Obama's Pulp Fiction America

In the end, all I had left were my Hard Case Crime books.

I should have seen it coming. I should have been smarter. But I was a sucker. A sucker for a pretty face and the promise of hope and change.

I was working in a bar when I met her. I had just gotten back from the war. The therapy and the medicine were helping me cope.

Then I met... her. I was bartending in Washington, D.C., where I had settled after I got back from Afghanistan. Things were going good. I was making some good tips, and was freelancing for the book section of the Washington Examiner. My speciality was crime. Jim Thompson, Dashiell Hammett, George Pelecanos, Raymond Chandler, Donald Westlake -- the great ones.

They created worlds of sex, violence, and despair. And my favorite publisher was Hard Case. They publish pulp the way God intended -- classic covers featuring hot babes, action from the first page, and a world where people have been pushed to the limit, either by their past or circumstances beyond their control.

The publish both classic works that have been neglected, and newer writers like Stephen King. They just published The Cocktail Waitress, the last book written by James M. Cain. It's a good one, and takes place right here in D.C.

I read my Hard Case books when things were slow at the Billy Bar, where I was working when I met her. It's a nondescript place on Georgia Avenue. The crowd is a mix of old-timers who grew up in the neighborhood and the new young hipsters who are gentrifying.

The owner, Billy, is a fat middle-ages Irishman who came to America in 1950. He's not a bad guy to work for -- even if he's "borrowed" a couple of my Hard Case books and not returned them. He loves the covers -- and who wouldn't? Great saturated color and terrific babes rendered by masters like Terry Beatty and Richard Farrell.

It was September of 2008 when she walked into the Billy Bar. I was reading House Dick by E. Howard Hunt, who had been a pretty good novelist before he went away for Watergate.

I looked up right as she was walking in. The first thing I noticed were her legs. They were long and strong -- you could tell she was a runner. Probably spent a lot of time on the canal. She had long red hair and skin the color of coffee. She was a mix of Irish and Mexican -- a toxic mix, as it turned out.

She ordered a martini and glanced at my book. "Oh, House Dick," she said. "A good story, but not one of Hunt's best. I prefer American Spy."

She stayed until closing -- and after. Her name was Maritza Connelly. Her mother was Mexican, her father Irish. She was an editor at the Washington Post. The Post is the big boy on the block in D.C., even in the days of newspaper fire sales. We talked about books, about politics, about D.C. And over the course of that night, which we spent together, and the next four years, she was my world.

She read books by Jonathan Franzen and A.S. Byatt and Salman Rushdie. Slowly, she convinced me that there was no need to read Hard Case books anymore. The night Obama was elected, we made love in her U Street condo to the sounds of a city celebrating on the street below.

"It's a new era," she whispered in the dark. "It's a time for hope and change. You don't need those dark macho books anymore. The world is a place of light now."

Before the election she had talked about moving to Mexico. Now she was staying in America.

Slowly, over the course of time, I stopped reading Hard Case. I found myself reading Maritza's copies of Anne Tyler and Nora Ephron, and watching Oprah's Book Club. I left my job at the Billy Bar and joined Maritza's book club that met at Politics and Prose book store. I thought about going to law school.

I read The Piano.

Then, in 2011, I got the news. Hard Case was closing down.

Then, as soon as it had started, it was over. I woke up one morning and she was gone. She had run up my credit cards and taken her books. When I checked with the Post, they said Maritza had moved to Mexico. I was left with a huge bill from Politics and Prose.

I was a sucker. It turned out that nothing had changed -- in fact, things were probably worse than ever.

But Hard Case didn't close down. Their fans and even Stephen King insisted they stay in business. Now I'm back to bartending at the Billy Bar.

Some nights I wonder what the hell I'm going to do to get out of this hole that was dug by hope and change. And the city seems a very dark place.