Fight Club

I’m wondering how clean this gun is.
    Three minutes.
    Then somebody yells.
    "Wait,” and it’s Marla coming toward us across the roof.
    Marla’s coming toward me, just me because Tyler’s gone. Poof. Tyler’s my hallucination, not hers. Fast as a magic trick, Tyler’s disappeared. And now I’m just one man holding a gun in my mouth.
    "We followed you,” Marla yells. "All the people from the support group. You don’t have to do this. Put the gun down.”
    Behind Marla, all the bowel cancers, the brain parasites, the melanoma people, the tuberculosis people are walking, limping, wheel-chairing toward me.
    They’re saying, "Wait.”
    Their voices come to me on the cold wind, saying, "Stop.”
    And, "We can help you.”
    "Let us help you.”
    Across the sky comes the whop, whop, whop of police helicopters.
    I yell, go. Get out of here. This building is going to explode.
    Marla yells, "We know.”
    This is like a total epiphany moment for me.
    I’m not killing myself, I yell. I’m killing Tyler.
    I am Joe’s Hard Drive.
    I remember everything.
    "It’s not love or anything,” Marla shouts, "but I think I like you, too.”
    One minute.
    Marla likes Tyler.
    "No, I like you,” Marla shouts. "I know the difference.”
    And nothing.
    Nothing explodes.
    The barrel of the gun tucked in my surviving cheek, I say, Tyler, you mixed the nitro with paraffin, didn’t you.
    Paraffin never works.
    I have to do this.
    The police helicopters.
    And I pull the trigger.

30
    IN MY FATHER’S house are many mansions.
    Of course, when I pulled the trigger, I died.
    Liar.
    And Tyler died.
    With the police helicopters thundering toward us, and Marla and all the support group people who couldn’t save themselves, with all of them trying to save me, I had to pull the trigger.
    This was better than real life.
    And your one perfect moment won’t last forever.
    Everything in heaven is white on white.
    Faker.
    Everything in heaven is quiet, rubber-soled shoes.
    I can sleep in heaven.
    People write to me in heaven and tell me I’m remembered. That I’m their hero. I’ll get better.
    The angels here are the Old Testament kind, legions and lieutenants, a heavenly host who works in shifts, days, swing. Graveyard. They bring you your meals on a tray with a paper cup of meds. The Valley of the Dolls playset.
    I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?”
    Why did I cause so much pain?
    Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
    Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love?
    I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong.
    We are not special.
    We are not crap or trash, either.
    We just are.
    We just are, and what happens just happens.
    And God says, "No, that’s not right.”
    Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything.
    God asks me what I remember.
    I remember everything.
    The bullet out of Tyler’s gun, it tore out my other cheek to give me a jagged smile from ear to ear. Yeah, just like an angry Halloween pumpkin. Japanese demon. Dragon of Avarice.
    Marla’s still on Earth, and she writes to me. Someday, she says, they’ll bring me back.
    And if there were a telephone in Heaven, I would call Marla from Heaven and the moment she says, "Hello,” I wouldn’t hang up. I’d say, "Hi. What’s happening? Tell me every little thing.”
    But I don’t want to go back. Not yet.
    Just because.
    Because every once in a while, somebody brings me my lunch tray and my meds and he has a black eye or his forehead is swollen with stitches, and he says:
    "We miss you Mr. Durden.”
    Or somebody with a broken nose pushes a mop past me and whispers:
    "Everything’s going according to the plan.”
    Whispers:
    "We’re going to break up civilization so we can make something better out of the world.”
    Whispers:
    "We look forward to getting you back.”

Afterword
    HE LEANED FORWARD , his breath the smell of whiskey drunk straight from the bottle. His mouth never all the way closed. His blue eyes never more than half open. His one hand held a coiled loop of rope, the old hemp kind, blond as his hair. Yellow as his cowboy hat. The cowboy kind of rope, and he shook the rope in my face as he talked. Behind him, an open door showed a flight of stairs that went down into the dark.
    He was young with a flat stomach, wearing a white T-shirt and brown cowboy boots with thick