“Quiet, you,” said Marek, dolphin kicking deeper into the quarry. I followed, though I didn’t want to. We reached the center, where the reflection stayed intact whenever we were still, conifers etched in gray on the water’s surface. My lungs relaxed—this far out, no one could land on me.

“I won’t go,” I said, though I’d already committed Jakub’s email to memory.

“Go to Płaszów as much as you want. Live and breathe at Płaszów for a hundred years. You think I care about that nonsense law?” Marek pursed his lips. They were still so dark in the water, so it couldn’t have been lipstick, but they looked even less natural with the rest of his flesh bleached blue. Maybe they’d been tattooed.

“I said that about PiS because you shouldn’t be with Kuba. I’m sorry to tell you, he’s a, what do you call it. A person who is like an animal attacking and eating more dainty animals.”

“A predator?”

“Yes.”

“But he looks like a child.”

“That is your first mistake. Jakub is only, perhaps, a child in the heart. He is thirty-seven years old. He may jump at you in attempts to kiss.”

In the water, Jakub had felt short. I could push him away easily, his eagerness setting him off-kilter. Rosie would be delighted by my bravery, would think it cheeky I’d kissed a boy. She required more boldness from me and took every chance, even in public, to touch my breasts, my ass, my hips. “I’ve never had hips in a relationship,” she’d said once, squeezing their bulge in Penn Station. “How do you leave them alone?”

As she blushed with arousal, I couldn’t bear to tell her that vomit touched my throat and that, when she let me blanket her with my body, my shape disappeared and I became solid and stiff, powerful above her. I itched to even think this, but now that she was far away, life was easier.

“Did Jakub kiss you?” I asked.

As soon as I spoke the words, I regretted it. Marek softened, like his lighting had changed. “I had something with him, yes. Some few months’ affair.” He pointed his nose at the sky, half of which had been rolled over by clouds. “We made love on occasions. We moved toward a kind of beautiful deep intimacy.” He swallowed, neck pulsing. “Alas, but Jakub had other ideas.” Marek’s arm popped from the water, shooting droplets as it arced in illustration. “He possessed a region of young men with whom he enjoyed, shall we say, ‘passing the time.’”

So Jakub wasn’t a predator at all. I wanted to pull his springy body free from Marek’s unworthy hands, to change history so they’d never touched. “So he’s gay?”

“Ha, ha, certainly.”