While I was researching a sequel to "The Magic Mineral" about the special hazard of spraying asbestos fireproofing materials in high-rise buildings, the vice president and director of public affairs for Johns-Manville invited me to visit company headquarters, in Manville, New Jersey, to hear the corporate side of things. The town is about fifty miles southwest of New York City, and I drove down there with him in a company limousine. The asbestos factory complex in Manville was almost half a mile square, and it was located smack in the middle of town, and since most of the twelve thousand people who lived there had worked for the company at one time or another, it should come as no surprise that they included one of the largest concentrations of asbestos-disease victims in the entire world.

 The meeting took place in a conference room at the headquarters building. Just before it started, I saw the vice president reach into his open briefcase and turn on a tape recorder, so I was careful to listen and say little. I have forgotten the names of the half dozen or so company officials who were present. One of them was the corporate manager of industrial health, who assured me that the company had been striving diligently to lower dust levels in all its factories. A year or so later, his wife, who had worked at the Manville complex as a secretary, died of mesothelioma, an invariably malignant, always fatal tumor of the pleura or the peritoneum - a similar membrane that lines the stomach - which rarely occurs without some, even if slight, history of exposure to asbestos. A few years after that, he himself died of the same disease.

 Another official at the meeting was the director of corporate research and development. On the way to lunch, he told me that he and his colleagues had been impressed with "The Magic Mineral."

 "You really know how to write about asbestos," he said.

 "Thanks," I replied.

 "We could use someone like you in our public relations department. Matter of fact, I understand there's an opening there right now."

 I looked at him and said nothing.

 "Don't know what your present position pays, of course, but this one starts at forty-five thousand."

 I looked straight ahead and pretended I hadn't heard him. The sum he'd mentioned was more than three times what I was making at The New Yorker.

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