Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk
I called Marla at the Regent Hotel to see if she was going to Melanoma.
Marla answered in slow motion. This wasn’t a for-real suicide, Marla said, this was probably just one of those cry-for-help things, but she had taken too many Xanax.
Picture going over to the Regent Hotel to watch Marla throw herself around her crummy room saying: I’m dying. Dying. I’m dying. Dying. Die-ing. Dying.
This would go on for hours.
So she was staying home tonight, right?
She was doing the big death thing, Marla told me. I should get a move on if I wanted to watch.
Thanks anyway, I said, but I had other plans.
That’s okay, Marla said, she could die just as well watching television. Marla just hoped there was something worth watching.
And I ran off to Melanoma. I came home early. I slept.
And now, at breakfast the next morning, Tyler’s sitting here covered in hickies and says Marla is some twisted bitch, but he likes that a lot.
After Melanoma last night, I came home and went to bed and slept. And dreamed I was humping, humping, humping Marla Singer.
And this morning, listening to Tyler, I pretend to read the Reader’s Digest. A twisted bitch, I could’ve told you that. Reader’s Digest. Humor in Uniform.
I am Joe’s Raging Bile Duct.
The things Marla said to him last night, Tyler sayd. No girl’s ever talked to him that way.
I am Joe’s Grinding Teeth.
I am Joe’s Inflamed Flaring Nostrils.
After Tyler and Marla had sex about ten times, Tyler says, Marla said she wanted to get pregnant. Marla said she wanted to have Tyler’s abortion.
I am Joe’s White Knuckles.
How could Tyler not fall for that. The night before last, Tyler sat up alone, splicing sex organs into Snow White.
How could I compete for Tyler’s attention.
I am Joe’s Enrages, Inflames Sense of Rejection.
What’s worse is this is all my fault. After I went to sleep last night, Tyler tells me he came home from his shift as a banquet waiter, and Marla called again from the Regent Hotel. This was it, Marla said. The tunnel, the light leading her down the tunnel. The death experience was so cool, Marla wanted me to hear her describe it as she lifted out of her body and floated up.
Marla didn’t know if her spirit could use the telephone, but she wanted someone to at least hear her last breath.
No, but no, Tyler answers the phone and misunderstands the whole situation.
They’ve never met so Tyler thinks it’s a bad thing that Marla is about to die.
It’s nothing of the kind.
This is none of Tyler’s business, but Tyler calls the police and Tyler races over to the Regent Hotel.
Now, according to the ancient Chinese custom we all learned from television, Tyler is responsible for Marla, forever, because Tyler saved Marla’s life.
If I had only wasted a couple of minutes and gone over to watch Marla die, then none of this would have happened.
Tyler tells me how Marla lives in room 8G, on the top floor of the Regent Hotel, up eight flights of stairs and down a noisy hallway with canned television laughter coming through the doors. Every couple seconds an actress screams or actors die screaming in a rattle of bullets. Tyler gets to the end of the hallway and even before he knocks a thin, thin, buttermilk sallow arm slingshots out the door of room 8G, grabs his wrist, and yanks Tyler inside.
I bury myself in a Reader’s Digest.
Even as Marla yanks Tyler into her room, Tyler can hear brake squeals and sirens collecting out in front of the Regent Hotel. On the dresser, there’s a dildo made of the same soft pink plastic as a million Barbie dolls, and for a moment, Tyler can picture millions of baby dolls and Barbie dolls and dildos injection-molded and coming off the same assembly line in Taiwan.
Marla looks at Tyler looking at her dildo, and she rolls her eyes and says, “Don’t be afraid. It’s not a threat to you.”
Marla shoves Tyler back out into the hallway, and she says she’s sorry, but he shouldn’t have called the police and that’s probably the police downstairds right now.
In the hallway, Marla locks the door to 8G and shoves Tyler toward the stairs. On the staird, Tyler and Marla flatten against the wall as police and paramedics charge by with oxygen, asking which door will be 8G.
Marla tells them the door at the end of the hall.
Marla shouts to the police that the girl who lives in 8G used to be a lovely charming girl, but the girl is a monster bitch monster. The girl is infectuous human waste, and she’s confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won’t commit to anything.
"The girl in 8G has no faith in herself," Marla shouts, "and she’s worried that as she grows older, she’ll have fewer and fewer options."
Marla shouts, “Good luck.”
The police pile up at the locked door to 8G, and Marla and Tyler hurry down to the lobby. Behind them, a policeman is yelling at the door:
"Let us help you! Miss Singer, you have every reason to live! Just let us in, Marla, and we can help you with your problems!"
Marla and Tyler rushed out into the street. Tyler got Marla into a cab, and high up on the eighth floor of the hotel, Tyler could see shadows moving back and forth across the windows of Marla’s room.
Out on the freeway with all the lights and the other cars, six lanes of traffic racing toward the vanishing point, Marla tells Tyler he has to keep her up all night. If Marla ever falls asleep, she’ll die.
A lot of people wanted Marla dead, she told Tyler. These people were already dead and on the other side, and at night they called on the telephone. Marla would go to bars and hear the bartender calling her name, and when she took the call, the line was dead.
Tyler and Marla, they were up almost all night in the room next to mine. When Tyler woke up, Marla had disappeared back to the Regent Hotel.
I tell Tyler, Marla Singer doesn’t need a lover, she needs a case worker.
Tyler says, “Don’t call this love.”
Long story short, now Marla’s out to ruin another part of my life. Ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.
Tyler asks, is this a problem for me?
I am Joe’s Clenching Bowels.
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.
Just great, I say. Really.
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