Nick said to Sven, who was staring back at him on the video-phone, "does it gobble?"

Sven said, "I want to point out at the beginning that thrilled as we are to be on this account, and we're extremely thrilled, everyone here, what you asked us to produce was an ineffective message that will have no impact on the people it is targeted at."

Nick had the feeling he was being taped. It was like having a conversation in the Oval Office with Nixon at the height of Watergate.

"I just want it clear what our role is," Sven said.

Nick said, "Okay, you've established that your role is the tormented artiste. Can we proceed?" Honestly, these creative hothouse orchids. And in Minneapolis, no less. Nick still had frostbite from his visit there six months ago.

"What we did was to take the 'Some People Want You to Smoke. We Don't' concept, which avoided the whole health issue, and instead tapped into the adolescent's innate fear of being manipulated by adults. You didn't like it."

"Right. Because it was effective."

"It's gone. So now we're going to be blunt, we want to speak to them with the voice of despised authority, nag them, tell them to go to their rooms, turn them completely off."

"I like it already," Nick said.

"Okay." Sven said. "Here we go. He pulled the board into video camera range. All it had on it was type. It said, "Everything Your Parents Told You About Smoking Is Right."

"Hmm," Nick said.

"You know what I love about it?" Sven said. "Its dullness." "It is dull," Nick admitted.

"It's deadly. Kids are going to look at this and go, 'Puuke.' " That would probably be Joey's reaction, Nick mused. "And yet," Sven said, "its brilliance, if I may say so, is in its deconstructability." "How's that?"

"Say the last three words out loud." " 'Smoking Is Right.' "

"Gobbles on the outside, grabs you on the inside. A Trojan turkey."

"I think," Nick said, "that I can sell this to my people."

Nick was looking forward to lunch, an hour or two of normalcy with Polly and Bobby Jay. As a Ph.D. in Spin Control, he could certainly understand why the Captain and BR were eager to suction every golden egg from the goose before it died, but fame has its price. As Fred Allen used to say, a celebrity is someone who works hard in order to become well-known and then has to wear dark glasses in order to avoid being recognized. On his way from the Academy to Bert's, he became aware of people staring at him as he passed, saw people nudge each other, whisper, "Isn't that him?" At the corner of K and Connecticut, while waiting for the light, he heard a woman murmur, "You deserved it."

He whirled but the woman kept going and he didn't feel like running after her to ask her if he'd heard correctly. It sent a chill up his spine. Nick was no wimp, he'd been called "mass murderer" and worse by entire crowds of people, often simultaneously; but that was heckling, and usually by card-carrying gaspers or "health professionals." But when pedestrians, total strangers, started coming up to you — at Washington's busiest intersection, in the middle of the day— and expressing solidarity with people who had kidnapped and tortured you, it could be taken as a sign that somewhere along your career path you had taken a wrong turn.

He ducked into the Trover Shop and bought some cheap sunglasses. He made it the rest of the way up Connecticut and down Rhode Island without anyone else wishing him dead.

Once inside Bert's he felt secure again. Bert came over and hugged him and made a big fuss; the regular waiters came over to shake his hand and congratulate him and tell him how well he looked. He was hearing that a lot these days: "You look good, Nick," despite the fact that he had lost ten pounds and his skin was fish gray.

Bert told him that lunch today was on the house and led him personally to his regular table by the fake fireplace, which was flickering away, casting its comforting acetate flames onto the chimney brick.

Bobby Jay and Polly were already there. They both got up to greet him, unsettling Nick. Here of all places he valued the comfort of routine, and no member of the Mod Squad ever got up to greet the other. Among merchants of death, equality rules. Polly actually kissed him and hugged him. It was unsettling. He was tired of being fussed over.

"I'm fine," Nick said. "It's no big thing." "You look great," Bobby Jay said. "Yeah, you really do," Polly said. "You look great." Nick stared at them. "What are you two, from Hallmark Cards? I look like shit."

Bobby Jay and Polly exchanged glances. Polly touched his forearm. "We're just glad to have you back." "Don't patronize me."

"Sorry," Polly said, withdrawing her arm, "I didn't realize you were having a bad hair day."

"BR just told me the Captain wants me to go bribe the Tumbleweed Man, who's dying of throat cancer, so he'll stop badmouthing us. I have to accept every goddamn interview request — I'm on Larry King tomorrow night, he and the FBI want to use me as bait to

draw out this Peter Lorre maniac — and some woman on the street just hissed at me that I deserved to get kidnapped. Yes, I'm having a bad hair day."

"It's a tough town," Bobby Jay said.

"Tell me about it. Check out my new bodyguards."

"Where?"

"Fooled you, didn't they? The one in the jeans and the woman with the handbag the size of a duffel? Former Secret Service. Do you know what she's got in there? Sawed-off shotgun. I hope they'll try it again. Do you have any idea what a ragged hole a fistful of double-ought buckshot makes?"