Fight Club Part 23

Jump over the edge.

There's Marla, and she's in the middle of everything and doesn't know it.

And she loves you.

She loves Tyler.

She doesn't know the difference.

Somebody has to tell her. Get out. Get out. Get out.

Save yourself.

You ride the elevator down to the lobby, and the doorman who never liked you, now he smiles at you with three teeth knocked out of his mouth and says, "Good evening, Mr. Durden. Can I get you a cab? Are you feeling alright? Do you want to use the phone?"

You call Marla at the Regent Hotel.

The clerk at the Regent says, "Right away, Mr. Durden."

Then Marla comes on the line.

The doorman is listening over your shoulder. The clerk at the Regent is probably listening. You say, Marla, we have to talk.

Marla says, "You can suck s.h.i.t."

She might be in danger, you say. She deserves to know what's going on. She has to meet you. You have to talk.

"Where?"

She should go to the first place we ever met. Remember. Think back.

The white healing ball of light. The palace of seven doors.

"Got it," she says. "I can be there in twenty minutes."

Be there.

You hang up, and the doorman says, "I can get you a cab, Mr. Durden. Free of charge to anywhere you want."

The fight club boys are tracking you. No, you say, it's such a nice night, I think I'll walk.

It's Sat.u.r.day night, bowel cancer night in the bas.e.m.e.nt of First Methodist, and Marla is there when you arrive.

Marla Singer smoking her cigarette. Marla Singer rolling her eyes. Marla Singer with a black eye.

You sit on the s.h.a.g carpet at opposite sides of the meditation circle and try to summon up your power animal while Marla glares at you with her black eye. You close your eyes and meditate to the palace of the seven doors, and you can still feel Marla's glare. You cradle your inner child.

Marla glares.

Then it's time to hug.

Open your eyes.

We should all choose a partner.

Marla crosses the room in three quick steps and slaps me hard across the face.

Share yourself completely.

"You f.u.c.king suck-a.s.s piece of s.h.i.t," Marla says.

Around us, everyone stands staring.

Then both of Marla's fists are beating me from every direction. "You killed someone," she's screaming. "I called the police and they should be here any minute."

I grab her wrists and say, maybe the police will come, but probably they won't.

Marla twists and says the police are speeding over here to hook me up to the electric chair and bake my eyes out or at least give me a lethal injection.

This will feel just like a bee sting.

An overdose shot of sodium phen.o.barbital, and then the big sleep. Valley of the Dogs style.

Marla says she saw me kill somebody today.

If she means my boss, I say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, the police know, everyone's looking for me to lethally inject me, already, but it was Tyler who killed my boss.

Tyler and I just happen to have the same fingerprints, but no one understands.

"You can suck s.h.i.t," Marla says and pushes her punched-out black eye at me. "Just because you and your little disciples like getting beat up, you touch me ever again, and you're dead."

"I saw you shoot a man tonight," Marla says.

No, it was a bomb, I say, and it happened this morning. Tyler drilled a computer monitor and filled it with gasoline or black powder.

All the people with real bowel cancers are standing around watching this.

"No," Marla says. "I followed you to the Pressman Hotel, and you were a waiter at one of those murder mystery parties."

The murder mystery parties, rich people would come to the hotel for a big dinner party, and act out a sort of Agatha Christie story. Sometime between the Boudin of Gravlax and the Saddle of Venison, the lights would go out for a minute and someone would fake getting killed. It's supposed to be a fun let's-pretend sort of death.

The rest of the meal, the guests would get drunk and eat their Madeira Consomme and try to find clues to who among them was a psychotic killer.

Marla yells, "You shot the mayor's special envoy on recycling!"

Tyler shot the mayor's special envoy on whatever.

Marla says, "And you don't even have cancer!"

It happens that fast.

Snap your fingers.

Everyone's looking.

I yell, you don't have cancer either!

"He's been coming here for two years," Marla shouts, "and he doesn't have anything!"

I'm trying to save your life!

"What? Why does my life need saving?"

Because you've been following me. Because you followed me tonight, because you saw Tyler Durden kill someone, and Tyler will kill anybody who threatens Project Mayhem.

Everybody in the room looks snapped out of their little tragedies. Their little cancer thing. Even the people on pain meds look wide-eyed and alert.

I say to the crowd, I'm sorry. I never meant any harm. We should go. We should talk about this outside.

Everybody goes, "No! Stay! What else?"

I didn't kill anybody, I say. I'm not Tyler Durden. He's the other side of my split personality. I say, has anybody here seen the movie Sybil? Sybil?

Marla says, "So who's going to kill me?"

Tyler.

"You?"

Tyler, I say, but I can take care of Tyler. You just have to watch out for the members of Project Mayhem. Tyler might've given them orders to follow you or kidnap you or something.

"Why should I believe any of this?"

It happens that fast.

I say, because I think I like you.

Marla says, "Not love?"

This is a cheesy enough moment, I say. Don't push it.

Everybody watching smiles.

I have to go. I have to get out of here. I say, watch out for guys with shaved heads or guys who look beat up. Black eyes. Missing teeth. That sort of thing.

And Marla says, "So where are you going?"

I have to take care of Tyler Durden.

28.

HIS NAME WAS Patrick Madden, and he was the mayor's special envoy on recycling. His name was Patrick Madden, and he was an enemy of Project Mayhem. Patrick Madden, and he was the mayor's special envoy on recycling. His name was Patrick Madden, and he was an enemy of Project Mayhem.

I walk out into the night around First Methodist, and it's all coming back to me.

All the things that Tyler knows are all coming back to me.

Patrick Madden was compiling a list of bars where fight clubs met.

All of the sudden, I know how to run a movie projector. I know how to break locks and how Tyler had rented the house on Paper Street just before he revealed himself to me at the beach.

I know why Tyler had occurred. Tyler loved Marla. From the first night I met her, Tyler or some part of me had needed a way to be with Marla.

Not that any of this matters. Not now. But all the details are coming back to me as I walk through the night to the closest fight club.

There's a fight club in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Armory Bar on Sat.u.r.day nights. You can probably find it on the list Patrick Madden was compiling, poor dead Patrick Madden.

Tonight, I go to the Armory Bar and the crowds part zipper style when I walk in. To everybody there, I am Tyler Durden the Great and Powerful. G.o.d and father.

All around me I hear, "Good evening, sir."

"Welcome to fight club, sir."

"Thank you for joining us, sir."

Me, my monster face just starting to heal. The hole in my face smiling through my cheek. A frown on my real mouth.

Because I'm Tyler Durden, and you can kiss my a.s.s, I register to fight every guy in the club that night. Fifty fights. One fight at a time. No shoes. No shirts.

The fights go on as long as they have to.

And if Tyler loves Marla.

I love Marla.

And what happens doesn't happen in words. I want to smother all the French beaches I'll never see. Imagine stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around Rockefeller Center.

The first fight I get, the guy gets me in a full nelson and rams my face, rams my cheek, rams the hole in my cheek into the concrete floor until my teeth inside snap off and plant their jagged roots into my tongue.

Now I can remember Patrick Madden, dead on the floor, his little figurine of a wife, just a little girl with a chignon. His wife giggled and tried to pour champagne between her dead husband's lips.