Fight Club

there, and Tyler goes out to go, "I’m sorry.” Tyler says he’s sorry he told the guy about training, but the guy is really too young, and would he please just go.
    Good cop. Bad cop.
    I scream at the poor guy, again. Then, six hours later, Tyler goes out and says he’s sorry, but no. The guy has to leave. Tyler says he’s going to call the police if the guy won’t leave.
    And the guy stays.
    And his clothes are still in the gutter. The wind takes the torn paper sack away.
    And the guy stays.
    On the third day, another applicant is at the front door. Mister angel is still there, and Tyler goes down and just tells mister angel, "Come in. Get your stuff out of the street and come in.”
    To the new guy, Tyler says, he’s sorry but there’s been a mistake. The new guy is too old to train here, and would he please leave.
    I go to work every day. I come home, and every day there’s one or two guys waiting on the front porch. These new guys don’t make eye contact. I shut the door and leave them on the porch. This happens every day for a while, and sometimes the applicants will leave, but most times, the applicants stick it out until the third day, until most of the seventy-two bunk beds Tyler and I bought and set up in the basement are full.
    One day, Tyler gives me five hundred dollars in cash and tells me to keep it in my shoe all the time. My personal burial money. This is another old Buddhist monastery thing.
    I come home from work now, and the house is filled with strangers that Tyler has accepted. All of them working. The whole first floor turns into a kitchen and a soap factory. The bathroom is never empty. Teams of men disappear for a few days and come home with red rubber bags of thin, watery fat.
    One night, Tyler comes upstairs to find me hiding in my room and says, "Don’t bother them. They all know what to do. It’s part of Project Mayhem. No one guy understands the whole plan, but each guy is trained to do one simple task perfectly.”
    The rule in Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler.
    Then Tyler’s gone.
    Teams of Project Mayhem guys render fat all day. I’m not sleeping. All night I hear other teams mix the lye and cut the bars and bake the bars of soap on cookie sheets, then wrap each bar in tissue and seal it with the Paper Street Soap Company label. Everyone except me seems to know what to do, and Tyler is never home.
    I hug the walls, being a mouse trapped in this clockwork of silent men with the energy of trained monkeys, cooking and working and sleeping in teams. Pull a lever. Push a button. A team of space monkeys cooks meals all day, and all day, teams of space monkeys are eating out of the plastic bowls they brought with them.
    One morning I’m leaving for work and Big Bob’s on the front porch wearing black shoes and a black shirt and pants. I ask, has he seen Tyler lately? Did Tyler send him here?
    "The first rule about Project Mayhem,” Big Bob says with his heels together and his back ramrod straight, "is you don’t ask questions about Project Mayhem.”
    So what brainless little honor has Tyler assigned him, I ask. There are guys whose job is to just boil rice all day or wash out eating bowls or clean the crapper. All day. Has Tyler promised Big Bob enlightenment if he spends sixteen hours a day wrapping bars of soap?
    Big Bob doesn’t say anything.
    I go to work. I come home, and Big Bob’s still on the porch. I don’t sleep all night, and the next morning, Big Bob’s out tending the garden.
    Before I leave for work, I ask Big Bob, who let him in? Who assigned him this task? Did he see Tyler? Was Tyler here last night?
    Big Bob says, "The first rule in Project Mayhem is you don’t talk—”
    I cut him off. I say, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
    And while I’m at work, teams of space monkeys dig up the muddy lawn around the house and cut the dirt with Epsom salts to lower the acidity, and spade in loads of free steer manure from the stockyards and bags of hair clippings from barber shops to ward off moles and mice and boost the protein in the soil.
    At any time of the night, space monkeys from some slaughterhouse come home with bags of blood meal to boost the iron in the soil and bone meal to boost the phosphorus.
    Teams of space monkeys plant basil and thyme and lettuce and starts of witch hazel and eucalyptus and mock orange and mint in a kaleidoscope knot pattern. A rose window in every shade of green. And other teams go out at night and kill the slugs