You used to study something.

You'd worked up a pretty intense cry at this point so I pressed the gun a little harder against your cheek, and you started to step back until I said, don't move or you're dead right here. Now, what did you study?

Where?

In college, I said. You have a student card.

Oh, you didn't know, sob, swallow, sniff, stuff, biology.

Listen, now, you're going to die, Ray-mond K. K. K. Hessel, tonight. You might die in one second or in one hour, you decide. So lie to me. Tell me the first thing off the top of your head. Make something up. I don't give a s.h.i.t. I have the gun.

Finally, you were listening and coming out of the little tragedy in your head.

Fill in the blank. What does Raymond Hessel want to be when he grows up?

Go home, you said you just wanted to go home, please.

No s.h.i.t, I said. But after that, how did you want to spend your life? If you could do anything in the world.

Make something up.

You didn't know.

Then you're dead right now, I said. I said, now turn your head.

Death to commence in ten, in nine, in eight.

A vet, you said. You want to be a vet, a veterinarian.

That means animals. You have to go to school for that.

It means too much school, you said.

You could be in school working your a.s.s off, Raymond Hessel, or you could be dead. You choose. I stuffed your wallet into the back pocket of your jeans. So you really wanted to be an animal doctor. I took the salt.w.a.ter muzzle of the gun off one cheek and pressed it against the other. Is that what you've always wanted to be, Dr. Raymond K. K. K. K. Hessel, a veterinarian?

Yeah.

No s.h.i.t?

No. No, you meant, yeah, no s.h.i.t. Yeah.

Okay, I said, and I pressed the wet end of the muzzle to the tip of your chin, and then the tip of your nose, and everywhere I pressed the muzzle, it left a shining wet ring of your tears.

So, I said, go back to school. If you wake up tomorrow morning, you find a way to get back into school.

I pressed the wet end of the gun on each cheek, and then on your chin, and then against your forehead and left the muzzle pressed there. You might as well be dead right now, I said.

I have your license.

I know who you are. I know where you live. I'm keeping your license, and I'm going to check on you, mister Raymond K. Hessel. In three months, and then in six months, and then in a year, and if you aren't back in school on your way to being a veterinarian, you will be dead.

You didn't say anything.

Get out of here, and do your little life, but remember I'm watching you, Raymond Hessel, and I'd rather kill you than see you working a s.h.i.t job for just enough money to buy cheese and watch television.

Now, I'm going to walk away so don't turn around.

This is what Tyler wants me to do.

These are Tyler's words coming out of my mouth.

I am Tyler's mouth.

I am Tyler's hands.

Everybody in Project Mayhem is part of Tyler Durden, and vice versa.

Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you've ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your entire life.

21.

YOU WAKE UP at Sky Harbor International. at Sky Harbor International.

Set your watch back two hours.

The shuttle takes me to downtown Phoenix and every bar I go into there are guys with st.i.tches around the rim of an eye socket where a good slam packed their face meat against its sharp edge. There are guys with sideways noses, and these guys at the bar see me with the puckered hole in my cheek and we're an instant family.

Tyler hasn't been home for a while. I do my little job. I go airport to airport to look at the cars that people died in. The magic of travel. Tiny life. Tiny soaps. The tiny airline seats.

Everywhere I travel, I ask about Tyler.

In case I find him, the driver's licenses of my twelve human sacrifices are in my pocket.

Every bar I walk into, every f.u.c.king bar, I see beat-up guys. Every bar, they throw an arm around me and want to buy me a beer. It's like I already know which bars are the fight club bars.

I ask, have they seen a guy named Tyler Durden.

It's stupid to ask if they know about fight club.

The first rule is you don't talk about fight club.

But have they seen Tyler Durden?

They say, never heard of him, sir.

But you might find him in Chicago, sir.

It must be the hole in my cheek, everyone calls me sir.

And they wink.

You wake up at O'Hare and take the shuttle into Chicago.

Set your watch ahead an hour.

If you can wake up in a different place.

If you can wake up in a different time.

Why can't you wake up as a different person?

Every bar you go into, punched-out guys want to buy you a beer.

And no, sir, they've never met this Tyler Durden.

And they wink.

They've never heard the name before. Sir.

I ask about fight club. Is there a fight club around here, tonight?

No, sir.

The second rule of fight club is you don't talk about fight club.

The punched-out guys at the bar shake their heads.

Never heard of it. Sir. But you might find this fight club of yours in Seattle, sir.

You wake up at Meigs Field and call Marla to see what's happening on Paper Street. Marla says now all the s.p.a.ce monkeys are shaving their heads. Their electric razor gets hot and now the whole house smells like singed hair. The s.p.a.ce monkeys are using lye to burn off their fingerprints.

You wake up at SeaTac.

Set your watch back two hours.

The shuttle takes you to downtown Seattle, and the first bar you go into, the bartender is wearing a neck brace that tilts his head back so far he has to look down his purple smashed eggplant of a nose to grin at you.

The bar is empty, and the bartender says, "Welcome back, sir."

I've never been to this bar, ever, ever before.

I ask if he knows the name Tyler Durden.

The bartender grins with his chin stuck out above the top of the white neck brace and asks, "Is this a test?"

Yeah, I say, it's a test. Has he ever met Tyler Durden?

"You stopped in last week, Mr. Durden," he says. "Don't you remember?"

Tyler was here.

"You were here, sir."

I've never been in here before tonight.

"If you say so, sir," the bartender says, "but Thursday night, you came in to ask how soon the police were planning to shut us down."

Last Thursday night, I was awake all night with the insomnia, wondering was I awake, was I sleeping. I woke up late Friday morning, bone tired and feeling I hadn't ever had my eyes closed.

"Yes, sir," the bartender says, "Thursday night, you were standing right where you are now and you were asking me about the police crackdown, and you were asking me how many guys we had to turn away from the Wednesday night fight club."

The bartender twists his shoulders and braced neck to look around the empty bar and says, "There's n.o.body that's going to hear, Mr. Durden, sir. We had a twenty-seven-count turn-away, last night. The place is always empty the night after fight club."

Every bar I've walked into this week, everybody's called me sir.

Every bar I go into, the beat-up fight club guys all start to look alike. How can a stranger know who I am?

"You have a birthmark, Mr. Durden," the bartender says. "On your foot. It's shaped like a dark red Australia with New Zealand next to it."

Only Marla knows this. Marla and my father. Not even Tyler knows this. When I go to the beach, I sit with that foot tucked under me.

The cancer I don't have is everywhere, now.

"Everybody in Project Mayhem knows, Mr. Durden." The bartender holds up his hand, the back of his hand toward me, a kiss burned into the back of his hand.

My kiss?

Tyler's kiss.

"Everybody knows about the birthmark," the bartender says. "It's part of the legend. You're turning into a f.u.c.king legend, man."

I call Marla from my Seattle motel room to ask if we've ever done it.

You know.

Long distance, Marla says, "What?"

Slept together.

"What!"