Marla

What Marla lifts out of the package, it's one of those sandwich bags of white stuff that Tyler rendered for tallow to make soap.

Just before Marla and I met at Remaining Men Together, there was the first lump, and now there was a second lump.

"You've got to get your ass back here, " Marla yells over the phone, "before those little trolls make soap out of me. "

The death experience was so cool, Marla wanted me to hear her describe it as she lifted out of her body and floated up.

If I had only wasted a couple of minutes and gone over to watch Marla die, then none of this would have happened.

Marla's at the kitchen table, burning the inside of her arm with a clove cigarette and calling herself human butt wipe.

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.

Little could have prepared me for what I saw when Marla opened her gown.

Marla stops breathing and her stomach goes like a drum, and her heart is like a fist pounding from inside the tight skin of a drum.

The color of Marla's brown eyes is like an animal that's been heated in a furnace and dropped into cold water.

The space monkey with the hand mirror is eyeing us so I tell Marla we have to leave.

Marla didn't know if her spirit could use the telephone, but she wanted someone to at least hear her last breath.

We admitted Marla immediately to the hospital and removed her cancer the next day.

Two years earlier, Marla had noticed a pebble-sized lump in her left breast.

Right now, my Almond Chicken in its warm, creamy sauce tastes like something sucked out of Marla's mother's thighs.

I tell Marla goodnight, and Marla's screaming is smaller, smaller, smaller, gone as I reach over and hang up the phone.

Marla hunched over oddly and cradled her left arm not out of habit but to support the weight of the cancer within her breast.

Marla twists the cigarette into the soft white belly of her arm. "Burn, witch, burn. "

It was right then, standing in the kitchen with Marla, that I knew what Tyler had done.

Long story short, now Marla's out to ruin another part of my life.

Even as Marla yanks Tyler into her room, Tyler can hear brake squeals and sirens collecting out in front of the Regent Hotel.

You knew Marla? You mean Anne? How'd you know her?

And I hear the front door slam shut. Marla doesn't wait the three days.

Greg: Today's the day, Marla! I've been looking forward to this day all week. I organized a basketball tournament with my friends.

"So, " Marla says, "even if I did believe all this, what do you want from me? "

"When you're twenty-four, " Marla says, "you have no idea how far you can really fall, but I was a fast learner. "

The scar on her hand, I ask Marla, how did she get it?

Marla looks at me, and I tell her, trust me.

It turned out that Marla was like my mother, a preventive health and alternative medicine enthusiast.

Marla was not the first patient I had seen who had waited until her cancer was advanced before seeing the doctor.

We go upstairs to her room, and Marla tells me how in the wild you don't see old animals because as soon as they age, animals die.

Greg wants to go out and play basketball with his friends, but his sister, Marla, tells him that it has started to rain outside.

Marla said it was the operation itself that scared her.

Marla says she'll forgive the collagen thing if I'll help her look.

Marla looks down at my hand and the scar from Tyler's kiss.

When Marla screams, I throw the skirt in her face and run.

One time, I went with Tyler to the Western Union office and watched as he sent Marla's mother a telegram.

Every night, Marla and I walk in the garden until I'm sure that Tyler's not coming home that night.

The professors were "surprised, " said Marla Eisenberg, lead researcher.

An American aid worker, Marla Ruzicka, who helped arrange for Rakan's treatment, was herself later killed in a car bomb in Baghdad.

"That night, " Marla says, "I said I wanted to have your abortion. "

Between the support groups and the clinic, Marla told me, she had met a lot of people who were dead.

And I knew why he sent candy to Marla's mother.

Tyler and I share the same body, and until now, I didn't know it. Whenever Tyler was having sex with Marla, I was asleep.

"I'm glad you're back, " Marla says. "We have to talk. "

This stuff in the fridge at home, it was Marla's collagen trust fund.

About a month ago, I was afraid to let Marla look in the fridge.

"In that testicle cancer thing, " Marla says. "Then you saved my life. "

I'm starting to wonder if Tyler and Marla are the same person. Except for their humping, every night in Marla's room.

So Tyler can't take complete control, I need Marla to keep me awake. All the time.

Marla had started going to the support groups after she found the first lump.

When Tyler woke up, Marla had disappeared back to the Regent Hotel.

Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment.

'For no apparent reason, Tyler sent Marla's mother a fifteen-pound box of chocolates.

Marla says now all the space monkeys are shaving their heads.

Marla laughs at this until she sees my fingers have stopped. Like maybe I've found something.

I take out my wallet and show Marla my driver's license with my real name.

The second Marla opens the screen door, Tyler is gone, vanished, run out of the room, disappeared.

Mike's outgoing personality is the flip side of Marla's need for solitude.

Tyler never ate in restaurants, and Marla wasn't wrinkled.

FAST FORWARD, fly back home to Marla and the Paper Street Soap Company.

The rose, Marla tells me, is a natural astringent.

And Marla Singer, who stole the support groups from me.

"I dated a guy once who liked to wear my clothes, " Marla says.

What Marla says is, would I do her a favor?

And if I do fall asleep, Marla has to keep track of Tyler.

Greg went to clean his room but after several hours, he still hasn't come down. Marla goes to check up on him.

"No, " Marla says, "you don't sleep. "

What we'll do is send Marla's mom some chocolates and probably some fruitcakes.

Except for their humping, Marla and Tyler are never in the same room.

"But you are, Tyler, " Marla says.

WHEN I GET to the Regent Hotel, Marla's in the lobby wearing a bathrobe.

Just in case Marla burns the house down.

I ask Marla what my name is.

More than anything in the world right then, while Marla and I were standing in the kitchen, I didn't want Marla to open the freezer.

Marla would go to bars and hear the bartender calling her name, and when she took the call the line was dead.

This is why Marla called, because she hates me.

Marla says, "What are you cooking? "