The bookstore’s first month was August 1996. After the wine-and-cheese opening, the place was busy for a few days, but the curiosity began to wear off. The traffic slowed considerably. After three weeks in business, Bruce was beginning to wonder if he’d blundered badly. August saw a net profit of only two thousand dollars, and Bruce was ready to panic. It was, after all, the high season for tourism on Camino Island. He decided to begin discounting, something the majority of independent owners advised against. Big new releases and bestsellers were marked down 25 percent. He pushed the closing time back from seven to nine and put in fifteen hours a day. He worked the front like a politician, memorizing the names of the regular customers and noting what they bought. He was soon an accomplished barista. He could brew an espresso while hustling to the front to check out a customer. He removed shelves of old books, mainly classics that were not too popular, and put in a small café. Closing time went from nine to ten. He cranked out dozens of handwritten notes to customers, and to writers and booksellers he’d met on his coast-to-coast adventure. At midnight, he was often at the computer, updating the Bay Books newsletter. He wrestled with the idea of opening on Sunday, something most of the independents did. He didn’t want to, because he needed the rest, and he was also afraid of possible backlash. Camino Island was in the Bible Belt; one could easily walk to a dozen churches from the bookstore. But it was also a vacation spot and almost none of the tourists seemed interested in Sunday morning worship. So in September he said to hell with it and opened at 9:00 a.m. Sunday, with the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune hot off the press, along with fresh chicken biscuits from a café three doors down. By the third Sunday, the place was packed.
The store netted four thousand dollars in September and October and doubled that after six months. Bruce stopped worrying. Within a year Bay Books was the hub of downtown, by far the busiest store. Publishers and sales reps succumbed to his constant badgering and began to include Camino Island on author tours. Bruce joined the American Booksellers Association and immersed himself in its causes, issues, and committees. In the winter of 1997, at an ABA convention, he met Stephen King and convinced him to pop over for a book party. Mr. King signed for nine hours as fans waited in lines that wrapped around the block. The store sold twenty-two hundred copies of his various titles and grossed seventy thousand dollars in sales. It was a glorious day that put Bay Books on the map. Three years later it was voted Best Independent Bookstore in Florida, and in 2004 Publishers Weekly named it Bookstore of the Year. In 2005, after nine hard years in the trenches, Bruce Cable was elected to the ABA Board of Directors.
4.
By then Bruce was quite the figure around town. He owned a dozen seersucker suits, each a different shade or color, and he wore one every day, along with a starched white shirt with a spread collar, and a loud bow tie, usually either red or yellow. His ensemble was completed with a pair of dirty buckskins, no socks. He never wore socks, not even in January when the temperatures dipped into the forties. His hair was thick and wavy, and he wore it long, almost to his shoulders. He shaved once a week on Sunday morning. By the time he was thirty, some gray was working itself into the picture, a few whiskers and a few strands of the long hair, and it was quite becoming.
Each day, when things slowed a bit in the store, Bruce hit the street. He walked to the post office and flirted with the clerks. He went to the bank and flirted with the tellers. If a new retail shop opened downtown, Bruce was there for the grand opening, and he returned soon afterward to flirt with the salesgirls. Lunch was a major production for Bruce, and he dined out six days a week, always with someone else so he could write it off as a business expense. When a new café opened, Bruce was first in line, sampling everything on the menu and flirting with the waitresses. He usually drank a bottle of wine for lunch and slept it off with a little siesta in the upstairs apartment.
Often, with Bruce, there was a fine line between flirting and stalking. He had an eye for the ladies, as they did for him, and he played the game beautifully. He hit pay dirt when Bay Books became a popular stop on the author circuit. Half the writers who came to town were women, most under forty, all obviously away from home, most of them single and traveling alone and looking for some fun. They were easy and willing targets when they arrived at the bookstore and stepped into his world. After a reading and signing session, then a long dinner, they often retired to the apartment upstairs with Bruce for “a deeper search for human emotion.” He had his favorites, especially two young ladies who were doing well with erotic mysteries. And they published every year!
Despite his efforts to carefully groom his image as a well-read playboy, Bruce was at his core an ambitious businessman. The store provided a healthy income, but that was not by accident. Regardless of how late his night had been, he was at the store before seven each morning, in shorts and a T-shirt, unloading and unboxing books, stocking shelves, taking inventory, even sweeping the floors. He loved the feel and smell of new books as they came out of the box. He found the perfect spot for each new edition. He touched every book that came into the store, and, sadly, every book that was re-boxed and returned to the publisher for credit. He hated returns and viewed each one as a failure, a missed opportunity. He purged the inventory of stuff that didn’t sell, and after a few years settled on about twelve thousand titles. Sections of the store were cramped spaces with saggy old shelves and books stacked on the floors, but Bruce knew where to find anything. After all, he had carefully placed them all. At 8:45 each morning, he hurried upstairs to the apartment, showered, and changed into his seersucker of the day, and at precisely 9:00 a.m. he opened the doors and greeted his customers.
He rarely took a day off. For Bruce, the idea of a vacation was a trip to New England to meet antiquarian book dealers in their old dusty shops and talk about the market. He loved rare books, especially those by twentieth-century American authors, and he collected them with a passion. His collection grew, primarily because he wanted to buy so much, but also because he found it painful to sell anything. He was a dealer for sure, but one who always bought and almost never sold. The eighteen of “Daddy’s old books” he’d filched became a wonderful foundation, and by the time Bruce was forty years old he valued his rare collection at two million dollars.
5.
While he served on the ABA Board, the owner of his building died. Bruce bought it from the estate and began expanding the store. He shrunk the size of his apartment and moved the coffee bar and café to the second floor. He knocked out a wall and doubled the size of his children’s section. On Saturday mornings, the store was filled with kids buying books and listening to story time while their young moms were upstairs sipping lattes under the watchful eye of the friendly owner. His rare book section received a lot of his attention. On the main floor, he knocked out another wall and built a First Editions Room with handsome oak shelves, paneling, and expensive rugs. He built a vault in the basement to protect his rarest books.
After ten years of apartment living, Bruce was ready for something grander. He’d kept his eye on several of the old Victorians in historic downtown Santa Rosa, and had even made offers to purchase two of them. In both cases he failed to offer enough, and the homes quickly sold to other buyers. The magnificent homes, built by turn-of-the-century railroad magnates and shippers and doctors and politicians, were beautifully preserved and sat timelessly on streets shaded with ancient oaks and Spanish moss. When Mrs. Marchbanks died at the age of 103, Bruce approached her daughter, age 81 and living in Texas. He paid too much for the house, but then he was determined not to lose a third time.