Our Single Performance
You betrayed me. Tomi was saying this into the phone. Her voice was tired but razor-sharp—I don’t know what drug she was on, it was night, late, the sky was crisp, the sky was in her voice—she only called me when she wanted something so her tone was usually seductive, pursuing me in a low, soft register, but tonight it was different. Her voice cut the distance between us.
It was months after our single performance—a play, a two-hander, an hour long—and this was the first I was hearing from her. Months after the Times headline that read “One Half Triumph, One Half Disaster”—the disaster being me, though Tomi had to invert that, had to be the crucified one.
And when you betrayed me on that stage, Tomi went on, in front of those hundreds of people watching my every move, I saw our friendship for what it truly was.
Tomi continued in this accusatory way while I went cold, listening—the familiar dark, my spine straight on the couch, a couch so lumpen I felt like I was leaning into a body. I had never wanted the best for her as I had pretended with my counterfeit devotion these last 20 years. Playing the role of starving artist to her movie star, you would think she would have the power, but I had the power. I had the power all along. Despite my poverty, my absence of clout, despite the fact that I could never hold on to a man, to true love, and instead seemed to belong to all men, but in a way that was matterless, I was nameless, a thin apparition that asked for nothing but took everything. Despite the fact that I was still an unknown, my writing life had gone only a very short distance if any distance at all—no one knew who I was, no one knew my work, I was a cultural zero—despite my failures, I had the power. And I wielded that power to sabotage Tomi’s life, to keep her separate from herself. I was the obstacle, always in the way.
You are an insect, Mia, so tiny and commonplace as to be imperceptible, and you broke the barrier of my skin, burrowed inside of me with your infection, slowly spreading your disease, the disease of who you are.
No—and here Tomi paused to draw an image in her mind which she then conveyed to me with a high-octane satisfaction—Tomi said, You are an insect, Mia, so tiny and commonplace as to be imperceptible, and you broke the barrier of my skin, burrowed inside of me with your infection, slowly spreading your disease, the disease of who you are.
We were never friends, Mia, Tomi said. We were always enemies, enemies disguised as friends.
Rewind three months. When I got off the stage that night after our single performance, after bending my humiliated body into a bow, then half-turning like a dummy to face Tomi who curtsied several times while I applauded her along with the audience (as if I were not, in this moment, her co-star and the playwright of the piece, but one of those faces in the tidal blackout, transfixed by their proximity to the famous movie star, Tomi Hall), when I exited that stage, entered my dressing room, stripped off my costume, unpinned my hair, pulled on a dress, painted my lips, I felt like something had been done to my body. I felt dislodged. I was more terrified of myself than I was of Tomi. Who was I to let myself be eliminated in this way. I looked in the mirror. I slapped my face. I thought of Hemingway’s ex-wife. The note she wrote when she served him with divorce papers: I love you love you love you so—and I’m yours all shot to hell.
I walked into the after party, the burgundy lounge of the theatre, the engorged furniture, opulent chandeliers poised to snap from their fixtures. I accepted the congratulations in passing, the praise. I could see it was false, a matter of politeness. Behind it, there was worry, I could taste its pulp in my mouth, and disgust. I spoke little, drank fast. I kept my face open like a flower—a thing live and decent to gaze upon, interesting enough, but fundamentally pointless and mortal.
That was quite a stunt she pulled, Theo lead me through the crowded room to a quieter, darker corner of the lounge. He’d read the script, watched the dress rehearsal. What happened up there, Mia, what even was that?
I told Theo that our dressing rooms were situated on opposite sides of the stage. When I arrived in my dressing room two hours before showtime to do my preparations, there was an outrageous bouquet from Tomi, and a note of love and good luck. We’d spent the last month in rehearsals. Those days together were the height of our long friendship. I stood in the wings, ready, and on cue, entered from stage left. When the lights came up, I turned to face Tomi who was to enter from stage right—but Tomi was nowhere. I hung there, unsure of what to do, in a strange and prolonged pause, selling something to the audience I myself did not understand, that shadowed mass in its suspended state, that hollow I peered into, nearly fell into, until finally, Tomi appeared.
The audience broke into applause. It was Tomi’s theatre debut, always perceived as a brave turn for film actors; the audience commended Tomi’s daring, but I sensed they were also relieved that those aimless, opening moments of my bizarre silence had finally been snuffed. The applause dissipated. I looked to Tomi who stood there, inexplicably—she must have made a dupe—in my costume, in my make-up.
Tomi began to deliver my lines. She began to play my role. My mind went vacant. I was dumbfounded, everything went into slow-motion. I glared at Tomi, trying to snap us out of this bad dream, but Tomi blazed on. In my role, Tomi was mesmerizing. There was nowhere for me to go. The piece was written for two performers, it was an hour long. I had to survive the hour. The role I had written for Tomi I now had to play myself, meekly retrieving her lines from memory, stuttering through the unfamiliar beats and blocking, moving awkwardly, timidly, from cue to cue.
Out of view of the partygoers in that lush, hell-coloured room, Theo pressed his hand hard into my lower back and then his wife joined us, and his hand dropped automatically from my body and went to hers, and then Tomi crossed the room toward us, stopping to accept the accolades of producers, fans—she was composed though flushed, because she was now herself and myself, through that stunt, she was doubled, I was nothing—and arriving in our small scrum, she kissed me, messing my lipstick. I love you, Mia, I’ve always loved you, and then she turned to the small group, and she said, Don’t you just love her, and while Theo nodded, the group said nothing.
The idea for the performance had been Tomi’s, borne out of a drunken night together. By that time, Tomi could hardly be in public. She had done a film that had catapulted her into a new stratosphere of fame. She belonged to the popular imagination now and it was a filthy, greedy place—she was constantly harassed; she felt covered by the fingerprints of strangers. She had a bodyguard called Marcel who prowled behind us, a beautiful hulk of a man.
I let everyone in, I have no discretion, I say too much and then strangers are walking around with aspects of my soul. I’m reckless.
I just need a normal night, the normal night of a normal person, Tomi had texted. I’m in town.
We sat at the bar. Tomi had grown her hair for a role. It hung thick as a curtain to her waist. From the street, through the large front window, in the greasy candlelight, we would look identical. Our bodies perched and keen, eyes set on each other—the conversation was a series of locks: Tomi was locking me into the mirrored room of her mind. We got very drunk. In the bartender’s hands, the martini shaker was a small urn. Tomi’s expensive purse was curled and slumped on the bar top like a cat. Every so often, Tomi looked at her purse sidelong, checking to see that it was still there the way you would a lover at a party. Tomi’s purse could pay my rent for a year.
You’re the genius, Tomi was saying to me, into our third drink, our stomachs empty. She did this—flattered me as a way of negating herself. Throughout the night, we would trade on worth. This was our shared language, our addiction. You were always the genius, Tomi went on. Your fucking adaptation of Faust. Your fucking fluency in Latin, Ancient Greek. Who chooses the dead languages to be fluent in? To what end? Your functional alcoholism. Do you sleep? Very little. And your face. More of a TV face than mine was. Not that your face interested you. You had a passing interest in your face. Like your face was an upstairs neighbour. Your face lived above your body. And I need a change, Tomi was saying. You have minor mental problems, but I have major ones. Tomi inched closer, quieted her voice. I’m losing myself. My thoughts are fractured. Every psychic tells me I’m too porous. People take advantage of me. I have no borders. People get mad at me for no reason. They steal my things or I give them my things, it’s hard to tell the difference. I let everyone in, I have no discretion, I say too much and then strangers are walking around with aspects of my soul. I’m reckless. I’m such an idiot for the way that I live. I don’t even know if you’re still my friend. Are you still my friend, Mia?
Of course, I assured Tomi. I looked at the bartender, the bartender was looking at me. Then Tomi asked, Are you fucking someone, Mia? Because your skin looks really good. People are so much less annoying when they’re fucking you. And then Tomi asked, how are you, I mean really, how are you? You’re well, I can see that, Tomi answered for me. So well with that burning faith in the industry of yourself, so situated in your own life. Do you want what I have or do I want what you have? Obscurity. Who knows. Did you see that conversation between Cher and David Lynch—and here Tomi plays herself playing Cher, “You know this is my life, you know, it’s going to be what it is, I mean it’s gonna make a much better movie, probably, than a life.”
Tomi loved to ask questions and leave no space to answer them. I excused myself and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. It was at the back of the restaurant, another weather system, dank and underlit, a cave. In a claustrophobic stall, I switched the lock, sat on the toilet seat cover and stayed in that antechamber to cool myself, to remake myself for as long as I could without unsettling Tomi, which had always been too easy to do. If I was too quick, she would accuse me of just taking a break from her because she was an unbearable person. If I was too long, she would ask me who I had called and what I had said about her. I pulled out my phone. My face in the blank screen. The stern forehead, the deep eyes. A text from Theo. Tomi’s ex. I should not be texting with Theo.
Tomi and I met at an arts high school. I was sixteen. Tomi, a year older, a mysterious transplant from another city, entered her final year already a minor television and film star. She changed the atmosphere. We circled each other for two months, but once we started talking, we could not be pried apart. There was this draw, this magnetism, our anguished attachment; it became the very undertow of my life, and it could not be reasoned with. It was stronger than I was, it was some kind of Godly work.
At the restaurant, I returned to Tomi sitting at the bar, her steak untouched. On this night, Tomi was a syrup, sweet and thick, drugged and drunk, her body loose and hanging from something I could not see––will, I guess, or maybe hunger, an anorexic hunger. Tomi’s lonesome purse, her lonesome body. She does not sense me yet. Seeing the ceiling as an eye, the sky as an eye, the candles eyes, all eyes on Tomi. Climbing back up onto the bar stool, I feel an urge to hold Tomi. We hug for a long time. The uneasy calm between us, the room spinning very slightly.
Briefly, I was Tomi’s assistant and we joked about how little this changed things between us. I scripted what Tomi said in interviews, how to tell the story of Tomi Hall’s life. What to disclose, what to withhold. I was the playwright, the dramatist, I was useful to Tomi. Pulling from the embrace, Tomi said, you’re the one who should have been performing. When I perform, I just pretend I’m you. I’ve been playing you all these years. Every role I play, I play you. Is it a question of purity? Maybe. You’ve always had so few objects. You don’t itemize. All dogs love you. You won’t commit to anyone. You won’t have a baby or even a job title. You live like you’re in witness protection. In semi-darkness. Nothing in the medicine cabinet, nothing in the fridge. One carry-on suitcase. I’ve been out there all this time, a fraud—at auction, scanning the room for the highest bid—while you do the noble thing and write. Who writes for a living? You should be sainted.
I should, I agreed with Tomi.
Not even a television writer but a playwright, Tomi said.
Then Tomi, the hummingbird, frantically looped back to her original thought, I need a change, Tomi said, and her eyelids went heavy then bright. I’m a cash cow, I can do whatever the fuck I want, and now I just want to make art with my friend. I want to make art with you. Let’s do something together. I’ve never done a play. Write something for me. No, write something for me and you. A two-hander. We’ll do it one night only. It will change the course of our lives—you’ll see, Mia—everything will open up for you.
A previous draft of this story was first performed by its author at the reading series Oral Method on April 25, 2024 at the Ace Hotel.
Claudia Dey is a playwright, an essayist, and novelist whose work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Believer, and McSweeney’s, among other places. She’s the author of three novels, including most recently, Daughter (2024).