Facing the bare wall, you find yourself wishing you had never taken it for granted. There is something comforting about its simplicity — its subtle off-white color, its unpretentious flatness, its wide receptiveness, the coolness of it on your dry face. It doesn't move or speak or think about death or weep. It exists as you want it to, receiving thick layers of paint ungrudgingly, even (you imagine) with a smile and sigh. You know instinctively that you don't have to say anything to it to make it love you. You also know that you are very drunk.
You used to talk with her in places surrounded with walls like this one, your hushed voices, meant only for each other, rubbing against their surface, bouncing back toward both of you, sound waves tumbling and dissipating in the hot air. You mapped your lives out on movie tickets and the sides of coffee cups, the solidity of it somehow hidden from you.
Friends would remark offhandedly about the two of you "seeing each other," and you know now that's all it had ever been. You got the job offer in Portland, and feeling the firm, post-college tug of responsibility, moved away. You rented a small apartment in the city, which had rough hardwood flooring and smelled of a 20-year cigarette habit. With your landlord's blessing you primed and painted over the harsh yellow hue on the wall, the same wall against which you are now intoxicatedly pressed, with your eyes closed and your hands outstretched, feeling its smoothness. You embrace it as you ought to have embraced her.
You talked on the phone once. You told her Washington was cold and rainy but otherwise not too drab. The conversation did not last long and you haven't talked since. She's had time enough to start seeing someone else, you reason. She never said she loved you so you're left to guess.