![]() ![]() Murad IV was in charge now.īack in his office, Nick took off his new Paul Stuart sports jacket and hung it on the back of the door. Enough heads had rolled in the last six months. He wondered if he should tell her not to cough if BR walked by. Nick wondered if having a receptionist who couldn’t get through “hello” without a broncospasm was a plus. “Academy of”-hargg-“Tobacco”-kuhhh-“Studies.” No dainty little throat-clearer, either, but a deep, pulmonary bulldozer. “Good morning,” she said chirpily into her headset, exhaling a stream of smoke. “Your mother called,” said Maureen, the receptionist, handing him one last slip. Just once, Nick thought, it would be nice to get back to the office to something other than blame for ghastly new health problems. ![]() “CBS needs react to SG’s call for ban on billboard ads.” ABC, NBC, CNN, etc., etc., they all wanted the same, except for USA Today, which needed a react to tomorrow’s story in The New England Journal of Medicine announcing medical science’s conclusion that smoking also leads to something called Buerger’s disease, a circulatory ailment that requires having all your extremities amputated. He flipped through the stack of pink slips waiting for him at the receptionist’s stand. ![]() Even smokers care about proper ventilation. Also, he could leave his door open and the smoke would waft out into the atrium. As a senior vice president for communications at ATS, or “the Academy” as BR insisted it be called by staff, Nick was entitled to an outside corner office, but he chose an interior corner office because he liked the sound of running water. The Academy of Tobacco Studies occupied the top three floors. A huge neo-deco-classical fountain on the ground floor provided a continuous and soothing flow of splashing white noise. The overall effect was that of an inside-out corporate Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There was a thick stack of WHILE YOU WERE OUTS when he got back to the Academy’s office in one of the more interesting buildings on K Street, hollowed out in the middle with a ten-story atrium with balconies dripping with ivy. ![]()
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