Fight Club Read Free Page A

it.
    You big tourist.
    The next time we meet, I’ll say, Marla, I can’t sleep with you here. I need this. Get out.

3
    YOU WAKE UP at Air Harbor International.
    Every takeoff and landing, when the plane banked too much to one side, I prayed for a crash. That moment cures my insomnia with narcolepsy when we might die helpless and packed human tobacco in the fuselage.
    This is how I met Tyler Durden.
    You wake up at O’Hare.
    You wake up at LaGuardia.
    You wake up at Logan.
    Tyler worked part-time as a movie projectionist. Because of his nature, Tyler could only work night jobs. If a projectionist called in sick, the union called Tyler.
    Some people are night people. Some people are day people. I could only work a day job.
    You wake up at Dulles.
    Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip. I prayed for wind shear effect. I prayed for pelicans sucked into the turbines and loose bolts and ice on the wings. On takeoff, as the plane pushed down the runway and the flaps tilted up, with our seats in their full upright position and our tray tables stowed and all personal carry-on baggage in the overhead compartment, as the end of the runway ran up to meet us with our smoking materials extinguished, I prayed for a crash.
    You wake up at Love Field.
    In a projection booth, Tyler did changeovers if the theater was old enough. With changeovers, you have two projectors in the booth, and one projector is running.
    I know this because Tyler knows this.
    The second projector is set up with the next reel of film. Most movies are six or seven small reels of film played in a certain order. Newer theaters, they splice all the reels together into one five-foot reel. This way, you don’t have to run two projectors and do changeovers, switch back and forth, reel one, switch, reel two on the other projector, switch, reel three on the first projector.
    Switch.
    You wake up at SeaTac.
    I study the people on the laminated airline seat card. A woman floats in the ocean, her brown hair spread out behind her, her seat cushion clutched to her chest. The eyes are wide open, but the woman doesn’t smile or frown. In another picture, people calm as Hindu cows reach up from their seats toward oxygen masks sprung out of the ceiling.
    This must be an emergency.
    Oh.
    We’ve lost cabin pressure.
    Oh.
    You wake up, and you’re at Willow Run.
    Old theater, new theater, to ship a movie to the next theater, Tyler has to break the movie back down to the original six or seven reels. The small reels pack into a pair of hexagonal steel suitcases. Each suitcase has a handle on top. Pick one up, and you’ll dislocate a shoulder. They weigh that much.
    Tyler’s a banquet waiter, waiting tables at a hotel, downtown, and Tyler’s a projectionist with the projector operator’s union. I don’t know how long Tyler had been working on all those nights I couldn’t sleep.
    The old theaters that run a movie with two projectors, a projectionist has to stand right there to change projectors at the exact second so the audience never sees the break when one reel starts and one reel ran out. You have to look for the white dots in the top, right-hand corner of the screen. This is the warning. Watch the movie, and you’ll see two dots at the end of a reel.
    "Cigarette burns,” they’re called in the business.
    The first white dot, this is the two-minute warning. You get the second projector started so it will be running up to speed.
    The second white dot is the five-second warning. Excitement. You’re standing between the two projectors and the booth is sweating hot from the xenon bulbs that if you looked right at them you’re blind. The first dot flashes on the screen. The sound in a movie comes from a big speaker behind the screen. The projectionist booth is soundproof because inside the booth is the racket of sprockets snapping film past the lens at six feet a second, ten frames a foot, sixty frames a second snapping through, clattering Gatling-gun