telephones full of axle grease or vanilla pudding.
And Tyler was never at home, but after a month a few of the space monkeys had Tyler’s kiss burned into the back of their hand. Then those space monkeys were gone, too, and new ones were on the front porch to replace them.
And every day, the teams of men came and went in different cars. You never saw the same car twice. One evening, I hear Marla on the front porch, telling a space monkey, “I’m here to see Tyler. Tyler Durden He lives here. I’m his friend.”
The space monkey says, “I’m sorry, but you’re too … “ and he pauses, “you’re too young to train here.”
Marla says, “Get screwed.”
“Besides,” the space monkey says, “you haven’t brought the required items: two black shirts, two pair of black pants …”
Marla screams, “Tyler!”
“One pair of heavy black shoes.”
“Tyler!”
“Two pair of black socks and two pair of plain underwear.”
“Tyler!”
And I hear the front door slam shut. Marla doesn’t wait the three days.
Most days, after work, I come home and make a peanut butter sandwich.
When I come home, one space monkey is reading to the assembled space monkeys who sit covering the whole first floor. “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile.”
The space monkey continues, “Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.”
The reader stops when I walk in to make my sandwich, and all the space monkeys sit silent as if I were alone. I say, don’t bother. I’ve already read it. I typed it.
Even my boss has probably read it.
We’re all just a big bunch of crap, I say. Go ahead. Play your little game. Don’t mind me.
The space monkeys wait in quiet while I make my sandwich and take another bottle of vodka and go up the stairs. Behind me I hear, “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”
I am Joe’s Broken Heart because Tyler’s dumped me. Because my father dumped me. Oh, I could go on and on.
Some nights, after work, I go to a different fight club in the basement of a bar or garage, and I ask if anybody’s seen Tyler Durden.
In every new fight club, someone I’ve never met is standing under the one light in the center of the darkness, surrounded by men, and reading Tyler’s words.
The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.
When the fights get started, I take the club leader aside and ask if he’s seen Tyler. I live with Tyler, I say, and he hasn’t been home for a while.
The guy’s eyes get big and he asks, do I really know Tyler Durden?
This happens in most of the new fight clubs. Yes, I say, I’m best buddies with Tyler. Then, everybody all of a sudden wants to shake my hand.
These new guys stare at the butthole in my cheek and the black skin on my face, yellow and green around the edges, and they call me sir. No, sir. Not hardly, sir. Nobody they know’s ever met Tyler Durden. Friends of friends met Tyler Durden, and they founded this chapter of fight club, sir.
Then they wink at me.
Nobody they know has ever seen Tyler Durden.
Sir.
Is it true, everybody asks. Is Tyler Durden building an army? That’s the word. Does Tyler Durden only sleep one hour a night? Rumor has it that Tyler’s on the road starting fight clubs all over the country. What’s next, everybody wants to know.
The meetings for Project Mayhem have moved to bigger basements because each committee — Arson, Assault, Mischief, and Misinformation — gets bigger as more guys graduate out of fight club. Each committee has a leader, and even the leaders don’t know where Tyler’s at. Tyler calls them every week on the phone.
Everybody on Project Mayhem wants to know what’s next.
Where are we going?
What is there to look forward to?
On Paper Street, Marla and I walk through the garden at night with our bare feet, every step brushing up the smell of sage and lemon verbena and rose geranium. Black shirts and black pants hunch around us with candles, lifting plant leaves to kill a snail or slug. Marla asks, what’s going on here?
Tufts of hair surface beside the dirt clods. Hair and shit. Bone meal and blood meal. The plants are growing faster than the space monkeys can cut them back.
Marla asks, “What are you going to do?”
What’s the word?
In the dirt is a shining spot of gold, and I kneel down to see. What’s going to happen next, I don’t know, I tell Marla.
It looks like we’ve both been dumped.
In the corner of my eye, the space monkeys pace around in black, each one hunched over his candle. The little spot of gold in the dirt is a molar with a gold filling. Next to it surface two more molars with silver amalgam fillings. It’s a jawbone.
I say, no, I can’t say what’s going to happen. And I push the one, two, three molars into the dirt and hair and shit and bone and blood where Marla won’t see.
Chapter 15
This Friday night, I fall asleep at my desk at work.
When I wake up with my face and my crossed arms on my desktop, the telephone is ringing, and everyone else is gone. A telephony was ringing in my dream, and it’s not clear if reality slipped into my dream or if my dream is slopping over into reality.
I answer the phone, Compliance and Liability. That’s my department. Compliance and Liability.
The sun is going down, and piled-up storm clouds the size of Wyoming and Japan are headed our way. It’s not like I have a window at work. All the outside walls are floor-to-ceiling glass. Everything where I work is floor- to-ceiling glass. Everything is vertical blinds. Everything is industrial low-pile gray carpet spotted with little tombstone monuments where the PCs plug into the network. Everything is a maze of cubicles boxed in with fences of upholstered plywood.
A vacuum cleaner hums somewhere.
My boss is gone on vacation. He sent me an E-mail and then disappeared. I’m to prepare for a formal review in two weeks. Reserve a conference room. Get all my ducks in a row. Update my resume. That sort of thing. They’re building a case against me.
I am Joe’s Complete Lack of Surprise.
I’ve been behaving miserably.
I pick up the phone, and it’s Tyler, and he says, “Go outside, there’s some guys waiting for you in the parking lot.”
I ask, who are they?
“They’re all waiting,” Tyler says.
I smell gasoline on my hands.
Tyler goes, “Hit the road. They have a car, outside. They have a Cadillac.”
