Fight Club

Marla how me met.
    "In that testicle cancer thing,” Marla says. "Then you saved my life.”
    I saved her life?
    "You saved my life.”
    Tyler saved her life.
    "You saved my life.”
    I stick my finger through the hole in my cheek and wiggle the finger around. This should be good for enough major league pain to wake me up.
    Marla says, "You saved my life. The Regent Hotel. I’d accidentally attempted suicide. Remember?”
    Oh.
    "That night,” Marla says, "I said I wanted to have your abortion.”
    We’ve just lost cabin pressure.
    I ask Marla what my name is.
    We’re all going to die.
    Marla says, "Tyler Durden. Your name is Tyler Butt-Wipe-for-Brains Durden. You live at 5123 NE Paper Street which is currently teeming with your little disciples shaving their heads and burning their skin off with lye.”
    I’ve got to get some sleep.
    "You’ve got to get your ass back here,” Marla yells over the phone, "before those little trolls make soap out of me.”
    I’ve got to find Tyler.
    The scar on her hand, I ask Marla, how did she get it?
    "You,” Marla says. "You kissed my hand.”
    I’ve got to find Tyler.
    I’ve got to get some sleep.
    I’ve got to sleep.
    I’ve got to go to sleep.
    I tell Marla goodnight, and Marla’s screaming is smaller, smaller, smaller, gone as I reach over and hang up the phone.

22
    ALL NIGHT LONG , your thoughts are on the air.
    Am I sleeping? Have I slept at all? This is the insomnia.
    Try to relax a little more with every breath out, but your heart’s still racing and your thoughts tornado in your head.
    Nothing works. Not guided meditation.
    You’re in Ireland.
    Not counting sheep.
    You count up the days, hours, minutes since you can remember falling asleep. Your doctor laughed. Nobody ever died from lack of sleep. The old bruised fruit way your face looks, you’d think you were dead.
    After three o’clock in the morning in a motel bed in Seattle, it’s too late for you to find a cancer support group. Too late to find some little blue Amytal Sodium capsules or lipstick-red Seconals, the whole Valley of the Dolls playset. After three in the morning, you can’t get into a fight club.
    You’ve got to find Tyler.
    You’ve got to get some sleep.
    Then you’re awake, and Tyler’s standing in the dark next to the bed.
    You wake up.
    The moment you were falling asleep, Tyler was standing there saying, "Wake up. Wake up, we solved the problem with the police here in Seattle. Wake up.”
    The police commissioner wanted a crackdown on what he called gang-type activity and after-hours boxing clubs.
    "But not to worry,” Tyler says. "Mister police commissioner shouldn’t be a problem,” Tyler says. "We have him by the balls, now.”
    I ask if Tyler’s been following me.
    "Funny,” Tyler says, "I wanted to ask you the same thing. You talked about me to other people, you little shit. You broke your promise.”
    Tyler was wondering when I’d figure him out.
    "Every time you fall asleep,” Tyler says, "I run off and do something wild, something crazy, something completely out of my mind.”
    Tyler kneels down next to the bed and whispers, "Last Thursday, you fell asleep, and I took a plane to Seattle for a little fight club look-see. To check the turn-away numbers, that sort of thing. Look for new talent. We have Project Mayhem in Seattle, too.”
    Tyler’s fingertip traces the swelling along my eyebrows. "We have Project Mayhem in Los Angeles and Detroit, a big Project Mayhem going on in Washington, D.C., in New York. We have Project Mayhem in Chicago like you would not believe.”
    Tyler says, "I can’t believe you broke your promise. The first rule is you don’t talk about fight club.”
    He was in Seattle last week when a bartender in a neck brace told him that the police were going to crack down on fight clubs. The police commissioner himself wanted it special.
    "What it is,” Tyler says, "is we have police who come to fight at fight club and really like it. We have newspaper reporters and law clerks and lawyers, and we know everything before it’s going to happen.”
    We were going to be shut down.
    "At least in Seattle,” Tyler says.
    I ask what did Tyler do about it.
    "What did we do about it,” Tyler says.
    We called an Assault Committee meeting.
    "There isn’t a me and a you, anymore,” Tyler says, and he pinches the end of my nose. "I think you’ve figured that out.”
    We both use the same body, but at different times.
    "We called a special homework