Fight Club

forty-watt bulb hidden in the back of the fridge, something bright I can’t see behind the empty ketchup bottles and jars of pickle brine or mayonnaise, some tiny light from inside the fridge edges Tyler’s profile bright.
    Boil and skim. Boil and skim. Put the skimmed tallow into milk cartons with the tops opened all the way.
    With a chair pulled up to the open fridge, Tyler watches the tallow cool. In the heat of the kitchen, clouds of cold fog waterfall out from the bottom of the fridge and pool around Tyler’s feet.
    As I fill the milk cartons with tallow, Tyler puts them in the fridge.
    I go to kneel beside Tyler in front of the fridge, and Tyler takes my hands and shows them to me. The life line. The love line. The mounds of Venus and Mars. The cold fog pooling around us, the dim bright light on our faces.
    "I need you to do me another favor,” Tyler says.
    This is about Marla isn’t it?
    "Don’t ever talk to her about me. Don’t talk about me behind my back. Do you promise?” Tyler says.
    I promise.
    Tyler says, "If you ever mention me to her, you’ll never see me again.”
    I promise.
    "Promise?”
    I promise.
    Tyler says, "Now remember, that was three times that you promised.”
    A layer of something thick and clear is collecting on top of the tallow in the fridge.
    The tallow, I say, it’s separating.
    "Don’t worry,” Tyler says. "The clear layer is glycerin. You can mix the glycerin back in when you make soap. Or, you can skim the glycerin off.”
    Tyler licks his lips, and turns my hands palm-down on his thigh, on the gummy flannel lap of his bathrobe.
    "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 you’ve ever been burned. Worse than a hundred cigarettes.”
    The kiss shines on the back of my hand.
    "You’ll 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.

9
    TYLER’S 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 you’ve 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 Tyler’s 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 it’s beyond the horizon. A sunset.
    "Come back to the pain,” Tyler says.
    This is the kind of guided meditation they use at support groups.
    Don’t even think of the word pain.
    Guided meditation works for cancer, it can work for this.
    "Look at your hand,” Tyler says.
    Don’t look at your hand.
    Don’t think of the word searing or flesh or tissue or charred.
    Don’t hear yourself cry.
    Guided meditation.
    You’re in Ireland. Close your eyes.
    You’re in Ireland the summer after you left college, and you’re drinking at a pub