Fight Club

I’m Bob, I’m Paul, I’m Terry, I’m David.
    I never give my real name.
    "This is cancer, right?” she said.
    Then she said, "Well, hi, I’m Marla Singer.”
    Nobody ever told Marla what kind of cancer. Then we were all busy cradling our inner child.
    The man still crying against her neck, Marla takes another drag on her cigarette.
    I watch her from between Bob’s shuddering tits.
    To Marla I’m a fake. Since the second night I saw her, I can’t sleep. Still, I was the first fake, unless, maybe all these people are faking with their lesions and their coughs and tumors, even Big Bob, the big moosie. The big cheesebread.
    Would you just look at his sculpted hair.
    Marla smokes and rolls her eyes now.
    In this one moment, Marla’s lie reflects my lie, and all I can see are lies. In the middle of all their truth. Everyone clinging and risking to share their worst fear, that their death is coming head-on and the barrel of a gun is pressed against the back of their throats. Well, Marla is smoking and rolling her eyes, and me, I’m buried under a sobbing carpet, and all of a sudden even death and dying rank right down there with plastic flowers on video as a non-event.
    "Bob,” I say, "you’re crushing me.” I try to whisper, then I don’t. "Bob.” I try to keep my voice down, then I’m yelling. "Bob, I have to go to the can.”

    A mirror hangs over the sink in the bathroom. If the pattern holds, I’ll see Marla Singer at Above and Beyond, the parasitic brain dysfunction group. Marla will be there. Of course, Marla will be there, and what I’ll do is sit next to her. And after the introductions and the guided meditation, the seven doors of the palace, the white healing ball of light, after we open our chakras, when it comes time to hug, I’ll grab the little bitch.
    Her arms squeezed tight against her sides, and my lips pressed against her ear, I’ll say, Marla, you big fake, you get out.
    This is the one real thing in my life, and you’re wrecking it.
    You big tourist.
    The next time we meet, I’ll say, Marla, I can’t sleep with you here. I need this. Get out.

3
    YOU WAKE UP at Air Harbor International.
    Every takeoff and landing, when the plane banked too much to one side, I prayed for a crash. That moment cures my insomnia with narcolepsy when we might die helpless and packed human tobacco in the fuselage.
    This is how I met Tyler Durden.
    You wake up at O’Hare.
    You wake up at LaGuardia.
    You wake up at Logan.
    Tyler worked part-time as a movie projectionist. Because of his nature, Tyler could only work night jobs. If a projectionist called in sick, the union called Tyler.
    Some people are night people. Some people are day people. I could only work a day job.
    You wake up at Dulles.
    Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip. I prayed for wind shear effect. I prayed for pelicans sucked into the turbines and loose bolts and ice on the wings. On takeoff, as the plane pushed down the runway and the flaps tilted up, with our seats in their full upright position and our tray tables stowed and all personal carry-on baggage in the overhead compartment, as the end of the runway ran up to meet us with our smoking materials extinguished, I prayed for a crash.
    You wake up at Love Field.
    In a projection booth, Tyler did changeovers if the theater was old enough. With changeovers, you have two projectors in the booth, and one projector is running.
    I know this because Tyler knows this.
    The second projector is set up with the next reel of film. Most movies are six or seven small reels of film played in a certain order. Newer theaters, they splice all the reels together into one five-foot reel. This way, you don’t have to run two projectors and do changeovers, switch back and forth, reel one, switch, reel two on the other projector, switch, reel three on the first projector.
    Switch.
    You wake up at SeaTac.
    I study the people on the laminated airline seat card. A woman floats in the ocean, her brown hair spread out behind her, her seat cushion clutched to her chest. The eyes are wide open, but the woman doesn’t smile or frown. In another picture, people calm as Hindu cows reach up from their seats toward oxygen masks sprung out of the ceiling.
    This must be an emergency.
    Oh.
    We’ve lost cabin pressure.
    Oh.
    You wake up, and you’re at Willow Run.
    Old theater, new theater, to ship a movie to the next theater, Tyler has to break the movie back down to the original six or