Fight Club and Marla Singer Essays

Fight Club and Marla Singer Essays Fight Club and Marla Singer Paper Fight Club and Marla Singer Paper You can mix the glycerin with nitric acid to make nitroglycerin, Tyler says. I breathe with my mouth open and say, nitroglycerin. Tyler licks his lips wet and shining and kisses the back of my hand. You can mix the nitroglycerin with sodium nitrate and sawdust to make dynamite, Tyler says. The kiss shines wet on the back of my white hand. Dynamite, I say, and sit back on my heels. Tyler pries the lid off the can of lye. You can blow up bridges, Tyler says. You can mix the nitroglycerin with more nitric acid and paraffin and make gelatin explosives, Tyler says. You could blow up a building, easy, Tyler says. Tyler tilts the can of lye an inch above the shining wet kiss on the back of my hand. This is a chemical burn, Tyler says, and it will hurt worse than youve ever been burned. Worse than a hundred cigarettes. The kiss shines on the back of my hand. Youll have a scar, Tyler says. With enough soap, Tyler says, you could blow up the whole world. Now remember your promise. And Tyler pours the lye. Chapter 7 TYLERS SALIVA DID two jobs. The wet kiss on the back of my hand held the flakes of lye while they burned. That was the first job. The second was lye only burns when you combine it with water. Or saliva. This is a chemical burn, Tyler said, and it will hurt more than youve ever been burned. You can use lye to open clogged drains. Close your eyes. A paste of lye and water can burn through an aluminum pan. A solution of lye and water will dissolve a wooden spoon. Combined with water, lye heats to over two hundred degrees, and as it heats it burns into the back of my hand, and Tyler places his fingers of one hand over my fingers, our hands spread on the lap of my bloodstained pants, and Tyler says to pay attention because this is the greatest moment of my life. Because everything up to now is a story, Tyler says, and everything after now is a story. This is the greatest moment of our life. The lye clinging in the exact shape of Tylers kiss is a bonfire or a branding iron or an atomic pile meltdown on my hand at the end of a long, long road I picture miles away from me. Tyler tells me to come back and be with him. My hand is leaving, tiny and on the horizon at the end of the road. Picture the fire still burning, except now its beyond the horizon. A sunset. Come back to the pain, Tyler says. This is the kind of guided meditation they use at support groups. Dont even think of the word pain. Guided meditation works for cancer, it can work for this. Look at your hand, Tyler says. Dont look at your hand. Dont think of the word searing or flesh or tissue or charred. Dont hear yourself cry. Guided meditation. Youre in Ireland. Close your eyes. Youre in Ireland the summer after you left college, and youre drinking at a pub near the castle where every day busloads of English and American tourists come to kiss the Blarney stone. Dont shut this out, Tyler says. Soap and human sacrifice go hand in hand. You leave the pub in a stream of men, walking through the beaded wet car silence of streets where its just rained. Its night. Until you get to the Blarneystone castle. The floors in the castle are rotted away, and you climb the rock stairs with blackness getting deeper and deeper on every side with every step up. Everybody is quiet with the climb and the tradition of this little ac t of rebellion. Listen to me, Tyler says. Open your eyes. In ancient history, Tyler says, human sacrifices were made on a hill above a river. Thousands of people. Listen to me. The sacrifices were made and the bodies were burned on a pyre. You can cry, Tyler says. You can go to the sink and run water over your hand, but first you have to know that youre stupid and you will die. Look at me. Someday, Tyler says, you will die, and until you know that, youre useless to me. Youre in Ireland. You can cry, Tyler says, but every tear that lands in the lye flakes on your skin will burn a cigarette burn scar. Guided meditation. Youre in Ireland the summer after you left college, and maybe this is where you first wanted anarchy. Years before you met Tyler Durden, before you peed in your first creme anglaise, you learned about little acts of rebellion. In Ireland. Youre standing on a platform at the top of the stairs in a castle. We can use vinegar, Tyler says, to neutralize the burning, but first you have to give up. After hundreds of people were sacrificed and burned, Tyler says, a thick white discharge crept from the altar, downhill to the river. First you have to hit bottom. Youre on a platform in a castle in Ireland with bottomless darkness all around the edge of the platform, and ahead of you, across an arms length of darkness, is a rock wall. Rain, Tyler says, fell on the burnt pyre year after year, and year after year, people were burned, and the rain seeped through the wood ashes to become a solution of lye, and the lye combined with the melted fat of the sacrifices, and a thick white discharge of soap crept out from the base of the altar and crept downhill toward the river. And the Irish men aroun d you with their little act of rebellion in the darkness, they walk to the edge of the platform, and stand at the edge of the bottomless darkness and piss. And the men say, go ahead, piss your fancy American piss rich and yellow with too many vitamins. Rich and expensive and thrown away. This is the greatest moment of your life, Tyler says, and youre off somewhere missing it. Youre in Ireland. Oh, and youre doing it. Oh, yeah. Yes. And you can smell the ammonia and the daily allowance of B vitamins. Where the soap fell into the river, Tyler says, after a thousand years of killing people and rain, the ancient people found their clothes got cleaner if they washed at that spot. Im pissing on the Blarney stone. Geez, Tyler says. Im pissing in my black trousers with the dried bloodstains my boss cant stomach. Youre in a rented house on Paper Street. This means something, Tyler says. This is a sign, Tyler says. Tyler is full of useful information. Cultures without soap, Tyler says, they used their urine and the urine of their dogs to wash their clothes and hair because of the uric acid and ammonia. Theres the smell of vinegar, and the fire on your hand at the end of the long road goes out. Theres the smell of lye scalding the branched shape of your sinuses, and the hospital vomit smell of piss and vinegar. It was right to kill all those people, Tyler says. The back of your hand is swollen red and glossy as a pair of lips in the exact shape of Tylers kiss. Scattered around the kiss are the cigarette burn spots of somebody crying. Open your eyes, Tyler says, and his face is shining with tears. Congratulations, Tyler says. Youre a step closer to hitting bottom. You have to see, Tyler says, how the first soap was made of heroes. Think about the animals used in product testing. Think about the monkeys shot into space. Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice, Tyler says, we would have nothing. I S T O P T H E elevator between floors while Tyler undoes his belt. When the elevator stops, the soup bowls stacked an the buffet cart stop rattling, and steam mushrooms up to the elevator ceiling as Tyler takes the lid off the soup tureen. Tyler starts to take himself out and says, Dont look at me, or I cant go. The soups a sweet tomato bisque with cilantro and clams. Between the two, nobody will smell anything else we put in. I sa y, hurry up, and I look back over my shoulder at Tyler with his last half inch hanging in the soup. This looks in a really funny way like a tall elephant in a waiters white shirt and bow tie drinking soup through its little trunk. Tyler says, I said, `Dont look. The elevator door in front of me has a little face-sized window that lets me look out into the banquet service corridor. With the elevator stopped between floors, my view is about a cockroach above the green linoleum, and from here at cockroach level the green corridor stretches toward the vanishing point, past half-open doors where titans and their gigantic wives drink barrels of champagne and bellow at each other wearing diamonds bigger han I feel. Last week, I tell Tyler, when the Empire State Lawyers were here for their Christmas party, I got mine hard and stuck it in all their orange mousses. Last week, Tyler says, he stopped the elevator and farted on a whole cart of Boccone Dolce for the Junior League tea. That Tyler knows how a meringue will absorb odor. At cockroach level, we can hear the captive harpist make musi c as the titans lift forks of butterflied lamb chop, each bite the size of a whole pig, each mouth a tearing Stonehenge of ivory. I say, go already. Tyler says, I cant. If the soup gets cold, theyll send it back. The giants, theyll send something back to the kitchen for no reason at all. They just want to see you run around for their money. A dinner like this, these banquet parties, they know the tip is already included in the bill so they treat you like dirt. We dont really take anything back to the kitchen. Move the Pommes Parisienne and the Asperges Hollandaise around the plate a little, serve it to someone else, and all of a sudden its fine. I say, Niagara Falls. The Nile River. In school, we all thought if you put somebodys hand in a bowl of warm water while they slept, theyd wet the bed. Tyler says, Oh. Behind me, Tyler says, Oh, yeah. Oh, Im doing it. Oh, yeah. Yes. Past half-open doors in the ballrooms off the service corridor swish gold and black and red skirts as tall as the gold velvet curtain at the Old Broadway Theatre. Now and again there are pairs of Cadillac sedans in black leather with shoelaces where the windshields should be. Above the cars move a city of office towers in red cummerbunds. Not too much, I say. Tyler and me, weve turned into the guerrilla terrorists of the service industry. Dinner party saboteurs. The hotel caters dinner parties, and when somebody wants the food they get the food and the wine and the china and glassware and the waiters. They get the works, all in one bill. And because they know they cant threaten you with the pp, to them youre just a cockroach. Tyler, he did a dinner party one time. This was when Tyler turned into a renegade waiter. That first dinner party, Tyler was serving the fish course in this white and glass cloud of a house that seemed to float over the city on steel legs attached to a hillside. Part of the way through the fish ourse, while Tylers rinsing plates from the pasta course, the hostess comes in the kitchen holding a scrap of paper that flaps like a flag, her hand is shaking so much. Through her clenched teeth, Madam wants to know did the waiters see any of the guests go down the hallway that leads to the bedroom part of the house? Especially any of the women guests? Or the host? In the kitchen, its Tyler and Albert and Len and Jerry rinsing a nd stacking the plates and a prep cook, Leslie, basting garlic butter on the artichoke hearts stuffed with shrimp and escargot. Were not supposed to go in that part of the house, Tyler says. We come in through the garage. All were supposed to see is the garage, the kitchen, and the dining room. The host comes in behind his wife in the kitchen doorway and takes the scrap of paper out of her shaking hand. This will be alright, he says. How can I face those people, Madam says, unless I know who did this? The host puts a flat open hand against the back of her silky white party dress that matches her house and Madam straightens up, her shoulders squared, and is all of a sudden quiet. They are your guests, he says. And this party is very important. This looks in a really funny way like a ventriloquist bringing his dummy to life. Madam looks at her husband, and with a little shove the host takes his wife back into the dining room. The note drops to the floor and the two-way swish-swish of the kitchen door sweeps the note against Tylers feet. Albert says, Whats it say? Len goes out to start clearing the fish course. Leslie slides the tray of artichoke hearts back into the oven and says, Whats it say, already? Tyler looks right at Leslie and says, without even picking up the note, `I have passed an amount of urine into at least one of your many elegant fragrances. Albert smiles. You pissed in her perfume? No, Tyler says. He just left the note stuck between the bottles. Shes got about a hundred bottles sitting on a mirror counter in her bathroom. Leslie smiles. So you didnt, really? No, Tyler says, but she doesnt know that. The whole rest of the night in that white and glass dinner party in the sky, Tyler kept clearing plates of cold artichokes, then cold veal with cold Pommes Duchesse, then cold Choufleur a la Polonaise from in front of the hostess, and Tyler kept filling her wine glass about a dozen times. Madam sat watching each of her women guests eat the food, until between clearing the sorbet dishes and serving the apricot gateau, Madams place at the head of the table was all of a sudden empty. They were washing up after the guests had left, loading the coolers and the china back into the hotel van, when the host came in the kitchen and asked, would Albert please come help him with something heavy? Leslie says, maybe Tyler went too far. Loud and fast, Tyler says how they kill whales, Tyler says, to make that perfume that costs more than gold per ounce. Most people have never seen a whale. Leslie has two kids in an apartment next to the freeway and Madam hostess has more bucks than well make in a year in bottles on her bathroom counter. Albert comes back from helping the host and dials 9-1-1 on the phone. Albert puts a hand over the mouth part and says, man, Tyler shouldnt have left that note. Tyler says, So, tell the banquet manager. Get me fired. Im not married to this chickenshit job. Everybody looks at their feet. Getting fired, Tyler says, is the best thing that could happen to any of us. That way, wed quit treading water and do something with our lives. Albert says into the phone that we need an ambulance and the address. Waiting on the line, Albert says the hostess is a real mess right now. Albert had to pick her up from next to the toilet. The host couldnt pick her up because Madam says hes the one who peed in her perfume bottles, and she says hes trying to drive her crazy by having an affair with one of the women guests, tonight, and shes tired, tired of all the people they call their friends. The host cant pick her up because Madams fallen down behind the toilet in her white dress and shes waving around half a broken perfume bottle. Madam says shell cut his throat, he even tries to touch her. Tyler says, Cool. And Albert stinks. Leslie says, Albert, honey, you stink. Theres no way you could come out of that bathroom not stinking, Albert says. Every bottle of perfume is broken on the floor and the toilet is piled full of the other bottles. They look like ice, Albert says, like at the fanciest hotel parties where we have to fill the urinals with crushed ice. The bathroom stinks and the floor is gritty with slivers of ice that wont melt, and when Albert helps Madam to her feet, her white dress wet with yellow stains, Madam swings the broken bottle at the host, lips in the perfume and broken glass, and lands on her palms. Shes crying and bleeding, curled against the toilet. Oh, and it stings, she says. Oh, Walter, it stings. Its stinging, Madam says. The perfume, all those dead whales in the cuts in her hands, it stings. The host pulls Madam to her feet against him, Madam holding her hands up as if she were prayin g but with her hands an inch apart and blood running down the palms, down the wrists, across a diamond bracelet, and to her elbows where it drips. And the host, he says, It will be alright, Nina. My hands, Walter, Madam says. It will be alright. Madam says, Who would do this to me? Who could hate me this much? The host says, to Albert, Would you call an ambulance? That was Tylers first mission as a service industry terrorist. Guerrilla waiter. Minimum-wage despoiler. Tylers been doing this for years, but he says everything is more fun as a shared activity. At the end of Alberts story, Tyler smiles and says, Cool. Back in the hotel, right now, in the elevator stopped between the kitchen and the banquet floors, I tell Tyler how I sneezed on the trout in aspic for the dermatologist convention and three people told me it was too salty and one person said it was delicious. Tyler shakes himself off over the soup tureen and says hes run dry. This is easier with cold soup, vichyssoise, or when the chefs make a really fresh gazpacho. This is impossible with that onion soup that has a crust of melted cheese on it in ramekins. If I ever ate here, thats what Id order. We were running out of ideas, Tyler and me. Doing stuff to the food sot to be boring, almost part of the job description. Then I hear one of the doctors, lawyers, whatever, say how a hepatitis bug can live on stainless steel for six months. You have to wonder how long this bug can live on Rum Custard Charlotte Russe. Or Salmon Timbale. I asked the doctor where could we get our hands on some of these hepatitis bugs, and hes drunk enough to laugh. Everything goes to the medical waste dump, he says. And he laughs. Everything. The medical waste dump sounds like hitting bottom. One hand on the elevator control, I ask Tyler if hes ready. The scar on the back of my hand is swollen red and glossy as a pair of lips in the exact shape of Tylers kiss. One second, Tyler says. The tomato soup must still be hot because the crooked thing Tyler tucks back in his pants is boiled pink as a jumbo prawn. Chapter 8 IN SOUTH AMERICA, Land of Enchantment, we could be wading in a river where tiny fish will swim up Tylers urethra. The fish have barbed spines that flare out and back so once theyre up Tyler, the fish set up housekeeping and get ready to lay their eggs. In so many ways, how we spent Saturday night could be worse. It couldve been worse, Tyler says, what we did with Marlas mother. I say, shut up. Tyler says, the French government couldve taken us to an underground complex outside of Paris where not even surgeons but semiskilled technicians would razor our eyelids off as part of toxicity testing an aerosol tanning spray. This stuff happens, Tyler says. Read the newspaper. Whats worse is I knew what Tyler had been up to with Marlas mother, but for the first time since Ive known him, Tyler had some oval play money. Tyler was making real bucks. Nordstroms called and left an order for two hundred bars of Tylers brown sugar facial soap before Christmas. At twenty bucks a bar, suggested retail price, we had money to go out on Saturday night. Money to fix the leak in the gas line. Go dancing. Without money to worry about, maybe I could quit my job. Tyler calls himself the Paper Street Soap Company. People are saying its the best soap ever. What wouldve been worse, Tyler says, is if you had accidentally eaten Marlas mother. Through a mouthful of Kung Pao Chicken, I say to just shut the hell up. Where we are this Saturday night is the front seat of a 1968 Impala sitting on two flats in the front row of a used-car lot. Tyler and me, were talking, drinking beer out of cans, and the front seat of this Impala is bigger than most peoples sofas. The car lots up and down this part of the boulevard, in the industry they call these lots the Pot Lots where the cars all cost around two hundred dollars and during the day, the gypsy guys who run these lots stand around in their plywood offices smoking long, thin cigars. The cars are the beater first cars kids drive in high school: Gremlins and Pacers, Mavericks and Hornets, Pintos, International Harvester pickup trucks, lowered Camaros and Dusters and Impalas. Cars that people loved and then dumped. Animals at the pound. Bridesmaid dresses at the Goodwill. With dents and gray or red or black primer quarter panels and rocker panels and lumps of body putty that nobody ever got around to sanding. Plastic wood and plastic leather and plastic chrome interiors. At night, the gypsy guys dont even lock the car doors. The headlights on the boulevard go by behind the price painted on the Impala-big wraparound Cinemascope windshield. See the U. S. A. The price is ninety-eight dollars. From the inside, this looks like eightynine cents. Zero, zero, decimal point, eight, nine. America is asking you to call. Most of the cars here are about a hundred dollars, and all the cars have an AS IS sales agreement hanging in the drivers window. We chose the Impala because if we have to sleep in a car on Saturday night, this car has the biggest seats. Were eating Chinese because we cant go home. It was either sleep here, or stay up all night at an after-hours dance club. We dont go to dance clubs. Tyler says the music is so loud, especially the base tracks, that it screws with his biorhythm. The last time we went out, Tyler said the loud music made him constipated. This, and the club is too loud to talk, so after a couple of drinks, everyone feels like the center of attention but completely cutoff from participating with anyone else. Youre the corpse in an English murder mystery. Were sleeping in a car tonight because Marla came to the house and threatened to call the police and have me arrested for cooking her mother, and then Marla slammed around the house, screaming that I was a ghoul and a cannibal and she went kicking through the piles of Readers Digest and National Geographic, and then I left her there. In a nutshell. After her accidental on-purpose suicide with Xanax at the Regent Hotel, I cant imagine Marla calling the police, but Tyler thought it would be good to sleep out, tonight. Just in case. Just in case Marla burns the house down. Just in case Marla goes out and finds a gun. Just in case Marla is still in the house. Just in case. I try to get centered: Watching white moon face The stars never feel anger Blah, blah, blah, the end Here, with the cars going by on the boulevard and a beer in my hand in the Impala with its cold, hard Bakelite steering wheel maybe three feet in diameter and the cracked vinyl eat pinching my ass through my jeans, Tyler says, One more time. Tell me exactly what happened. For weeks, I ignored what Tyler had been up to. One time, I went with Tyler to the Western Union office and watched as he sent Marlas mother a telegram. HIDEOUSLY WRINKLED (stop) PLEASE HELP ME! (end) Tyler had showed the clerk Marlas library card and signed Marlas name to the telegram order, an d yelled, yes, Marla can be a guys name sometimes, and the clerk could just mind his own business. When we were leaving the Western Union, Tyler said if I loved him, Id trust him. This wasnt something I needed to know about, Tyler told me and he took me to Garbonzos for hummus. What really scared me wasnt the telegram as much as it was eating out with Tyler. Never, no, never had Tyler ever paid cash for anything. [,or clothes, Tyler goes to gyms and hotels and claims clothing out of the lost and found. This is better than Marla, who goes to Laundromats to steal jeans out of the dryers and sell them at twelve dollars a pair to those places that buy used jeans. Tyler never ate in restaurants, and Marla wasnt wrinkled. For no apparent reason, Tyler sent Marlas mother a fifteen-pound box of chocolates. Another way this Saturday night could be worse, Tyler tells me in the Impala, is the brown recluse spider. When it bites you, it injects not just a venom but a digestive enzyme or acid that dissolves the tissue around the bite, literally melting your arm or your leg or your face. Tyler was hiding out tonight when this all started. Marla showed up at the house. Without even knocking, Marla leans inside the front door and shouts, Knock, knock. Im reading Readers Digest in the kitchen. I am totally nonplussed. Marla yells, Tyler. Can I come in? Are you home? I yell, Tylers not home. Marla yells, Dont be mean. By now, Im at the front door. Marlas standing in the foyer with a Federal Express overnight package, and says, I needed to put something in your freezer. I dog her heels on the way to the kitchen, saying, no. No. No. No. She is not going to start keeping her junk in this house. But Pumpkin, Marla says, I dont have a freezer at the hotel, and you said I could. No, I did not. The last thing I want is Marla moving in, one piece of crap at a time. Marla has her Federal Express package ripped open on the kitchen table, and she lifts something white out of the Styrofoam packing peanuts and shakes this white thing in my face. This is not crap, she says. This is my mother youre talking about so just fuck off. What Marla lifts out of the package, its one of those sandwich bags of white stuff that Tyler rendered for tallow to make soap. Things wouldve been worse, Tyler says, if youd accidentally eaten what was in one of those sandwich bags. If youd got up in the middle of the night sometime, and squeezed out the white goo and added California onion soup mix and eaten it as a dip with potato chips. Or broccoli. More than anything in the world right then, while Marla and I were standing in the kitchen, I didnt want Marla to open the freezer. I asked, what was she going to do with the white stuff? Paris lips, Marla said. As you get older, your lips pull inside your mouth. Im saving for a collagen lip injection. I have almost thirty pounds of collagen in your freezer. I asked, how big of lips did she want? Marla said it was the operation itself that scared her. The stuff in the Federal Express package, I tell Tyler in the Impala, that was the same stuff we made soap out of. Ever since silicone turned out to be dangerous, collagen has become the hot item to I gave injected to smooth out wrinkles or to puff up thin lips or weak chins. The way Marla had explained it, most collagen you get cheap from cow fat thats been sterilized and processed, but that kind of cheap collagen doesnt last very long in your body. Wherever you get injected, say in your lips, your body rejects it and starts to poop it out. Six months later, you have thin lips, again. The best kind of collagen, Marla said, is your own fat, sucked out of your thighs, processed and cleaned and injected back into your lips, or wherever. This kind of collagen will last. This stuff in the fridge at home, it was Marlas collagen trust fund. Whenever her mom grew any extra fat, she had it sucked out and packaged. Marla says the process is called gleaning. If Marlas mom doesnt need the collagen herself, she sends the packets to Marla. Marla never has any fat of her own, and her mom figures that familial collagen would be better than Marla ever having to use the cheap cow kind. Streetlight along the boulevard comes through the sales agreement m the window and prints AS IS on Tylers cheek. Spiders, Tyler says, could lay their eggs and larva could tunnel, under your skin. Thats how bad your life can get. Right now, my Almond Chicken in its warm, creamy sauce tastes like something sucked out of Marlas mothers thighs. It was right then, standing in the kitchen with Marla, that I knew what Tyler had done. HIDEOUSLY WRINKLED. And I knew why he sent candy to Marlas mother. PLEASE HELP. I say, Marla, you dont want to look in the freezer. Marla says, Do what? We never eat red meat, Tyler tells me in the Impala, and he cant use chicken fat or the soap wont harden into a bar. The stuff, Tyler says, is making us a fortune. We paid the rent with that collagen. I say, you shouldve told Marla. Now she thinks I did it. Saponification, Tyler says, is the chemical reaction you need to make good soap. Chicken fat wont work or any fat with too much salt. Listen, Tyler says. We have a big order to fill. What well do is send Marlas mom some chocolates and probably some fruitcakes. I dont think that will work, anymore. Long story short, Marla looked in the freezer. Okay, there was a little scuffle, first. I try to stop her, and the bag shes holding gets dropped and breaks open on the linoleum and we both slip in the greasy white mess and come up gagging. I have Marla around the waist from behind, her black hair whipping my face, her arms pinned to her sides, and Im saying over and over, it wasnt me. It wasnt me. I didnt do it. My mother! Youre spilling her all over! We needed to make soap, I say with my face pressed up behind her car. We needed to wash my pants, to pay the rent, to fix the leak in the gas line. It wasnt me. It was Tyler. Marla screams, What are you talking about? and twists out of her skirt. Im scrambling to get up off the greased floor with an armful of Marlas India cotton print skirt, and Marla in her panties and wedgie Feels and peasant blouse throws open the freezer part of the fridge, and inside theres no collagen trust fund. Theres two old flashlight batteries, but thats all. Where is she? Im already crawling backwards, my hands slipping, my shoes slipping on the linoleum, and my ass wiping a clean path across the dirty Moor away from Marla and the fridge. I hold up the skirt so I dont Dave to see Marlas face when I tell her. The truth. We made soap out of it. Her. Marlas mother. Soap? Soap. You boil fat. You mix it with lye. You get soap. When Marla s creams, I throw the skirt in her face and run. I slip. I run. Around and around the first floor, Marla runs after me, skidding m the corners, pushing off against the window casings for momentum. Slipping. Leaving filthy handprints of grease and floor dirt among the wallpaper flowers. Falling and sliding into the wainscoting, getting back up, running. Marla screaming, You boiled my mother! Tyler boiled her mother. Marla screaming, always one swipe of her fingernails behind me. Tyler boiled her mother. You boiled my mother! The front door was still open. And then I was out the front door with Marla screaming in the doorway behind me. My feet didnt slip against the concrete sidewalk, and I just kept running. Until I found Tyler or until Tyler found me, and I told him what happened. With one beer each, Tyler and I spread out on the front and back seats with me in the front seat. Even now, Marlas probably still in the house, throwing magazines against the walls and screaming how Im a prick and a monster twofaced capitalist suck-ass bastard. The miles of night between Marla and me offer insects and melanomas and flesh-eating viruses. Where Im at isnt so bad. When a man is hit by lightning, Tyler says, his head burns down to a smoldering baseball and his zipper welds itself shut. I say, did we hit bottom, tonight? Tyler lies back and asks, If Marilyn Monroe was alive right now, what would she be doing? I say, goodnight. The headliner hangs down in shreds from the ceiling, and Tyler says, Clawing at the lid of her coffin. Chapter 9 MY BOSS STANDS too close to my desk with his little smile, his lips together and stretched thin, his crotch at my elbow. I look up from writing the cover letter for a recall campaign. These letters always begin the same way: This notice is sent to you in accordance with the requirements of the National Motor Vehicle Safety Act. We have determined that a defect exists . . . This week I ran the liability formula, and for once A times B times C equaled more than the cost of a recall. This week, its the little plastic clip that holds the rubber blade on your windshield wipers. A throwaway item. Only two hundred vehicles affected. Next to nothing for the labor cost. Last week was more typical. Last week the issue was some leather cured with a known teratogenic substance , synthetic Nirret or something just as illegal thats still used in third world tanning. Something so strong that it could cause birth defects in the fetus of any pregnant woman who comes across it. Last week, nobody called the Department of Transportation. Nobody initiated a recall. New leather multiplied by labor cost multiplied by administration cost would equal more than our first-quarter profits. If anyone ever discovers our mistake, we can still pay off a lot of grieving families before we come close to the cost of retrofitting sixty-five hundred leather interiors. But this week, were doing a recall campaign. And this week the insomnia is back. Insomnia, and now the whole world figures to stop by and take a dump on my grave. My boss is wearing his gray tie so today must be a Tuesday. My boss brings a sheet of paper to my desk and asks if Im looking for something. This paper was left in the copy machine, he says, and begins to read: The first rule of fight club is you dont talk about fight club. His eyes go side to side across the paper, and he giggles. The second rule of fight club is you dont talk about fight club. I hear Tylers words come out of my boss, Mister Boss with his midlife spread and family photo on his desk and his dreams about early retirement and winters spent at a trailer-park hookup in some Arizona desert. My boss, with his extra-starched shirts and standing appointment for a haircut every Tuesday after lunch, he looks at me, and he says: I hope this isnt yours. I am Joes Blood-Boiling Rage. Tyler asked me to type up the fight club rules and make him ten copies. Not nine, not eleven. Tyler says, ten. Still, I have the insomnia, and cant remember sleeping since three nights ago. This must be the original I typed. I made ten copies, and forgot the original. The paparazzi flash of the copy machine in my face. The insomnia distance of everything, a copy of a copy of a copy. You cant touch anything, and nothing can touch you. My boss reads: The third rule of fight club is two men per fight. Neither of us blinks. My boss reads: One fight at a time. I havent slept in three days unless Im sleeping now. My boss shakes the paper under my nose. What about it, he says. Is this some little game Im playing on company time? Im paid for my full attention, not to waste time with little war games. And Im not paid to abuse the copy machines. What about it? He shakes the paper under my nose. What do I think, he asks, what should he do with an employee who spends company time in some little fantasy world. If I was in his shoes, what would I do? What would I do? The hole in my cheek, the blue-black swelling around my eyes, and the swollen red scar of Tylers kiss on the back of my hand, a copy of a copy of a copy. Speculation. Why does Tyler want ten copies of the fight club rules? Hindu cow. What I would do, I say, is Id be very careful who I talked to about this paper. I say, it sounds like some dangerous psychotic killer wrote this, and this buttoned-down schizophrenic could probably go over the edge at any moment in the working day and stalk from office to office with an Armalite AR-180 carbine gas-operated semiautomatic. My boss just looks at me. The guy, I say, is probably at home every night with a little rattail file, filing a cross into the tip of every one of his rounds. This way, when he shows up to work one morning and pumps a round into his nagging, ineffectual, petty, whining, butt-sucking, candy-ass boss, that one round will split along the filed grooves and spread open the way a dumdum bullet flowers inside you to blow a bushel load of your stinking guts out through your spine. Picture your gut chakra opening in a slow-motion explosion of sausage-casing small intestine. My boss takes the paper out from under my nose. Go ahead, I say, read some more. No really, I say, it sounds fascinating. The work of a totally diseased mind. And I smile. The little butthole-looking edges of the hole in my cheek are the same blue-black as . a dogs gums. The skin stretched tight across the swelling around my eyes feels varnished. My boss just looks at me. Let me help you, I say. I say, the fourth rule of fight club is one fight at a time. My boss looks at the rules and then looks at me. I say, the fifth rule is no shoes, no shirts in the fight. My boss looks at the rules and looks at me. Maybe, I say, this totally diseased fuck would use an Eagle Apache carbine because an Apache takes a thirty-shot mag and only weighs nine pounds. The Armalite only takes a five-round magazine. With thirty shots, our totally fucked hero could go the length of mahogany row and take out every vice president with a cartridge left over for each director. Tylers words coming out of my mouth.