Fight Club

OF FAILURE is recorded as "unknown.”
    No, I say, the paper’s not mine. I take the paper between two fingers and jerk it out of his hand. The edge must slice his thumb because his hand flies to his mouth, and he’s sucking hard, eyes wide open. I crumble the paper into a ball and toss it into the trash can next to my desk.
    Maybe, I say, you shouldn’t be bringing me every little piece of trash you pick up.

    Sunday night, I go to Remaining Men Together and the basement of Trinity Episcopal is almost empty. Just Big Bob, and I come dragging in with every muscle bruised inside and out, but my heart’s still racing and my thoughts are a tornado in my head. This is insomnia. All night, your thoughts are on the air.
    All night long, you’re thinking: Am I asleep? Have I slept?
    Insult to injury, Big Bob’s arms come out of his T-shirt sleeves quilted with muscle and so hard they shine. Big Bob smiles, he’s so happy to see me.
    He thought I was dead.
    Yeah, I say, me too.
    "Well,” Big Bob says, "I’ve got good news.”
    Where is everybody?
    "That’s the good news,” Big Bob says. "The group’s disbanded. I only come down here to tell any guys who might show up.”
    I collapse with my eyes closed on one of the plaid thrift store couches.
    "The good news,” Big Bob says, "is there’s a new group, but the first rule about this new group is you aren’t supposed to talk about it.”
    Oh.
    Big Bob says, "And the second rule is you’re not supposed to talk about it.”
    Oh, shit. I open my eyes.
    Fuck.
    "The group’s called fight club,” Big Bob says, "and it meets every Friday night in a closed garage across town. On Thursday nights, there’s another fight club that meets at a garage closer by.”
    I don’t know either of these places.
    "The first rule about fight club,” Big Bob says, "is you don’t talk about fight club.”
    Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night, Tyler is a movie projectionist. I saw his pay stub last week.
    "The second rule about fight club,” Big Bob says, "is you don’t talk about fight club.”
    Saturday night, Tyler goes to fight club with me.
    "Only two men per fight.”
    Sunday morning, we come home beat up and sleep all afternoon.
    "Only one fight at a time,” Big Bob says.
    Sunday and Monday night, Tyler’s waiting tables.
    "You fight without shirts or shoes.”
    Tuesday night, Tyler’s at home making soap, wrapping it in tissue paper, shipping it out. The Paper Street Soap Company.
    "The fights,” Big Bob says, "go on as long as they have to. Those are the rules invented by the guy who invented fight club.”
    Big Bob asks, "Do you know him?
    "I’ve never seen him, myself,” Big Bob says, "but the guy’s name is Tyler Durden.”
    The Paper Street Soap Company.
    Do I know him.
    I dunno, I say.
    Maybe.

13
    WHEN I GET to the Regent Hotel, Marla’s in the lobby wearing a bathrobe. Marla called me at work and asked, would I skip the gym and the library or the laundry or whatever I had planned after work and come see her, instead.
    This is why Marla called, because she hates me.
    She doesn’t say a thing about her collagen trust fund.
    What Marla says is, would I do her a favor? Marla was lying in bed this afternoon. Marla lives on the meals that Meals on Wheels delivers for her neighbors who are dead; Marla accepts the meals and says they’re asleep. Long story short, this afternoon Marla was just lying in bed, waiting for the Meals on Wheels delivery between noon and two. Marla hasn’t had health insurance for a couple years so she’s stopped looking, but this morning she looks and there seemed to be a lump and the nodes under her arm near the lump were hard and tender at the same time and she couldn’t tell anyone she loves because she doesn’t want to scare them and she can’t afford to see a doctor if this is nothing, but she needed to talk to someone and someone else needed to look.
    The color of Marla’s brown eyes is like an animal that’s been heated in a furnace and dropped into cold water. They call that vulcanized or galvanized or tempered.
    Marla says she’ll forgive the collagen thing if I’ll help her look.
    I figure she doesn’t call Tyler because she doesn’t want to scare him. I’m neutral in her book, I owe her.
    We go upstairs to her room, and Marla tells me how in the wild you don’t see old animals because as soon as they age, animals die. If they get sick or slow down, something stronger kills them. Animals aren’t meant to get