Richard Yates (5 page)

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Dakota Fanning left he would go to the library to work on things. It was Sunday. Dakota Fanning had school tomorrow. “I feel good,” thought Haley Joel Osment. “My life seems good.”

At Penn Station they sat against a wall and photographed themselves kissing. Haley Joel Osment walked about thirty feet away and photographed Dakota Fanning. He walked closer and photographed her again. He walked closer and photographed her again. He walked closer and hugged her and they went downstairs to the train and held each other until the train began to make noises. Dakota Fanning went in the train. They looked at each other’s eyes until they couldn’t see them anymore.

The next day Haley Joel Osment read an email from Dakota Fanning that said “I told my mom the dresses were cheap knock-offs and I got them for $3 each off a street vendor and she believed me. She wasn’t suspicious at all.”

The email talked about selling clothes from the ’50s and ’60s on eBay and buying a computer. It talked about an $800-a-month apartment. It talked about making $5,000 over the summer so she wouldn’t need a job senior year. “Once I get a real job we’ll never see each other again,” said the email.

“I’ll be working 40 hours a week. I don’t want to work.

If you move here we could work at Wendy’s together. It would be funny. I wasted my whole lunch period typing about money and computers. I feel terrible. College. Fuck. I have to present Hemingway tomorrow. I have a math fi nal tomorrow. I am fucked. I got a 60 on the practice fi nal. I am very fucked. It’s hot here. I couldn’t sleep last night because it was so hot. I smell cookies and rice. I want rice. I want mhp-yates-01.indd 36

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to fall asleep in a pile of cold rice. Shit. The bell just rang.

I want to fall asleep in a pile of cold rice.”

“$800 for all those rooms is good,” said Haley Joel Osment in an email. “There has to be somewhere where it’s less with no living room. I don’t care about the location. It can be an island on a river and I have to live with a crane family and use my air mattress to get there each day. That’s fi ne. Find me an apartment. At Whole Foods today an obese black cop followed me around a little but I escaped. There were two cops there today. They wore cop uniforms instead of the security ones. It felt like a video game.”

That night on Gmail chat Haley Joel Osment said he was going to cry if Dakota Fanning didn’t fi nd him an apartment. “I will look,” said Dakota Fanning. “There’s one that’s $650 a month. But it’s a dump. It’s diseased. You cannot live there. I will not let you live there.”

“Find me one. Anywhere. It doesn’t have to be near you.”

“I know. The one I saw wasn’t by me. I will fi nd you one. Shut the fuck up.”

“Do it,” said Haley Joel Osment. “You didn’t accom-plish anything.”

“Yes I did. I got you clothes today. I got you pants and a shirt.”

“Thank you,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Bring me them.”

“I will mail them. In a big box. There is a giant dying animal in my backyard making a very loud noise that can be heard throughout the whole house even with the windows closed. I think it’s a frog but my mom says it’s a distressed bird. It’s defi nitely a frog croaking. She is stupid.”

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“I just felt a buzzing near my crotch,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“It’s in the garden,” said Dakota Fanning. “The pants are 30-inch waist, is that wrong? I just guessed.”

“That’s about right. When are you coming.”

“I don’t know. I can’t for a while. You have to come here. I don’t have any money. You have to come here.”

“Alright,” said Haley Joel Osment. “When.”

“Whenever you want. I fi nish school next week. Come before that.”

“Tell me exactly when. I’m not a decision maker. I’m a person.”

“I don’t know,” said Dakota Fanning. “I have to plan.

It’s hard to fi nd apartments or houses here. Everyone wants to move here. After 9/11 the
New
York
Times
wrote an article about moving here.”

“There are 80 towns by you,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“No there aren’t,” said Dakota Fanning. “There’s two.

There is a small house for sale by the park. That’s all I saw so far.” Haley Joel Osment said “I want to put a Wal-Mart shirt on an emu” and stared at what he typed. “How much does it cost,” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Dakota Fanning.

“I’ll sell my kidney,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“It’s probably cheap,” said Dakota Fanning. “It’s small.

Shit. I just looked it up. It’s expensive. Why is it so expensive? $179,000.” Haley Joel Osment said he would ask his publisher for $179,000. He said he would write one novel a month for 179 months. A few months ago he was paid cash daily as an assistant to an actor starting a luxury charter-jet business. Each day he sat in the actor’s bedroom in TriBeCa mhp-yates-01.indd 38

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typing descriptions for jets, resizing images in Photoshop, updating the actor’s IMDb information. During this time he was sometimes eating dinner with a 26-year-old copy-writer and then sleeping in her apartment on the Lower East Side with their clothes on. Haley Joel Osment saw the 26-year-old less when he met Dakota Fanning on the internet in late March. When the actor’s website was completed Haley Joel Osment applied at the membership library on 76th Street.

Sometimes the actor emailed Haley Joel Osment instruc-tions to update his IMDb profi le and sent a $50 bill in the mail. Haley Joel Osment currently had about $800 in his checking account. “Write me the 179-novel contract,” he said. “Find me an apartment.”

“I’m looking online right now,” said Dakota Fanning.

“Thank you. I feel sad like I’m going to cry. I’m going to cry on my keyboard.”

“I stole you green pants and a shirt with bright green stripes that are the same color as the dress I’m wearing now,” said Dakota Fanning. “I saw this heart monitor for pregnant women. It’s expensive. But I think I can steal it. I want to listen to our hearts.”

“Thank you. Come to my reading July 20.”

“Okay,” said Dakota Fanning. “My birthday is July 22.

I don’t know when I can come back. You will have to come here for a while. Until July maybe. I don’t know. I’m going to have a job soon. I’m fucked.”

“I’m alone,” said Haley Joel Osment. “I’m alone.”

“Me too,” said Dakota Fanning.

“I am more alone than you. My cell phone broke. I sit alone in my room. There is no way to communicate with me.”

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“You have a phone in your apartment,” said Dakota

Fanning. “It’s impossible for me to stop being obese. Even if I exercise I am still obese.”

“Why are you obese?”

“Birth control,” said Dakota Fanning.

“Take vitamins in the morning. And green tea.”

“Okay,” said Dakota Fanning.

“And walk. Drink Edensoy instead of juice. And move your arm around when you’re watching a movie. And climb mountains.”

“Caffeine makes me feel strange and uncomfortable,”

said Dakota Fanning. “I think of caffeine and think ‘that isn’t good.’ I don’t have any money. I’m tired. I’m leaving.

Good night.”

“I went to a record store with Kailey and Pedro last night,”

said Dakota Fanning the next afternoon on Gmail chat. “I say I’m going to shit myself like every 5 minutes when I’m with them. They make me want to shit myself.”

“I’m jealous,” said Haley Joel Osment. “I didn’t hear that too much.”

“I refrained because I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. I said it in my head a lot. On the subway. When I was standing with that pole.”

“You were standing with me,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“Not a pole. You forgot it was me. In your memory it’s just the pole.”

“You are a pole,” said Dakota Fanning.

“Your mom’s bed is like a mountain,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“It’s a very big bed,” said Dakota Fanning. “Some kid mhp-yates-01.indd 40

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in my chemistry class told this cheerleader that everyone picks their nose and she almost cried. I was confused. She was so upset.” Haley Joel Osment typed twenty-three dollar signs, twelve dashes, eleven dollar signs, twenty-six open-parenthetical symbols and said he wanted to eat something that looked like that. He said whenever he saw more than two things together he immediately thought “Look at that pile of crap.” They made plans for him to visit again. “My heart is beating,” he said. “That I might be late.”

“Mine too,” said Dakota Fanning. “Don’t be. We were late. You can do it. You have to think hard. And make sticky notes. And stick them to your face.” The last time Haley Joel Osment visited Dakota Fanning he had missed the train at Penn Station and rode the next train a few hours later and then Dakota Fanning had been late to meet him on the train platform.

“Okay,” said Haley Joel Osment. “I need to be early. I need to camp out there.”

Dakota Fanning said she slapped his bare ass the last time she visited. Haley Joel Osment said he didn’t have an ass. Dakota Fanning said she wanted to cut her ass off and sell it in a Japanese supermarket wrapped in plastic on a foam dish. “I feel so tired,” she said. “I want to press a tea kettle of boiling water to my clit.”

Haley Joel Osment said he wanted to funnel boiling water into his brain.

“That would be good,” said Dakota Fanning. “I just thought of Bono and felt suicidal.”

Haley Joel Osment said he was afraid of missing the train.

“If you miss the train again I’m going to shit myself,”

said Dakota Fanning.

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“I’m going to miss it. I feel like I can’t not miss it,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I got electrocuted today,” said Dakota Fanning.

“Sizzling hot,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I’m going to be very sleepy tomorrow.”

“No,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I’m always very sleepy the day after electrocution. I won’t be able to do anything but lay.”

“Now what,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Drink coffee.”

“That won’t work. I can’t come pick you up tomorrow.

I’m going to be sleepy. Just walk to my house and come in and go upstairs and go to my room and look at me being sleepy and laying and then sit on top of me and hit me.”

“You aren’t picking me up,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I’m not coming.”

“I will pick you up. I’ll build a board with wheels. And wheel myself. Board and wheels.”

“Think about hamster ass,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“Your brain will generate power. It works. Think about hamster ass shaking and sweating.”

“I can’t move. I should go. I need to sleep as much as I can so I won’t be as dizzy and sleepy tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Okay.”

“You are coming tomorrow,” said Dakota Fanning.

“I am coming tomorrow,” said Haley Joel Osment.

In his room he closed his eyes and thought about Dakota Fanning and other people. He orgasmed into toilet paper.

He carried the toilet paper to the bathroom and put it in the toilet. He peed into the toilet. He fl ushed the toilet. He washed his hands. He washed his face. He went to his room mhp-yates-01.indd 42

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and read a few sentences from different books. He ate dark chocolate. He showered and did twenty-fi ve push-ups and turned off the light.

In Bobst Library in the morning he looked at things on the internet while sometimes thinking “what the hell is this”

or “what the fuck are you talking about” in a quiet monotone without emotion. He sat in a train at Penn Station.

He sat in a train at Secaucus. He stepped off the train in Dakota Fanning’s town. He stood on the platform and saw no Dakota Fanning. He thought about meaninglessness. He felt meaningless. Life was meaningless. He thought about acceptance a little. He focused on acceptance. He felt calm.

After a few minutes he called Dakota Fanning saying he was here.

The next day around 3:30 p.m. they were on her bed and Kailey and Mallory were downstairs. Mallory was Kailey’s 20-year-old sister. “Tell them they can come in here and look at me and then leave,” said Haley Joel Osment. Dakota Fanning laughed and said “Okay” and went downstairs and returned with Mallory who looked at Haley Joel Osment and threw a lollipop on the bed.

“Thank you for the lollipop,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“We came here to see you,” said Mallory. “Get up.”

“You saw me,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“Let’s go eat,” said Mallory. “We came all the way here to meet you.”

“You met me,” said Haley Joel Osment.

Mallory said something else and Haley Joel Osment

stood and they went to Mallory’s car. Haley Joel Osment sat with Dakota Fanning in the backseat and looked out his mhp-yates-01.indd 43

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window. He felt sunlight on his face and arms. He thought about asking what band’s music was playing. They passed Taco Palace and the homeless center and parked in front of an Italian restaurant and went in and were served pasta in giant bowls with olive oil and bread. Haley Joel Osment ate half his pasta. Mallory ate half her pasta. Kailey and Dakota Fanning ate all their pasta and a few pieces of garlic bread. “I feel meaningless here,” thought Haley Joel Osment. “That is so much food being eaten. Seems funny. I feel detached. I’ll just go back to being alone in the library every day.”