Picture this happening in a hundred cities, in a half-dozen languages.

The rules end, and I'm still standing in the center of the light.

"Registered fight number one, take the floor," yells the voice out of the darkness. "Clear the center of the club."

I don't move.

"Clear the center of the club!"

I don't move.

The one light reflects out of the darkness in one hundred pairs of eyes, all of them focused on me, waiting. I try to see each man the way Tyler would see him. Choose the best fighters for training in Project Mayhem. Which ones would Tyler invite to work at the Paper Street Soap Company?

"Clear the center of the club!" This is established fight club procedure. After three requests from the chapter leader, I will be ejected from the club.

But I'm Tyler Durden. I invented fight club. Fight club is mine. I wrote those rules. None of you would be here if it wasn't for me. And I say it stops here!

"Prepare to evict the member in three, two, one."

The circle of men collapses in on top of me, and two hundred hands clamp around every inch of my arms and legs and I'm lifted spread-eagle toward the light.

Prepare to evacuate soul in five, in four, three, two, one.

And I'm pa.s.sed overhead, hand to hand, crowd surfing toward the door. I'm floating. I'm flying.

I'm yelling, fight club is mine. Project Mayhem was my idea. You can't throw me out. I'm in control here. Go home.

The voice of the chapter leader yells, "Registered fight number one, please take the center of the floor. Now!"

I'm not leaving. I'm not giving up. I can beat this. I'm in control here.

"Evict fight club member, now!"

Evacuate soul, now.

And I fly slowly out the door and into the night with the stars overhead and the cold air, and I settle to the parking lot concrete. All the hands retreat, and a door shuts behind me, and a bolt snaps it locked. In a hundred cities, fight club goes on without me.

25.

FOR YEARS NOW, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do. I'm with Marla in room 8G at the Regent Hotel. With all the old people and junkies shut up in their little rooms, here, somehow, my pacing desperation seems sort of normal and expected. I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do. I'm with Marla in room 8G at the Regent Hotel. With all the old people and junkies shut up in their little rooms, here, somehow, my pacing desperation seems sort of normal and expected.

"Here," Marla says while she's sitting cross-legged on her bed and punching a half-dozen wake-up pills out of their plastic blister card. "I used to date a guy who had terrible nightmares. He hated to sleep, too."

What happened to the guy she was dating?

"Oh, he died. Heart attack. Overdose. Way too many amphetamines," Marla says. "He was only nineteen."

Thanks for sharing.

When we walked into the hotel, the guy at the lobby desk had half his hair torn out at the roots. His scalp raw and scabbed, he saluted me. The seniors watching television in the lobby all turned to see who I was when the guy at the desk called me sir.

"Good evening, sir."

Right now, I can imagine him calling some Project Mayhem headquarters and reporting my whereabouts. They'll have a wall map of the city and trace my movements with little pushpins. I feel tagged like a migrating goose on Wild Kingdom. Wild Kingdom.

They're all spying on me, keeping tabs.

"You can take all six of these and not get sick to your stomach," Marla says, "but you have to take them by putting them up your b.u.t.t."

Oh, this is pleasant.

Marla says, "I'm not making this up. We can get something stronger, later. Some real drugs like cross tops or black beauties or alligators."

I'm not putting these pills up my a.s.s.

"Then only take two."

Where are we going to go?

"Bowling. It's open all night, and they won't let you sleep there."

Everywhere we go, I say, guys on the street think I'm Tyler Durden.

"Is that why the bus driver let us ride for free?"

Yeah. And that's why the two guys on the bus gave us their seats.

"So what's your point?"

I don't think it's enough to just hide out. We have to do something to get rid of Tyler.

"I dated a guy once who liked to wear my clothes," Marla says. "You know, dresses. Hats with veils. We could dress you up and sneak you around."

I'm not cross-dressing, and I'm not putting pills up my a.s.s.

"It gets worse," Marla says. "I dated a guy, once, who wanted me to fake a lesbian scene with his blow-up doll."

I could imagine myself becoming one of Marla's stories.

I dated a guy once who was a split personality.

"I dated this other guy who used one of those p.e.n.i.s enlargement systems."

I ask what time is it?

"Four A.M."

In another three hours, I have to be at work.

"Take your pills," Marla says. "You being Tyler Durden and all, they'll probably let us bowl for free. Hey, before we get rid of Tyler, can we go shopping? We could get a nice car. Some clothes. Some CDs. There is an upside to all this free stuff."

Marla.

"Okay, forget it."

26.

THAT OLD SAYING, about how you always kill the thing you love, well, it works both ways. about how you always kill the thing you love, well, it works both ways.

And it does work both ways.

This morning I went to work and there were police barricades between the building and the parking lot with the police at the front doors, taking statements from the people I work with. Everybody milling around.

I didn't even get off the bus.

I am Joe's Cold Sweat.

From the bus, I can see the floor-to-ceiling windows on the third floor of my office building are blown out, and inside a fireman in a dirty yellow slicker is whacking at a burnt panel in the suspended ceiling. A smoldering desk inches out the broken window, pushed by two firemen, then the desk tilts and slides and falls the quick three stories to the sidewalk and lands with more of a feeling than a sound.

Breaks open and it's still smoking.

I am the Pit of Joe's Stomach.

It's my desk.

I know my boss is dead.

The three ways to make napalm. I knew Tyler was going to kill my boss. The second I smelled gasoline on my hands, when I said I wanted out of my job, I was giving him permission. Be my guest.

Kill my boss.

Oh, Tyler.

I know a computer blew up.

I know this because Tyler knows this.

I don't want to know this, but you use a jeweler's drill to drill a hole through the top of a computer monitor. All the s.p.a.ce monkeys know this. I typed up Tyler's notes. This is a new version of the lightbulb bomb, where you drill a hole in a lightbulb and fill the bulb with gasoline. Plug the hole with wax or silicone, then screw the bulb into a socket and let someone walk into the room and throw the switch.

A computer tube can hold a lot more gasoline than a lightbulb.

A cathode ray tube, CRT, you either remove the plastic housing around the tube, this is easy enough, or you work through the vent panels in the top of the housing.

First you have to unplug the monitor from the power source and from the computer.

This would also work with a television.

Just understand, if there's a spark, even static electricity from the carpet, you're dead. Screaming, burned-alive dead.

A cathode ray tube can hold 300 volts of pa.s.sive electrical storage, so use a hefty screwdriver across the main power supply capacitor, first. If you're dead at this point, you didn't use an insulated screwdriver.

There's a vacuum inside the cathode ray tube so the moment you drill through, the tube will suck air, sort of inhale a little whistle of it.

Ream the little hole with a larger bit, then a larger bit, until you can put the tip of a funnel into the hole. Then, fill the tube with your choice of explosive. Homemade napalm is good. Gasoline or gasoline mixed with frozen orange juice concentrate or cat litter.

A sort of fun explosive is pota.s.sium permanganate mixed with powdered sugar. The idea is to mix one ingredient that will burn very fast with a second ingredient that will supply enough oxygen for that burning. This burns so fast, it's an explosion.

Barium peroxide and zinc dust.

Ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminum.

The nouvelle cuisine of anarchy.

Barium nitrate in a sauce of sulfur and garnished with charcoal. That's your basic gunpowder.

Bon appet.i.t.

Pack the computer monitor full of this, and when someone turns on the power, this is five or six pounds of gunpowder exploding in their face.

The problem is, I sort of liked my boss.

If you're male, and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for G.o.d. And sometimes you find your father in your career.

Except Tyler didn't like my boss.

The police would be looking for me. I was the last person out of the building last Friday night. I woke up at my desk with my breath condensed on the desktop and Tyler on the telephone, telling me, "Go outside. We have a car."

We have a Cadillac.

The gasoline was still on my hands.

The fight club mechanic asked, what will you wish you'd done before you died?