Fight Club

beach. In the wet sand, he’d already planted a half circle of logs so they stood a few inches apart and as tall as his eyes. There were four logs, and when I woke up, I watched Tyler pull a fifth log up the beach. Tyler dug a hole under one end of the log, then lifted the other end until the log slid into the hole and stood there at a slight angle.
    You wake up at the beach.
    We were the only people on the beach.
    With a stick, Tyler drew a straight line in the sand several feet away. Tyler went back to straighten the log by stamping sand around its base.
    I was the only person watching this.
    Tyler called over, "Do you know what time it is?”
    I always wear a watch.
    "Do you know what time it is?”
    I asked, where?
    "Right here,” Tyler said. "Right now.”
    It was 4:06 P.M .
    After a while, Tyler sat cross-legged in the shadow of the standing logs. Tyler sat for a few minutes, got up and took a swim, pulled on a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and started to leave. I had to ask.
    I had to know what Tyler was doing while I was asleep.
    If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?
    I asked if Tyler was an artist.
    Tyler shrugged and showed me how the five standing logs were wider at the base. Tyler showed me the line he’d drawn in the sand, and how he’d use the line to gauge the shadow cast by each log.
    Sometimes, you wake up and have to ask where you are.
    What Tyler had created was the shadow of a giant hand. Only now the fingers were Nosferatu-long and the thumb was too short, but he said how at exactly four-thirty the hand was perfect. The giant shadow hand was perfect for one minute, and for one perfect minute Tyler had sat in the palm of a perfection he’d created himself.
    You wake up, and you’re nowhere.
    One minute was enough, Tyler said, a person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
    You wake up, and that’s enough.
    His name was Tyler Durden, and he was a movie projectionist with the union, and he was a banquet waiter at a hotel, downtown, and he gave me his phone number.
    And this is how we met.

4
    ALL THE USUAL brain parasites are here, tonight. Above and Beyond always gets a big turnout. This is Peter. This is Aldo. This is Marcy.
    Hi.
    The introductions, Everybody, this is Marla Singer, and this is her first time with us.
    Hi, Marla.
    At Above and Beyond, we start with the Catch-Up Rap. The group isn’t called Parasitic Brain Parasites. You’ll never hear anyone say "parasite.” Everybody is always getting better. Oh, this new medication. Everyone’s always just turned the corner. Still, everywhere, there’s the squint of a five-day headache. A woman wipes at involuntary tears. Everyone gets a name tag, and people you’ve met every Tuesday night for a year, they come at you, handshake hand ready and their eyes on your name tag.
    I don’t believe we’ve met.
    No one will ever say parasite. They’ll say, agent.
    They don’t say cure. They’ll say, treatment.
    In Catch-Up Rap, someone will say how the agent has spread into his spinal column and now all of a sudden he’ll have no control of his left hand. The agent, someone will say, has dried the lining of his brain so now the brain pulls away from the inside of his skull, causing seizures.
    The last time I was here, the woman named Chloe announced the only good news she had. Chloe pushed herself to her feet against the wooden arms of her chair and said she no longer had any fear of death.
    Tonight, after the introductions and Catch-Up Rap, a girl I don’t know, with a name tag that says Glenda, says she’s Chloe’s sister and that at two in the morning last Tuesday, Chloe finally died.
    Oh, this should be so sweet. For two years, Chloe’s been crying in my arms during hug time, and now she’s dead, dead in the ground, dead in an urn, mausoleum, columbarium. Oh, the proof that one day you’re thinking and hauling yourself around, and the next, you’re cold fertilizer, worm buffet. This is the amazing miracle of death, and it should be so sweet if it weren’t for, oh, that one.
    Marla.
    Oh, and Marla’s looking at me again, singled out among all the brain parasites.
    Liar.
    Faker.
    Marla’s the faker. You’re the faker. Everyone around when they wince or twitch and fall down barking and the crotch of their jeans turns dark blue, well, it’s all just a big