Chapter 12 Section 12

My boss is standing at my desk, a bit too close, with a slight smile, his lips pursed tightly, his crotch resting on my elbow.I looked up at him while I was writing an explanatory letter for a recall campaign.The beginnings of such letters are all buckled out of the same mold: "This notice is being sent to you pursuant to the requirements of the National Motor Vehicle Safety Act. We have determined that the vehicle XX has a defect..." This week I calculated according to the liability formula, and only once did the value of multiplying A by B and then by C exceed the cost of recall.

This week, the problem was the little plastic clip on the windshield wiper that holds the rubber wipers in place.Insignificant gizmos.Only two hundred vehicles were affected.Labor costs are almost negligible. Last week was more typical.The problem last week was that some kind of leather was processed with a substance known to cause fetal malformation, synthetic Nirret or something similarly illegal, which is still used in third world leather tanning .This thing is so powerful that as long as pregnant women come into contact with it, it can cause birth defects in the fetus.Last week, not a single person complained to the Department of Transportation.No one has called for product recalls.

The cost of new skins multiplied by labor costs multiplied by administrative costs has exceeded our first quarter profit.But even if someone finds out about our mistake, as long as the cost of paying for the loss of those unfortunate families does not come close to the cost of replacing all the interior leather of those 6,500 cars, we will not rush to recall the product. But this week, we are doing a product recall.And this week I started having insomnia again.Insomnia, now I feel as if the whole world just happened to pass by and drop a shit on my grave. My boss is wearing his gray tie, so today must be Tuesday.

My boss came over with a piece of paper and asked if I was missing something.The paper fell into the copier, he said, and began to read: "The first rule of Fight Club is you can't talk about Fight Club." He glanced from one side of the paper to the other and giggled. "Rule number two of fight club is you can't talk about fight club." I heard Taylor's words coming out of my boss's mouth. I am a middle-aged and fat boss with family photos on his desk. His dream is to retire early and go to some desert in Arizona in a car with utilities and gas. Spend the winter in a mobile home.My boss, whose shirts are too starched and who regularly goes for a haircut every Tuesday after lunch, looked at me and said:

"I hope it's not yours." I am Joe's boiling rage. Tyler asked me to type out the fight club rules and make ten copies for him.Not nine, not eleven.Ten copies, Taylor said.I'm still having insomnia, and I can't remember closing my eyes since three days ago.This must be the one I typed.I made ten copies and forgot about the master copy.The copier appears to be being targeted by the paparazzi.Insomnia alienates everything, a copy of a copy of a copy.You can't touch anything, and nothing can touch you. My boss read: "Rule number three of fight club is every two fights."

Both of us are right eyeballs. My boss read: "One fight at a time." I haven't slept in three days, unless I'm sleeping right now.My boss is dangling the paper under my nose.What the hell is going on, he said.A little game I play at work?He pays me to devote myself to work and not to waste my time on these little war games.And he's not paying me to abuse the copier. what happened?He dangled the paper under my nose.How do I feel, he asked, what should he do with an employee who wastes his working hours in some fancy little world.What would I do if I were him? what will i do

I have holes in my face, my black and blue panda eyes, red and swollen Taylor hickeys on the back of my hands, copies of copies of copies. Contemplative meditation. Why did Tyler want ten copies of the Fight Club charter? Indian sacred cow. If I were you, I say, I would never follow anyone to talk about this piece of paper. I said it sounded like it was written by a dangerous psycho killer, and that this prudish-looking psycho could flare up anytime during working hours, striding from office to office with an ArmaLite AR-180 semi-automatic gas-operated carbine. Another office. My boss looked at me sternly and didn't say a word.

This guy, I said, probably stays home every night with a rat-tail file, and files a criss-cross on the tip of every shot he takes.In this way, one morning when he was happy, went to the office, and shot a bullet into his squeaky, soft, narrow-minded, whining, and sycophant (corpse boss) Bao Boss, that A bullet would burst along the file and explode inside you like a dum-shot, pierce your spine and blast out a bushel of stinking offal in one fell swoop.Just imagine your small intestine exploding like a sausage casing in cinematic slow motion, slowly opening up the spiritual center in your gut.

My boss took that piece of paper from under my nose. Go on, I said, and read some more. Really, I said, that sounds like fun.The creation of a total psychopath. I smile slightly.That little hole in my cheek might look like a poop hole, and it's the same cyan color as a dog's gums.The skin around my panda eyes was pulled tight and had a varnish-like sheen. My boss looked at me nicely and said nothing. I'll read it for you, I said. I said rule four in fight club is one sparring at a time. My boss looked at the rules and then at me. I said rule five is to be barefoot and shirtless when fighting.

My boss looked at the rules and then at me. I said maybe this total freak would get an Eagle Apache carbine, because an Apache could fire thirty shots at a time, and it only weighed nine pounds.Amallet's magazine can only hold five rounds.With thirty rounds, our geek hero can bloodbath the office, take out every vice president, and save one bullet for every executive. Tyler's words came out of my mouth.What a polite person I was. I just looked at my boss like that.My boss has blue, blue, pale cornflower blue eyes. The J and R68 semi-automatic carbines also had thirty-round magazines and weighed only seven pounds.

My boss looked at me nicely and said nothing. How horrible, I said.This person may be an acquaintance he has known for many years.This guy probably knows everything about him, where he lives, where his wife works and where his kids go to school. It was tiring and all of a sudden I felt very, very bored. And why did Tyler need ten copies of the Fight Club charter? I don't need to be blunt that I know of car interior materials that cause birth defects.I know fake brake linings that look good enough to fool the buyer but fail after 2,000 miles. I know of an air conditioner rheostat that gets hot enough to set the map in your dashboard glove box on fire.I know a lot of people who have been burned alive because of a fuel injector backfiring.I've seen people get amputated from the knee down because the blades of a turbocharger exploded through the fire partition and into the cabin.I've been out in the field looking at burned cars and seen "Unknown" written as "Cause" on an accident report. No, I said, this paper is not mine.I gripped the paper between two fingers and pulled it out of his hand.The edge of the paper must have scratched his thumb, because his hand was immediately raised to his mouth, sucking desperately, his eyes wide open.I rolled the paper into a ball and threw it in the trash can by my desk. Maybe, I said, you shouldn't send me any trash you pick up. I went to Men's Hands on a Sunday night and there was nothing in the basement of the Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church except Big Bob.Every muscle was scarred inside and out when I went in, but my heart was still beating fast and there was a hurricane blowing through my head.This is insomnia.All night long, your mind seems to be floating in the sky. All night, you don't stop thinking: Am I sleeping?did i sleep To add insult to injury, Big Bob's arms protruded from the sleeves of his T-shirt, so muscular and so hard they gleamed.Big Bob laughed, he was so happy to see me. He thought I was dead. Yes, I said, each other each other. "Tell you," said Big Bob, "I have good news." Where has everyone else gone? "That's the good news," said Big Bob. "This group has been disbanded. I am staying here to inform those who still come here without knowing the news." I closed my eyes and collapsed on the checkered sofa I bought from the thrift store. "The good news is," said Big Bob, "we've got a new organization, but the first rule of the new organization is that you don't talk about it." Oh. Big Bob said, "And rule number two is you can't talk about it." Oh damn.I opened my eyes. Fuck me. "It's called the Fight Club," said Big Bob, "and it meets every Friday night in an abandoned garage across town. On Thursday nights, there's another Fight Club that meets in a garage closer." I don't know anything about either place. "The first rule of Fight Club," said Big Bob, "is that you can't talk about Fight Club." On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, Taylor goes to movie screenings.I saw his pay stub last week. "Rule number two of fight club," said Big Bob, "you can't talk about fight club." On Saturday night, Tyler and I went to fight club. "Only two people can fight each other." On Sunday morning, we came home bruised and slept through the afternoon. "Just one sparring at a time," said Big Bob. On Sunday and Monday nights, Tyler waits tables. "Be barefoot and barebacked." On Tuesday nights, Tyler stayed home to make the soap, wrapped it in tissue paper, and shipped it.Paper Street Soap Company. "Sparring," said Big Bob, "goes on till it has to. The guy who invented Fight Club invented these rules." Big Bob asked, "You know him?" "I've never seen him myself," said Big Bob, "but this fellow's name is Tyler Durden." Paper Street Soap Company. I don't know him. I don't know, I said. Maybe I really don't know.