Montauk Bookstore Goes Missing
A parting at The End: treasured bookstore weighs anchor.
The bakery was busy as usual, the line stretching from the counter to the front door. Laura was inside picking up their delicious crumb-cake squares for the next morning’s coffee. I was out front with the dog, people watching on the narrow sidewalk. The prepubescent revelers sans chaperones, young families out for a walk with the stroller, and single ladies out for dinner and dessert.
As I looked around, a couple of doors to the left of the bakery was a spa that looked like it was in the cottage where the bookstore used to be. Perhaps I was disoriented. I had not been at the Montauk Circle for a few years, and it was twilight. I spun to get my bearings, but everything looked in its place. The ice-cream shop was still there, doing brisk business even on a cool August evening. So were the souvenir shops with faded surfboards in the window selling floaties, shell bracelets, and t-shirts with the ubiquitous silk screen, “Montauk — The End.” The chilly air on sunburned skin prompting a run on hoodies, a quick, but costly, remedy for the goosebumps.
After my pirouette, I concluded the bookstore was no more. In its stead, a beauty spa had sprung, offering massages and facials. The white picket fence and brick pathway were still there. They framed a front yard that once felt quaint and charming. Now, a large cabana-striped navy umbrella over a round table, sat empty like a prop for hedonistic idleness.
When Laura stepped out of the bakery, I pointed out the missing bookstore. As we drove back to our summer rental, we lamented its closing, recalling how much I loved hanging out there with the kids while she checked out the boutiques on the Circle.
It was months later, around Christmas, when I randomly grabbed the bookmark from Barnacle Books from my stash, immediately connecting the name with the missing bookstore from the Montauk Circle. The ink drawing of the shingle cottage with a picket fence framing a small front yard was exactly the bookstore-cum-spa we had mourned that chilly summer evening.
Barnacle Books was a place I could visit every day. The store was deeper than it was wide, with tall shelves along the left side. The children’s section, a small space to the right, was enough of a bribe to keep my kids entertained while I walked around, taking in the smell of the new books, wanting to know each and every spine drawing my attention. The cashier’s counter was on the right side. Next to it was a table with recent releases and a selection of classics. I bought Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 there to read on the beach, the edition with the bright blue cover with a red silhouette of Yossarian prancing. I remember thinking that Heller must have known this place — the preface to this edition was written in East Hampton.
Any author with a book lying flat on the table would be thrilled to walk into the cottage and see their work waiting to be handled, to be turned upside down, to have its spine massaged a little. The book jacket offering fanciful blurbs from famous readers and famous writers.
As a not-so-famous reader, I joked with my kids about how many more books I would enjoy in my lifetime. My kids disapproved of this estimate, not because of the total, but because they were not comfortable with the thought of their father having an expiration date. As a not-so-famous writer, I imagined the immense joy of walking in and seeing your book lying there, a writer with a grip on the table.
The stylized anchor, also on the bookmark, was drawn to evoke nostalgia for the seas and seafaring. As an anchor for the Montauk Circle, Barnacle Books didn’t deliver. I guessed that it closed around the time so many other bookstores folded, the result of Amazon’s monopoly and a dwindling reading public. I considered looking up when the bookstore left town, but decided against it, knowing that my new hardcover’s hundreds of very white pages made it a certainty that the bookmark, with its ink drawing of the cottage, would be part of my routine for many days. A reminder of its place among summers long gone.
