LOBBYIST SEES HIMSELF AS A GUCCI GOEBBELS.
"Not at all. I see myself as a mediator between two sectors of society that are trying to reach an accommodation. I guess you could say I'm a facilitator."
"Or enabler?"
"Beg pardon?"
Heather flipped through some pages of her notebook. " 'Mass murderer,' 'profiteer,' 'pimp,' 'bloodsucker,' 'child killer,' 'yuppie Mephistopheles,' here it is, 'mass enabler.' "
"What is that you're reading from?"
"Interviews. In preparation for our meeting today."
"Who did you talk to? The head of the Lung Association?"
"Not yet."
"Well, frankly, this doesn't sound like a very balanced article you're writing."
"You tell me — who else should I talk to?"
"Fifty-five million American smokers, for starters. Or how about some tobacco farmers whose only crime is to be treated like cocaine producers when they're growing a perfectly legal product. They might have a different view, you know."
"I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry. Actually, I was going to talk to a tobacco farmer."
"I know a lot of them. Fine people. Salt of the earth. I'll give you some phone numbers."
"I guess what I'm trying to get at is, why do you do this? What motivates you, exactly?"
"I get asked that all the time. People expect me to answer, 'The challenge,' or, 'The chance to prove that the Constitution means what it says.' " He paused thoughtfully. "You want to know why I really do it?" Another thoughtful pause. "To pay the mortgage."
This manful statement appeared to make no impression on Heather Holloway, other than mild disappointment. "Someone told me that's probably what you'd say."
"Did they?"
"It's a kind of yuppie Nuremberg defense, isn't it?"
"What is it with the Y-word? That's a very eighties word. This is the nineties."
"Excuse me."
"And, I mean," he said, looking offended, "are you calling me a Nazi?"
"No. Actually, you're the one making Third Reich analogies."
"Well, it's one thing to call yourself a Nazi. That's self-deprecation. For someone else to call you one is deprecation. And it's not very nice."
"I apologize. But a mortgage isn't much of a life goal, is it?"
"Absolutely. Ninety-nine percent of everything that is done in the world, good and bad, is done to pay a mortgage. The world would be a much better place if everyone rented. Then there's tuition. Boy, has that been a force for evil in the modern world."
"You're married?"
"Divorced," Nick said a bit too quickly.
"Kids?"
"One son. But he's practically grown up."
"How old is he?"
"Twelve."
"He must be quite precocious. So how does he feel about what you do?"
"Frankly, twelve-year-olds don't care where the money comes from. I could be a vivisectionist and I don't think it would make a whole lot of difference as long as I keep him in Rollerblades and snowboards. Not that I equate vivisectionists and the tobacco industry. As a matter of fact, I feel very strongly about animals being, you know, used for dubious scientific purposes. The ones they torture out at NIH. My God, those poor little bunnies. It would break your heart to see them in their little cages, puffing away."
"Puffing?"
"Those smoking machines they attach to them. Criminal. Listen, if I had to smoke like seven thousand cigarettes a day, I'd get sick, probably. And I consider myself a heavy smoker."
"But doesn't it bother you being vilified like this? There are easier ways of paying mortgage and tuition."
"If it makes other people happy to have me play the role of villain, when all I really do is provide information about a legal and, I might add, time-honored industry, fine, no problem. Whatever."
She flipped through her notepad, making Nick suspicious.
"You were a reporter at WRTK."
"Um-hum," Nick said, lighting up. "Do you mind if I smoke?" Heather seemed to find this amusing. "No, please. Isn't their nickname W-Right To Know?"
"Um-hum."
"Is this an uncomfortable subject for you?"
"Not at all," Nick said, thoughtfully exhaling straight up so it wouldn't go in her face, though this made him feel like a metal dolphin in a fountain.
"I looked up the news clips," she said delicately, "but if you're agreeable, it would be better if you could tell me about it. So I get everything right."
"It's just kind of old news, is all. This is going to be a big part of your piece?"
"No. Not big. So this happened at Camp LaGroan.?"
"Um-hum." Nick slowly stubbed out his cigarette. Thank God for cigarettes, they gave you time to get your act together, or at least to look philosophical. "You'll recall President Broadbent liked to spend time with the boys, being a former marine and all. And I was in our van, monitoring the radio. We'd gotten the base frequencies from, well, someone, which you probably already knew, since you know all this, anyway," he sighed, "so we had the frequency and I was monitoring it and there was this, suddenly there was all this radio traffic about Rover choking to death on a bone. Rover being President Broadbent's Secret Service code name, and the fact that at that very minute the President was in the mess hall having lunch with the boys, so I, you know… "
"Went with it?"
"Um-hum. And it turned out to be a different Rover that had choked to death."
"The commandant's dog?"
"Um-hum. A German shorthaired pointer. A six-year-old, sixty-seven pound German shorthaired pointer. On a chicken bone."
"And…?"
"This was not a career-enhancing episode."
"It must have been awful. I'm sorry."
"I look on the positive side. How many people get to announce to the nation, 'The President is dead.' It's quite a feeling to say those words. Even if he wasn't dead."
"Yes," Heather said. "It must have been."
"Do you remember when Walter Cronkite said, 'We have just received this news flash. President Kennedy died at one o'clock, Eastern Standard Time.' You're probably too young. It was an amazing moment. I always used to get a chill when I thought about it. I still get it, except that it's immediately followed by the urge to vomit."
"What happened afterwards?"
"Walter Cronkite became the most respected newsman in history. I became a spokesman for cigarettes."
"It must have left you pretty damaged."
"On the contrary, I have extremely thick skin. It's practically like leather. I'd make a very comfortable Chesterfield. Couch, not cigarette."
"It didn't seem that way on the Oprah show," Heather said. "You really tore into that guy."
"That guy? Please. That guy is a dork. There are an awful lot of sanctimonious people out there who expect everyone else to canonize them because they're going around like hall monitors confiscating all the ashtrays. And once they've confiscated the last ashtray, do you think they're going to stop there? Oh no. They'll be slapping warning labels on kids' Popsicles. 'Warning, the surgeon general has determined that Popsicles make your tongue cold.' "
"Speaking of kids, what about this five-million-dollar program you announced on the Oprah show? Doesn't that indicate that your industry feels guilty about its product?"
"No," Nick said. "Not at all."
Heather appeared to be waiting for a better answer.
"I think it shows a remarkable sense of sensitivity."
"But isn't it hypocritical for the tobacco companies to mount an anti-smoking program for kids when they're spending millions in advertising to hook them in the first place? That absurd camel, Old Joe, with the nose like a penis and a saxophone. Honestly."
Nick shook his head. "Boy, you put up five million dollars to keep kids from smoking, and does anyone say, 'Thanks'?"