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written his dissertation on Lady Gregory and the Abbey Theatre, Merton said, “Look, I happened to be in town for the day, and I thought President Macomber might care to go out for a beer, but it looks as though he’s going to be tied up for a while. Do you drink beer? You don’t have a class now, do you?”
    Over beer—and Merton encouraged Joyce to have several—the younger man told of his problems getting a job and his fears that he might not get tenure at Windermere, “because my degree is from B.C. and they think because it’s a Catholic college, their standards are not as high as those of Harvard, or Tufts, or B.U. But let me tell you, the guy who supervised my dissertation at B.C., a Jesuit, was as good a scholar as anybody they’ve got at Harvard, and …”
    And Merton talked about how he had got started, about his present situation and his real estate holdings, about his sister who ran his household, and about his niece, the only Merton left besides him and his sister. “She’s a very spiritual girl.” From which Joyce immediately deduced that she was plain. “In fact, she wanted to become a nun.”
    â€œI thought of taking orders myself,” said Joyce, and then with a smile that just avoided becoming a leer, “but I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the vow of celibacy.”
    â€œI’m sure your wife is happy about that,” said Merton.
    â€œOh, I’m not married,” said Joyce, and added, “Can’t even think of it without tenure.”
    â€œMaybe something can be done about that,” said Merton, his eyes twinkling roguishly behind his rimless glasses.
    Their meeting lasted a couple of hours and ended with an invitation from Merton to Sunday dinner. “Or better yet, come out tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll show you around the town. You don’t know Barnard’s Crossing, do you? Lovely old colonial town. Stay the night, and you can join us Sunday morning for Mass and dinner afterward.”
    When Joyce climbed up to his fourth-floor room in the brownstone house on Commonwealth Avenue, he was quite drunk, not from the beer he had consumed, but with the prospects that he saw opening up before him. Later, he went out to a local restaurant for a meager dinner; and then, to celebrate, he went to a single’s bar where he let himself be picked up by a woman a good ten years his senior and to be taken back to her flat to spend the night. She was short and plump and cuddly, with a mop of blond curls. Her name was Marcia Skinner, and she said she was a buyer for Consolidated Stores. When she thought he appeared doubtful, she gave him her card, which did indeed say, Consolidated Stores, Marcia Skinner, Buyer of Junior Sportswear, and her office telephone number. She was not displeased when she saw him copying down the number of the telephone in the apartment.
    Although she had hoped to keep him with her for the weekend, he managed to extricate himself a little before noon, pleading an important engagement. He hurried home, where he showered and shaved, going over his face twice, followed by after-shave lotion and then patting on talcum powder to reduce the blueness of his jowls. Then, in accordance with the instructions he had received from Merton, he took a train to Swampscott and from there a cab to the Point of Barnard’s Crossing. As they drove along the Point, Joyce could see that the houses were large and commodious and suggested money, lots of money. All had large well-kept lawns with patches of carefully tended shrubbery. The Merton house was no exception. It was a two-story frame house with a broad veranda on the side facing the ocean.
    Cyrus himself opened the door to him and then called out, “Aggie, Peg, company.” The two women came down from the upper floor together. Cyrus’s sister Agnes looked to be just a few years younger than her brother. But it was on Margaret that his