One may surely give oneself up to a line of thought, and follow it up as far as it leads, simply out of scientific curiosity, or—if you prefer—as advocatus diaboli, without, however, making a pact with the devil about it . . . only that people unfortunately are seldom impartial where they are concerned with the ultimate things, the great problems of science and of life. My belief is that there everyone is under the sway of preferences deeply rooted within, into the hands of which he unwillingly plays as he pursues his speculation.
— Sigmund Freud “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” in A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud (1957)

Imperfect knowledge accompanied him across the field to the big tent. It was strange, it was just like the tent Thomas dreamed about the night before, with green and white stripes and billowing white flaps spread wide like labia. Inside the tent, a three-piece band played “All of Me,” a beguiling smell of gardenias insinuated itself, and five veiled women, their naked, fleshy bellies curling and uncurling—maybe the gypsy women from a small circus in southern Turkey—waved and pointed behind him, and there she was, Grace, his love, embracing him, lustily biting his lips. You’re eating me up alive, he dream-talked, and everything was right in the world, until he awoke. Déjà vu all over again, Thomas thought, entering the tent. His dream wasn’t a flash of prognostication, he knew the ceremony and reception would be under a tent, so the dream made perfect sense, even if her marriage didn’t. Its inevitability had plagued him for months, especially since Grace had once told him she couldn’t be with him because she didn’t know how to love, couldn’t love, it wasn’t him, she said, downcast, she was incapable. Hers was a hopeless, existential condition. My mother, she explained, made loving anyone impossible. Her mother had disappeared one day, didn’t pick her up from kindergarten, and finally turned up dead, or was pronounced dead, it was murkily put, and that was all; she wouldn’t say more, so he didn’t prod Grace, assuming the disappearance was the result of another man, drugs, or alcohol. He doubted she’d died—her father kept the truth from her—but Thomas believed the terrifying, great loss and abandonment had diminished Grace’s capacity to trust, and desperate insecurity carved out her being. Grace left it, and many other matters, open to interpretation; her vagueness shaped their relationship, until disastrously bent out of shape, it disintegrated.

Now Grace was actually marrying Billy Webster, a man—Thomas would’ve preferred a woman—someone she could love, presumably, unless she had other motives and reasons with which she’d tie her Gordian knot. Living gardenias cascaded down thick, moss-green plastic vines, but there were no women in veils, except for Grace, when she walked down the aisle next to her father, who looked just like the New Hampshire modern-day farmer he was. This was New Hampshire, Thomas reminded himself, glancing away from Grace’s swishing peau de soie dress, whose hem touched his foot as she walked toward the other man. But how much a dream tells and doesn’t, how it plays tricks, just like people. His only consolation was to attend her wedding the way he would a funeral for a colleague or a former friend, because it was required and ennobled him with easy virtue.
Thomas knew only a little about Grace’s dull or bright hubby who stood possessively by her side and appeared to sense subtle meanings in her every gesture, unctuous and fastidious in his affection, and grinned so broadly his eyes disappeared into folds of cheek, which looked to Thomas like abnormal growths. He’s assertive, Thomas decided, a wimp, or a geek, and probably impotent. Grace’s brand-new husband produced CD-ROMs, a movie or two, some Broadway shows, and Thomas distrusted his dilettantism, his casualness. Thomas prided himself on his vision and application of skill to one cause, graphic design, whose requirements called for a refined eye, precision, and creativity within limits. He served others rather than himself, far better than making art that encouraged self-indulgence. Billy Webster was a grandstander. Also, Billy Webster had once performed magic, which was how he got into theater, and read palms and handwriting. Grace had mentioned this, as if they were worthy pursuits.

She met Billy Webster after they’d split up, she explained to Thomas, when she also informed him, too delicately, as if his feelings were womanly, of their upcoming marriage. That’s why she’d phoned him. It was chance, they were at a party, thrown by a close college friend she hadn’t seen since, but the friend had converted to Scientology, which Grace didn’t know until the party, when she heard a well-dressed group of men and women, all in their thirties, with too-bright eyes and eager, lubricious smiles, discuss E-meters and getting clear. She listened in, didn’t say a word, fearing intimidation, and that’s when she and Billy Webster found each other’s eyes across the room. The antidisciples soon absconded from the religious or cultish party, to a bar. They talked all night. Until dawn, she’d said, and, soon Billy Webster had discovered her and she him, they found each other.

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