When the surface of old brick is covered with contemporary plaster and subsequently covered with contemporary latex paint, a series of events are set in motion.

Rain eventually returns. Even in this era where the climate has become other, the water comes back. How the rain makes its way into the ground in a place where so little ground is unclaimed by structures is mostly imagined. There is a corner, for example, where two higher buildings meet that I can see from the leather chair in the sitting room. The eavestrough that runs along the offending building is fallible, undoubtedly full of silt from rooftops and parts of pigeons. In heavy rain, water can’t move through the downspout and so it flows over, soaking the seam of walls. A heavy smudge.

What goes down then comes up. And out.

In home improvement shows, the people with really big budgets pay for lime plaster. It takes ages to dry and horsehair to bind it together, but it breathes with the brick so the little highways of water that criss-cross the exterior of a house don’t end up in penetrating congestion.

When I saw the bloom of damp on the plaster in the corner of the laundry room, I thought about the path of the water that was visible to me on those other buildings because of my perspective. I wondered what the damp patterns in their corners are like, and in which rooms. Do they sleep beside them or get to keep them in the back of a closet? If I hang my longest coat on the left, closest to the corner, I can almost forget that mine isn’t there.