“So I don’t have much to worry about?” I felt a phantom pinch on the back of the neck. Betrayal.

“I mean more that Jakub is not a worthwhile or trusting person for you to spend time with in Krakow. Better yet you stick with me, or historians of repute.” Marek gazed off to the cliffs. “Ah. They shuttered the portion where the boy jumped. So cautious!”

I followed his eyes. Young people, mostly boys, catapulted off the rocks that loomed over the water, one after another, so fast that they didn’t have time to clear the water for the next jumper. Only a narrow section—about three feet wide—was roped off.

“Let them jump. So they die, so what? People die every year at Zakrzówek. That’s practically why they come!” Marek shook his head, spraying quarry water. “Let us go there. Let us cross those stinky ropes and jump from the forbidden spot! Just to show how stupid they are.” His chin flushed as though he’d proposed a brave rebellion and couldn’t wait even the second it would take for my reaction to register.

This was Rosie’s favorite misadventure: dangerous, pointless, and of zero appeal. The very attitude that won her fellowships: her sculptures were formed from live bees, aspic, lead, Freon, a paste made from simmered poison ivy. She measured hydrochloric acid in flimsy plastic water bottles, harvested cyanide from apple seeds, dusted fairground butter sculptures with lye. Everyone worshipped her daring. Such a little girl with so much mercury. No one saw her as I did, in sweatpants, scarfing pudding over the sink, worrying her work was all carnival.

Straight from a marriage, Rosie had attacked me with her latent lesbianism, molding my contours with strong hands, building up my shape. Even her misguided attention was narcotic. I always said yes. We’d attempted to spend the night on the observation deck of the Empire State Building and were kicked out only when she spray-painted the security cameras. We’d swum in the East River, ducking from barges and ferries. We’d devoured full platters of Princeton’s half-baked, pockmarked cafeteria pizza, its beige cheese as toxic as any of her sculptures.

My cowardice about changing my body would only disgust her. If I jumped from the cliff, I’d at least have a story about my courage. But the idea of falling, my body loose in the open air, clenched my intestines. “No.”

Marek regarded me with disgust. He plowed his mushroom body back to shore.