Fight Club

I’m Tyler Durden, and I dictate the rules, and I say, put the knife down.
    The mechanic calls back over his shoulder, "What’s our best time to date for a cut-and-run?”
    Somebody yells, "Four minutes.”
    The mechanic yells, "Is somebody timing this?”
    Both cops have climbed up into the front of the bus now, and one looks at his watch and says, "Just a sec. Wait for the second hand to get up to the twelve.”
    The cop says, "Nine.”
    "Eight.”
    "Seven.”
    I dive for the open window.
    My stomach hits the thin metal windowsill, and behind me, the fight club mechanic yells, "Mr. Durden! You’re going to fuck up the time.”
    Hanging half out the window, I claw at the black rubber sidewall of the rear tire. I grab the wheelwell trim and pull. Someone grabs my feet and pulls. I’m yelling at the little tractor in the distance, "Hey.” And "Hey.” My face swelling hot and full of blood, I’m hanging upside down. I pull myself out a little. Hands around my ankles pull me back in. My tie flops in my face. My belt buckle catches on the windowsill. The bees and the flies and weeds are inches from in front of my face, and I’m yelling, "Hey!”
    Hands are hooked in the back of my pants, tugging me in, hugging my pants and belt down over my ass.
    Somebody inside the bus yells, "One minute!”
    My shoes slip off my feet.
    My belt buckle slips inside the windowsill.
    The hands bring my legs together. The windowsill cuts hot from the sun into my stomach. My white shirt billows and drops down around my head and shoulders, my hands still gripping the wheelwell trim, me still yelling, "Hey!”
    My legs are stretched out straight and together behind me. My pants slip down my legs and are gone. The sun shines warm on my ass.
    Blood pounding in my head, my eyes bugging from the pressure, all I can see is the white shirt hanging around my face. The tractor rattles somewhere. The bees buzz. Somewhere. Everything is a million miles away. Somewhere a million miles behind me someone is yelling, "Two minutes!”
    And a hand slips between my legs and gropes for me.
    "Don’t hurt him,” someone says.
    The hands around my ankles are a million miles away. Picture them at the end of a long, long road. Guided meditation.
    Don’t picture the windowsill as a dull hot knife slitting open your belly.
    Don’t picture a team of men tug-of-warring your legs apart.
    A million miles away, a bah-zillion miles away, a rough warm hand wraps around the base of you and pulls you back, and something is holding you tight, tighter, tighter.
    A rubber band.
    You’re in Ireland.
    You’re in fight club.
    You’re at work.
    You’re anywhere but here.
    "Three minutes!”
    Somebody far far away yells, "You know the speech Mr. Durden. Don’t fuck with fight club.”
    The warm hand is cupped under you. The cold tip of the knife.
    An arm wraps around your chest.
    Therapeutic physical contact.
    Hug time.
    And the ether presses your nose and mouth, hard.
    Then nothing, less than nothing. Oblivion.

27
    THE EXPLODED SHELL of my burned-out condo is outer space black and devastated in the night above the little lights of the city. With the windows gone, a yellow ribbon of police crime scene tape twists and swings at the edge of the fifteen-story drop.
    I wake up on the concrete subfloor. There was maple flooring once. There was art on the walls before the explosion. There was Swedish furniture. Before Tyler.
    I’m dressed. I put my hand in my pocket and feel.
    I’m whole.
    Scared but intact.
    Go to the edge of the floor, fifteen stories above the parking lot, and look at the city lights and the stars, and you’re gone.
    It’s all so beyond us.
    Up here, in the miles of night between the stars and the Earth, I feel just like one of those space animals.
    Dogs.
    Monkeys.
    Men.
    You just do your little job. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don’t really understand any of it.
    The world is going crazy. My boss is dead. My home is gone. My job is gone. And I’m responsible for it all.
    There’s nothing left.
    I’m overdrawn at the bank.
    Step over the edge.
    The police tape flutters between me and oblivion.
    Step over the edge.
    What else is there?
    Step over the edge.
    There’s Marla.
    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