I used to work at Sotheby’s when it was on Madison Avenue, near Seventy-seventh Street. Often, I spent my lunch hour a block farther north, at 999 Bookstore. This was a bland, unimaginative space, with a big, unadorned window facing the street, and a low back wall, like a drugstore. Books were piled there at random. Inside, tall shelves stood along the walls, shorter racks down the center. In the back was a counter like a coat check. There was no décor. I didn’t care about décor; it gave me pleasure simply to enter a bookstore. Row upon row of other worlds, a silent reminder that reading was a way to live.

At that time, I hadn’t publicly declared myself a writer. I wasn’t, really: I wrote on the side, and mostly about art. So I went into the store disguised as a normal person. But I had declared myself a reader, and books were a kind of food to me. Bookstores were like soup kitchens, and I grew hungry whenever I approached one.

The clerk at 999 was a quiet, pleasant man in his fifties. He had a pointed nose, a lined forehead and bright dark eyes. His thick, graying hair was combed straight back into a modest pompadour. It was slightly oiled and showed the marks from the teeth of a comb. His clothes were neat and literary: a tweed jacket and tie. Only the hair gave a whiff of the dandy. He was quiet and courteous, with something silent about him—did he wear Hush Puppies? Because of his neatness and his oiled hair, I didn’t consider him a reader until the day I asked about an Edith Wharton book.

“It’s out of print,” he said, “but I can get you a copy.”

“You can?” This seemed like a miracle.

Some time later, he called my office and told me the book had come. When I arrived at the back counter, the clerk took down from the shelf a first edition of Wharton’s novel, “The Children.” It cost fifteen dollars.

I took it as though it were platinum. I was stunned that I could have it with such ease—that not only could I enter the world of Edith Wharton, open the cover and lose myself in her narrative, but I could actually own a book that was her contemporary. I stared silently at the glossy-haired clerk.

“We can get most out-of-print books,” he said modestly.

The ordinary, mild-mannered bookstore had stripped off its everyday shirt to reveal its superpowers, moving with a slamming shift into warp-speed pleasure.

Down the avenue, between Sixty-ninth and Seventieth, was Madison Avenue Books. The window here was elegant and beautifully decorated, both charming and theatrical. An antique wooden mannequin stood, sat, or reclined on stacks and stacks of some new book, commenting on it through his stiff, jointed gesture. The store’s owner was an older man, quiet, witty, and literate; the manager was younger, handsome and smart and literate. I liked to stand unnoticed at the back counter, listening to clever repartee. It was a lovely place, both bookish and glamorous. When my first novel, “Summer Light,” came out, they did the front window for me. Stacks of the books stood in rows along the glass, the mannequin lying down, I think, taking a summer nap. Or was it my second book, “Georgia O’Keeffe”? Actually, I was sort of horrified to see the whole window taken up by my work. I glanced at it nervously, then away. I still don’t remember how it looked.

At Seventy-fifth Street was Books & Co., slightly more literary and less glamorous. It was two-storied, and the first floor was slightly below street level. You stepped down to go inside, as though you were entering a student café. The walls were stuffed with books, and in the center of the room was a counter staffed by young geniuses. In the stairwell hung photographs of great authors who had read there, and upstairs were paperbacks: classics, poetry, belles-lettres, and a choice selection of literary porn. Everyone there loved books, and the young geniuses talked about Virginia Woolf or Gabriel García Márquez with equal ease. I gave my first reading here, and, as I looked out at the modest rows of my good friends (the only people who came), I thought I had reached the pinnacle of success: this what I had wanted most.

By then, I had left Sotheby’s and had admitted publicly to being a writer. I gave readings at Books & Co. until it closed. Jeanette Watson, its owner, reappeared later at the excellent Lenox Hill Books. This was on Lexington Avenue, just above Seventy-second Street, and it was a haven for me, because then I lived nearby. Jeanette still had readings by literary giants, and I heard Shirley Hazzard there, and Colm Tóibín. I used to go there in the afternoons with my dog, after going to the park. Once, Jim Harrison was there, signing books. Jeanette introduced us to him, and I bought a book, and Jim signed it to my dog.

All those places are gone now.

Madison Avenue Books became an antiques store. After it changed hands, a handsome Biedermeier chest appeared in the window, and on the wall was a handwritten notice, a long tribute to the bookstore. Each time I walked by, I looked for the notice; after a while it was taken down.

But, passing those places, I still feel that phantom presence, the little lift of welcome that a bookstore offers a writer. Those places were like beacons, sending out signals, drawing me in. I still feel their presence, though now the stores don’t sell books, and no one inside them knows how a writer, walking past, might feel. It doesn’t matter. I know they were there.

A writer keeps an interior map of bookstores, like a hungry person and soup kitchens. I remember where bookstores are. I like to go in them, just to be among books and the people who like them. I know who else will be there: needy people like me, who walk slowly along the shelves and touch the spines. People who pull out a volume and open it, read a little, just to remind themselves of how they love this volume, this writer. People who may buy a book they hadn’t thought they needed. People who believe that this soup is important, who know how it fills us up and warms our bones.

Roxana Robinson is a novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her new novel, “Sparta,” will be published in June.

Photograph: Condé Nast Archive