Lisa Unger: Smoke

The fourth book in the Lydia Strong series, 2005

Copyright © 2005 by Lisa Miscione

I was nineteen years old when I first met Lydia Strong. I was living in the East Village, dating a New York City police officer, and attending Eugene Lang College, the undergraduate school of the New School for Social Research. I was sitting in a car, under the elevated section of the “1” line in the Bronx, waiting-for what I can’t remember. But in my mind that day, I kept seeing this woman running past a church. She was in New Mexico. And all I knew about her was that she was a damaged person, someone in great pain. Running, for her, was salve, religion, and drug. That was Lydia.

I pulled a napkin and a pen from the glove compartment and started writing the book that would become Angel Fire . It took me ten years to write that novel, mostly because the years between age nineteen and twenty-nine were, for me, years of hard work and tumultuous change. But also because during that time, I let my dreams of becoming a writer languish a bit. Lydia was faithful; she waited.

In spite of a first-rate education, a career in publishing, and a strong desire to write fiction, I didn’t know much of anything when I was writing my first novel. I don’t think you can really know anything about writing a novel until you’ve actually written one. (And then you go to school again when you sit down to write your second, and your third, and so on.) All I knew during that time was that I was truly fascinated by this woman occupying a place in my imagination, and I was deeply intrigued by her very dark appetites. I was enthralled by her past, by the mysteries in her present, and why she wouldn’t let herself love the man who loved her. There were lots of questions about Lydia Strong, and I was never happier over those ten years than when I was trying to answer them.

I was fortunate that the first novel I ever wrote was accepted by my (wonderful, brilliant) agent Elaine Markson, and that she fairly quickly brokered a deal for Angel Fire and my second, then unwritten, novel The Darkness Gathers . I spent the next few years with Lydia Strong and the very colorful cast of characters who populated her life. And I enjoyed every dark, harrowing, and complicated moment with them as I went on to write Twice , and then Smoke .

I followed Lydia from New Mexico, to New York City, to Albania, to Miami, and back. We trekked through the abandoned subway tunnels under Manhattan, to a compound in the backwoods of Florida, to a mysterious church in the Bronx, to a fictional town called Haunted. It was a total thrill ride, and I wrote like my fingers were on fire.

I am delighted that these early novels, which I published under my maiden name, Lisa Miscione, have found a new life on the shelves and a new home with the stellar team at Broadway Paperbacks. And, of course, I am thrilled that they’ve found their way into your hands. I know a lot of authors wish their early books would just disappear, because they’ve come so far as writers since they first began their careers. And I understand that, because we would all go back and rewrite everything if we could.

But I have a special place in my heart for these flawed, sometimes funny, complicated characters and their wild, action-packed stories. I still think about them, and feel tremendous tenderness for even the most twisted and deranged among them. The writing of each book was pure pleasure. I hope that you enjoy your time with them as much as I have. And, thanks, as always, for reading.

Lydia Strong wanted a cigarette to celebrate the defeat of her enemy. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the manuscript that sat fat and neat on her desk beside her computer. She felt like a prizefighter who had finally, after a brutal showdown, sent her opponent to the mat. The Lost Girl had taken her nearly a year to write and every page had been a battle. It was a first for her. Words were her tools, sometimes her weapons. Either way, she’d always wielded them with ease. But this book didn’t want to be written. Every day the blank page had seemed like a taunt, a dare, a bully on the playground looking for her lunch money.

Maybe it was because in the writing of it, she had to let go of things she’d been clinging to for years. Maybe because, as painful as those things were, they were comfortable, familiar, and a part of her didn’t really want to see them exorcised. But now they were safely incarcerated in the pages of her manuscript. Soon they’d be edited and revised, edited and revised again. Then they’d be exposed to the light of the world. And, like all demons, in the sun they’d turn to piles of dust.

She laughed a little, just because of the lightness of her relief. She got up from her desk and tossed around the idea of going out for a pack of cigarettes. Maybe if Jeffrey wasn’t lying on the couch reading the Sunday Times , she’d go down to the bodega on the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones, smoke a cigarette on the street and then throw away the rest of the pack. But he’d be able to tell and then he’d give her a hard time. It wasn’t worth it.

“I’m done,” she called, walking out of her office and through the loft. But he wasn’t on the couch; he was standing at the counter that divided the kitchen from the living room, talking on the phone.

“Oops, sorry,” she said when she saw him.

He looked at her strangely when she walked in. She hadn’t heard the phone ring. She took a frosty bottle of Ketel One vodka from the freezer and poured herself a lowball, trying and failing to be quiet as she put some ice in the glass and squirted some lime juice from one of those little plastic bottles shaped cutely like a lime.

“I see,” he said, lowering his eyes to the floor beneath his feet, tapping a pen on the countertop. “No, I’d rather tell her, David, if you don’t mind.”

“Is that my grandfather?” Lydia asked, looking at him now. She could tell there was something wrong, but she sipped at the drink in her hand and pretended she couldn’t. She needed a few minutes to enjoy the completion of her manuscript before life leaked in and started demanding attention.

Jeffrey put the phone back in the cradle and didn’t look at her right away.

“Did you hear me? I’m finished. I finished The Lost Girl .”

“That’s fantastic. Congratulations,” he said softly, moving toward her and taking her into his arms.

“Want a drink?” she asked.

“Not right now,” he said. She pulled away from him after a second and then walked over to the living room. The fire they’d made earlier in the afternoon was low, just a few flames danced. Outside, a light snow tapped against the windows and their view of lower Manhattan was obscured by frost.

She sat on the couch and curled her legs up beneath her. Something in her chest was thumping. She didn’t like the look on Jeffrey’s face or the careful way he was moving toward her.

“There’s some news,” he said, sitting beside her.

“Are they all right?” she asked, bracing herself. Her maternal grandparents, David and Eleanor Strong, were the only living family members to whom she had any connection. She thought of them, both hearty, young-minded, still traveling, enjoying their lives and each other. It seemed like they would always be there. But with both of them in their early seventies, she knew she’d have to deal with their mortality at some point. But she hadn’t done that yet. And she wasn’t ready.