Fight Club

guys waiting for you in the parking lot.”
    I ask, who are they?
    "They’re all waiting,” Tyler says.
    I smell gasoline on my hands.
    Tyler goes, "Hit the road. They have a car, outside. They have a Cadillac.”
    I’m still asleep.
    Here, I’m not sure if Tyler is my dream.
    Or if I am Tyler’s dream.
    I sniff the gasoline on my hands. There’s nobody else around, and I get up and walk out to the parking lot.
    A guy in fight club works on cars so he’s parked at the curb in somebody’s black Corniche, and all I can do is look at it, all black and gold, this huge cigarette case ready to drive me somewhere. This mechanic guy who gets out of the car tells me not to worry, he switched the plates with another car in the long-term parking lot at the airport.
    Our fight club mechanic says he can start anything. Two wires twist out of the steering column. Touch the wires to each other, you complete the circuit to the starter solenoid, you got a car to joyride.
    Either that, or you could hack the key code through a dealership.
    Three space monkeys are sitting in the back seat wearing their black shirts and black pants. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.
    I ask, so where’s Tyler?
    The fight club mechanic guy is holding the Cadillac open chauffeur style for me. The mechanic is tall and all bones with shoulders that remind you of a telephone pole crossbar.
    I ask, are we going to see Tyler?
    Waiting for me in the middle of the front seat is a birthday cake with candles ready to be lit. I get in. We start driving.
    Even a week after fight club, you’ve got no problem driving inside the speed limit. Maybe you’ve been passing black shit, internal injuries, for two days, but you are so cool. Other cars drive around you. Cars tailgate. You get the finger from other drivers. Total strangers hate you. It’s absolutely nothing personal. After fight club, you’re so relaxed, you just cannot care. You don’t even turn the radio on. Maybe your ribs stab along a hairline fracture every time you take a breath. Cars behind you blink their lights. The sun is going down, orange and gold.
    The mechanic is there, driving. The birthday cake is on the seat between us.
    It’s one scary fuck to see guys like our mechanic at fight club. Skinny guys, they never go limp. They fight until they’re burger. White guys like skeletons dipped in yellow wax with tattoos, black men like dried meat, these guys usually hang together, the way you can picture them at Narcotics Anonymous. They never say, stop. It’s like they’re all energy, shaking so fast they blur around the edges, these guys in recovery from something. As if the only choice they have left is how they’re going to die and they want to die in a fight.
    They have to fight each other, these guys.
    Nobody else will tag them for a fight, and they can’t tag anybody except another twitching skinny, all bones and rush, since nobody else will register to fight them.
    Guys watching don’t even yell when guys like our mechanic go at each other.
    All you hear is the fighters breathing through their teeth, hands slapping for a hold, the whistle and impact when fists hammer and hammer on thin hollow ribs, point-blank in a clinch. You see tendons and muscle and veins under the skin of these guys jump. Their skin shines, sweating, corded, and wet under the one light.
    Ten, fifteen minutes disappear. Their smell, they sweat and these guys’ smell, it reminds you of fried chicken.
    Twenty minutes of fight club will go by. Finally, one guy will go down.
    After a fight, two drug recovery guys will hang together for the rest of the night, wasted and smiling from fighting so hard.
    Since fight club, this mechanic guy is always hanging around the house on Paper Street. Wants me to hear the song he wrote. Wants me to see the birdhouse he built. The guy showed me a picture of some girl and asked me if she was pretty enough to marry.
    Sitting in the front seat of the Corniche, the guy says, "Did you see this cake I made for you? I made this.”
    It’s not my birthday.
    "Some oil was getting by the rings,” the mechanic guy says, "but I changed the oil and the air filter. I checked the valve lash and the timing. It’s supposed to rain, tonight, so I changed the blades.”
    I ask, what’s Tyler been planning?
    The mechanic opens the ashtray and pushes the cigarette lighter in. He says, "Is this a test? Are you testing us?”
    Where’s Tyler?
    "The first rule about fight club is you