“Hey, you want a tour?” Jakub bobbed as though on a current.

“Of the city?” I turned to Marek like I required his permission.

“Of Płaszów,” the boy said.

“Oh, don’t, Kuba,” Marek said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A concentration camp,” Jakub said. “Right inside Krakow, though tourists don’t know it. From outside it might look much like any city park. Ladies walk their dog and children run over the earth. Scenes that surprise an American. Because of all the dead. You’re Jewish?”

“A little.” A very little. My Jewish ancestors had abandoned Lesser Poland a century before the war. They’d reached England, where they intermarried with other pasty, moon-faced relatives, posing as Brits for time immemorial. My grandmother never revealed to my father that part of his ethnicity, denied it when my brother chased the genealogy back far enough.

“Wow,” Jakub said, bobbing his chin in reverence. “Then I’m sorry, but you really must go.”

A man slammed into the water ten feet away. Neither Marek nor Jakub glanced over. Rosie would be excited and horrified by the idea of a death camp park, and I could sweeten her up with my insider knowledge before I had to come clean about me.

“What about the law, though? What do you say on your tour, Kuba? Listen, now.” Marek turned to me. “You know this law, yes?”

PiS, the new party in power, had recently deemed it illegal to acknowledge Poland’s complicity in the Holocaust. The rule was enforced by an ominous-sounding entity called the Institute of National Remembrance. “Right,” I said. But Marek was a queer studies professor. He shouldn’t mind some stupid law. None of the Polish historians I’d talked to, here or in America, observed it.

“Oh, Marek,” Jakub flung out both hands dismissively, not sinking an inch. “Nothing I say is any problem.”

“I’m being tender with our dear visitor.” The way Marek spoke to Jakub, eyes narrow, voice thick and breathy, I was certain they’d slept together. Injustice cut through me. I wanted to feel Jakub’s soft, powerful shoulders too. And why not me?

“No one will care!” Jakub cried. “You’re a pure lunatic.”

I laughed in surprise. A body jackknifed into the water over his shoulder.

“Kuba.” Marek’s face hardened. “Don’t.” He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me away from Jakub. His grip burned, too firm, brutal. I couldn’t handle his touch. I jerked free, my legs sticking out to float. When the water settled, I found that I’d pitched away from Jakub.

“JakubMagik,” Jakub called to me, as Marek and I drifted farther away, Marek urging me along with prods to the ribs. “At uj.edu.pl. Two Ks.”