Magdalena first heard Lina’s theory of men and their radar on the day many years earlier when Lina climbed down onto the balcony of Magdalena’s mother’s apartment in Vilnius to the sound of glass breaking upstairs. Magdalena’s mother was setting the table for breakfast and she gave a little shriek, surprised to see a seven-year-old in her garlic plants. Her mother brought Lina inside and asked her what in God’s name was going on up there and didn’t she know she could be killed climbing between floors like that? Her mother was sending a message, Lina had said. Something like that. And it was hard to imagine that the radar of even the dullest of men wouldn’t pick up on the fact that Lina’s mother was just then shattering every bit of glass in the apartment upstairs.
Until then, all that Magdalena and her mother had known about the Valentukas family who lived above them was that their illegal washing machine leaked, leaving an orange stain on their kitchen ceiling. When Magdalena and her mother first moved in the stain was just a tiny spot, shaped like a rabbit. A sign of springtime, no bigger than Magdalena’s hand. “A rabbit means a new life,” Magdalena’s mother had said, standing in the kitchen looking up at the stain, and they would make one. It was not long after Magdalena’s father had died.
The stain grew steadily, week after week, changing shape each time Mrs. Valentukien? did the laundry. It reflected Magdalena’s mother’s moods. When times were good she saw good omens there—a loaf of bread, brown at the edges, that meant a happy home, or a curl like a woman’s hair, foretelling money—and when times were bad just the sight of it could make her cry. When Magdalena’s mother was a little bit drunk she would tell their fortunes in it. “You see? A mushroom wearing a hat. Ah, and see? He is shooting an arrow. That means that somewhere a nice man is waiting to fall in love with me, only he is like a mushroom, we will have to look very hard to find him.”
“In the forest?” Magdalena would ask.
“Maybe,” her mother would say, and they would both look up at the stain, which really did look like a mushroom shooting an arrow, and would change again on Saturday when Mrs. Valentukien? did the wash. After another drink or two Magdalena’s mother would start to get sentimental and tell Magdalena to go up and ask Mrs. Valentukien? to please never do the laundry again so that Magdalena and her mother wouldn’t lose their friend the mushroom who promised so much. Then Magdalena knew it was time to help her mother into bed, to turn out the lights and lock the door and draw the blinds against the moonlight that was surely right that minute streaming over little mushroom men shooting all variety of arrows in all variety of forests, waiting to be found.
Magdalena’s phone rang. Unidentified caller, it said. She was glad she hadn’t been the first to call. She let it ring four times, then said hello.
“Hey,” Ivan said.
“Hey,” she said.
“Look, I’m sorry I’ve been a bit out of it lately.” Ivan spoke English without an accent, at least according to him. Magdalena was no expert at accents. Maybe it was only his way of trailing off at the end of his sentences, as if he was always deciding that what he was saying wasn’t worth the effort before he’d even finished saying it, that reminded Magdalena of the Russian guys she knew back home.
“Uh-huh,” Magdalena said. “Is okay.” He had been ignoring her at work, going off to do the inventory when her shift started. Lina wouldn’t have picked up the phone. But Lina always got called back.
“Look, when can I see you?” Ivan asked. He made the schedule, so he knew what time she worked.
“I don’t know,” Magdalena said. “I’m busy.”
“Meet me in ten minutes, yeah?” Ivan said. “By the fountain.”
The stain from the Valentukas family’s washing machine had gone through a particularly violent transformation in the week or so before plates began smashing into the walls of the apartment upstairs and Lina climbed down onto their balcony. This was due, it turned out, to Ruta Valentukien?, Lina’s mother, washing every piece of fabric in their house, including the red drapes, which made the orange stain on Magdalena’s kitchen ceiling blush pink around the edges. Ruta Valentukien? washed the mattress covers and the lace from the windows. She washed the tablecloths and couch pillows. When she ran out of laundry soap she used shampoo, which made the washing machine explode into a mess of freesia-smelling bubbles. It was the only way Ruta Valentukien? knew of getting rid of the smell of burned hair. Lina’s father and his new girlfriend—her hair turned to black goo on the ends, the result of Ruta having dragged her out of their bed and straight to the stove where the girl’s pretty blonde hair flared up like dry hay—had left in a hurry. But the stench of that hair remained—the bitch. Cheap dye, no doubt about it, Magdalena’s mother told Ruta, sniffing the air when she took Lina back upstairs with Magdalena following behind with a broom to sweep up the glass. Good-quality hair doesn’t smell like that, Magdalena’s mother said, and took over from Ruta, who was crying into the coffee she was heating for them in an old saucepan—there was nothing else left to make it in. Ruta had opened all the windows, the illegal washing machine was groaning quietly in the corner, and even through the scent of shampoo Magdalena could smell something scorched and bitter.
“Do you want to see my shells?” Lina asked Magdalena. Lina was a class ahead of Magdalena at school; they had never spoken to each other before. Though their mothers said hello when they passed each other on the stairs, Lina was usually out playing with the older kids or, when she wasn’t, Magdalena was too shy to do more than smile from behind her mother’s packages and scuff her shoe against a step.
Lina had her own room, unlike Magdalena, who slept on the foldout couch. Her father was a truck driver and she had shells from all over the world, pink and yellow and white and one giant one, the prize, that curled into itself like a bony ear. “Listen,” Lina said. “You can hear the ocean.”
“Magdute?” her mother called from the kitchen. “Run downstairs and get us some coffee cups.”
“Okay,” Magdalena said. But she didn’t have to take the stairs. Lina showed her the magic combination: left foot cross right foot, big step to the side and down, change hands and down again, and Magdalena landed with a little thump next to the garlic her mother was growing on their balcony.