Richard Yates (18 page)

they bought two twin-size mattresses that were stained and a little moist for $35 from a yard sale. They bought waterproof mattress from Wal-Mart. They cleaned the mattresses using sponges and detergent and set them upright in Haley Joel Osment’s new room with the windows up. Dakota Fanning was wearing a green dress from H&M. They photographed each other hiding in cardboard boxes. They drove to Dakota Fanning’s house. The next night Haley Joel Osment was alone in the dark on his new bed. His internet wasn’t working. He had bought a computer off eBay for $250 and the monitor was on a cardboard box by his bed. In a corner was a Martha Stewart clothing rack from Wal-Mart. By the door was a $40 mini-refrigerator from eBay. The room was very quiet except sometimes a car passed outside. It was Sunday. The restaurant downstairs had not yet reopened.

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“I’m so alone here,” said Haley Joel Osment the next day on the phone.

“Do you want me to ride my bike there?” said Dakota Fanning.

“Your mom,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I can get there in forty minutes and stay for like an hour and come back.”

Haley Joel Osment made a noise.

“It doesn’t seem worth it,” he said.

They made plans to attend a two-day fi lm festival that weekend.

Saturday afternoon Dakota Fanning’s mother drove Dakota Fanning to the restaurant. Dakota Fanning gave Haley Joel Osment a glass container of organic tempeh, brown rice, onion, hijiki and he put it in his mini-refrigerator. They walked toward the fi lm festival holding hands on a two-lane street between a forest and a river.

“Let me walk on the outside,” said Dakota Fanning.

“It’s dangerous.”

“If a car hits me my hoodie will be padding and I won’t be hurt,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“I have more meat,” said Dakota Fanning.

“Meat isn’t as soft as my hoodie.”

“It’s better if I die,” said Dakota Fanning. “You’re better than me.”

“No,” said Haley Joel Osment. “What do you mean?”

“If you die I’ll probably just cry in my room for two years. If I die you’ll keep writing books.”

“I would write about you,” said Haley Joel Osment.

“Let me walk on the outside,” said Dakota Fanning.

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“Okay,” said Haley Joel Osment. “If you really want to.”

At the fi lm festival they went in a tent of about twenty-fi ve people watching short fi lms. Dakota Fanning took a bottle from her bag and said “Would you like some water?” Haley Joel Osment said “Yes. Thank you.” Onscreen a teenage girl sleeping under an overpass went into an obese man’s truck. After a few minutes the truck broke and they sat by it drinking whiskey and then slow-danced on the street in the dark. The next fi lm showed an obese man drinking beer in a bar.

Dakota Fanning’s mother called saying she was coming.

“Sorry,” said Dakota Fanning outside the tent. “She’s being a beast. She was screaming into the phone.”

“It’s okay,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Thank you for offering me water, that was nice.”

Dakota Fanning’s mother was driving her brother-in-law’s SUV that had two TVs and maybe twelve cup-holders.

Haley Joel Osment thought about saying it was out-of-control. “It’s out-of-control,” he said and Dakota Fanning’s mother laughed a little. “I know it’s not environmentally responsible, but I have to say, I could get used to this,” she said. “Just feel these seats.”

“I like them,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Comfortable.”

“Thank you for the ride,” he said at the restaurant.

“See you tomorrow,” he said to Dakota Fanning.

The next afternoon Dakota Fanning brought fl axseed bread, a bag of apples, one of two cases of Luna Bars Haley Joel Osment stole from a Duane Reade in Penn Station about a week ago, a container of organic tofu and onions with olive oil and sea salt. She was wearing black eyeliner.

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“It looks really good,” said Haley Joel Osment grinning.

“I wanted to do something different to surprise you.”

“I like it,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Goth.”

“It took me a long time. I kept messing up.”

“What did the beast say?” said Haley Joel Osment.

“She just said it looked stupid. She said something like

‘I hope you aren’t doing that all the time now because it looks really stupid.’”

“I think it looks really good. I wasn’t expecting this at all.”

They lay holding each other without talking. They had sex. Dakota Fanning was not on birth control anymore.

They had been having sex when she was not able to become pregnant. She had been having problems getting wet the past few weeks but they had not talked about it. She orgasmed and asked Haley Joel Osment if he orgasmed. He said he did not. Dakota Fanning pushed him a little and he lay on his back and lifted his head and looked at her face with a neutral facial expression and thought “She looks very sexy.”

After a few minutes he orgasmed.

They lay without talking for about ten minutes.

At the fi lm festival Dakota Fanning was in the bathroom more than fi ve minutes. “Is she doing something, did something happen?” thought Haley Joel Osment. She came out and Haley Joel Osment became upset about something.

About a minute later he was upset about something else, that she wasn’t making him feel better. He stared at the ground feeling her looking at him and then felt a little confused as he looked at her staring at the ground.

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They went in the theatre. The movie had begun. An

organizer made arm movements indicating seats were avail-able. They sat near the middle of the theatre. Onscreen two people were in a bathtub looking at each other. Dakota Fanning moved her hand toward Haley Joel Osment’s lap.

He held her hand and patted it. He moved both their hands onto her lap. “Now I sort of expect her to move our hands back to my lap,” he thought. “Seems like our hands are always in her lap. Why am I thinking this, I don’t want to think this.” The movie was about a romantic relationship.

One scene showed a man speaking in a monologue while the camera moved around his head in a continuous 360-degree motion.

A few days later Haley Joel Osment went to stay in Dakota Fanning’s brother’s room. Dakota Fanning’s mother had said to Dakota Fanning that Haley Joel Osment was welcome to stay in her brother’s room sometimes. Each morning around 6:00 a.m. Dakota Fanning brought Haley Joel Osment a smoothie and bread with sunfl ower seed butter while he was in bed and then prepared something for him to eat while she was at school. Dakota Fanning’s mother woke at 7:20 a.m.

and left for work around 8:00 a.m. and Haley Joel Osment slept until around 11:00 a.m. then showered and looked at the internet and worked on things until Dakota Fanning came home around 2:30 p.m. Dakota Fanning performed oral sex on him three mornings in a row and he was quiet and did not move while it was happening. One morning she brought him untoasted bread and he said he liked his bread toasted and she apologized and said she didn’t know but should have asked and he said he had told her already and mhp-yates-01.indd 147

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also had eaten it toasted in her presence. Dakota Fanning was apologizing many times a day and then writing in a Moleskine notebook what she did wrong, why it was wrong based on what she wanted in life, how she wanted to act in the future. Haley Joel Osment sometimes said something wasn’t written correctly and she would rewrite it and it still wouldn’t be correct and then she would have two things to write about, then sometimes three things, and this would sometimes continue more than one hour. Dakota Fanning had been apologizing and then writing things in this manner since late August when Haley Joel Osment said that people probably needed to do concrete things in order to change, not just say they will change. One night she lost her notebook and found it and said she would always keep it with her and after that when she forgot to bring it to the bathroom or left it downstairs or somewhere else Haley Joel Osment became upset if she did not do something new and concrete, in addition to writing about it, to help her change, like putting sticky-notes on doors. He sometimes became upset even if she did something and stayed upset one to fi ve hours before apologizing. Other promises she had made since Haley Joel Osment’s visit in late August included giving him water every time they entered the house and never eating anything she made for him.

After four days Haley Joel Osment said he had been mean recently and wanted to be nicer. Dakota Fanning said she also thought he had been mean recently and had been thinking that if she just kept being nice to him he would eventually be nicer. He began waking early to make her breakfast and walk with her to the bus stop and meet her at the bus stop after school. He vacuumed the house and mhp-yates-01.indd 148

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cleaned the kitchen. A few days later Dakota Fanning’s mother drove him to the restaurant. “I was poisoned last night I think,” said Dakota Fanning in an email the next day. “I kept hearing things and felt very afraid and put my whole body and head under all my blankets and stayed awake until a little after 3:00 in the morning I think because I was so afraid. I thought I heard my door open and shut slowly and I heard breathing noises. Then after I fi nally fell asleep and woke in the morning I felt terrible. I threw up 4

times. I kept drinking water and then throwing up. Someone was in my room last night and poisoned me. I don’t know how I will be able to sleep tonight. I’m very afraid.” The next night on Gmail chat she said “My ears, body, head, and neck all ache terribly. I’m very cold all the time. My nose is runny and all the glands in my throat are really swollen and hurt really bad when I touch them or swallow.” Haley Joel Osment said she should take a lot of medicine and a bath and lie down and rest very hard. She said she was going to shower and take more medicine and make water bottles for her room and lie down. “I miss you,” she said.

“Me too,” said Haley Joel Osment. “Just take the

drowsy medicine and sleep.”

“I’m sorry you have to be alone so far away,” said Dakota Fanning.

“It’s okay. Text me when you wake later.”

“Okay,” said Dakota Fanning. “Good night.”

A few hours later Haley Joel Osment emailed her Microsoft Paint drawings of an animal bred for optimal use in bestiality and an extremely rare species of fi sh named [email protected] after Sean Strub’s email address. The email said he was going to fi nd an umbrella and walk to mhp-yates-01.indd 149

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Chang Mao. “But the road is so dark a hummer will probably knock me 30 feet into the forest,” said the email. “If I don’t answer your emails tomorrow can you send a search team specifying to search between 25 to 35 feet into the forest?” He went outside his room to an area with a life-size plaster bear wearing a sombrero and some cabinets with small cereal boxes inside that he had found and eaten the contents of one night. He found no umbrella. He went in his room and put on a green hooded sweatshirt. He photographed himself with his cell phone in the bathroom mirror and sent it to Dakota Fanning’s email account. He walked on the street in the dark toward Chang Mao. It was raining a little. He photographed his face in the green hood. He looked at the photo and sent it to Dakota Fanning’s email account. At Chang Mao he ordered bean curd in garlic sauce.

He walked holding his cell phone with one hand and his food with another hand to his room. He put his cell phone next to a Richard Yates novel being used as a mouse pad. He sat on the wood fl oor and ate Chinese food while looking at his cell phone. He fi nished eating. He looked at his email. He looked at his cell phone. It was 11:39 p.m. Haley Joel Osment thought he would shower. He removed his clothes. He put his cell phone on the fl oor outside the stand-up shower.

“I’ll be able to hear it vibrating against the tile,” he thought.

He fi nished showering and looked at his cell phone.

He dried himself and did fi fty jumping jacks. He put on clothes and picked up his cell phone. He sat on the fl oor facing his computer screen with his back against the side of his bed. He put in earphones. He set his cell phone upright facing him. He opened a Microsoft Word fi le of his poetry.

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He searched Dakota Fanning’s name on the internet and found something he hadn’t seen before. She had written on a band’s message board a few years ago thanking them for their CD and promotional stickers. Haley Joel Osment read the message a few times. He thought about Dakota Fanning walking home after school in nice weather, seeing a package at her front door, carrying it upstairs into her room alone in the house, carefully opening it with a neutral facial expression feeling excited and calm and a little lonely.

A few days later at Dakota Fanning’s house Haley Joel Osment looked at her internet browser’s history and saw that she had searched “bulimia,” “vomit inducers,” “vomit inducers for toddlers” and that she had looked at photos of Matt Dixon and John and herself on MySpace. “Matt Dixon is attractive and Dakota looked at him a lot,” he thought.