Chapter Text
We didn't take an Uber out of the Botanical Gardens. Instead, a second or two after I had spoken, Mozart reached into the backpack that had been resting against the park bench and handed me a sweatshirt from within the bag before kneeling down and picking up a handful of small rocks off the ground, half of which he pushed into a pocket of the sweatshirt. "I'll be exiting the Gardens along the path to the right. Wait fifteen minutes, then put the sweatshirt on--with the hood down--and exit along the path to the left. Head three blocks up from the entrance to the Gardens, then turn left and go two more blocks. There's a coffeeshop there called Common Grounds; they don't have any cameras pointed at their shop and they're pretty sympathetic. Order a drink, and when you're waiting, head to the bathroom. Go into a stall, turn the sweatshirt inside out, and put the rocks inside one of your shoes. Once the sweatshirt's hood is up, that should fool the cameras and any software matching your face and your gait to Antonio Salieri, social media organizer for Senator Joseph. Do you have Signal on your phone?”
I stared at him, a bit surprised. "You're reckless enough to take a photo of you in front of treasonous graffiti, but have an entire repertoire of movie-grade spy tactics when it comes to leaving a park?"
"You said you wanted to stop being a coward, and I believe you! I want to show you something. I trust you. But I don't want to get you killed."
"And what you're about to show me could get me killed."
"Well yeah, but if it makes you feel better you could easily get me killed by telling anyone about what you see. I think you're better than that, Mr. Salieri--I think you've got a heart, and a conscience. So, you’ve got Signal on your phone?"
"Not that I know of." I pulled out my phone; I had just enough bars of cell service to download the app. We waited together in silence while the little download wheel scrolled to completion. I connected the app to my phone number. And then, I unfolded the sweatshirt Mozart had handed me. "Can you at least give me a hint about where we're going?"
"Nope. But it'll be worth it."
So I slid the sweatshirt on. "Go on, I'm fifteen minutes behind." He nodded, and stood up from the bench, walking down the path to the right.
My heart was in my throat as I counted down the fifteen minutes on my phone. I had no idea what to expect when I left the park, or where Mozart would lead me to. I was walking in blind--almost literally, once my hood was up. All I could do was trust him. That hadn't served me well in school, when I had trusted my friends with my greatest secret. It logically seemed foolish to think that things could change. Yet as soon as the fifteen minutes were up, I walked out of the park along the path to the left, following Mozart's instructions to the letter.
He met me at Common Grounds a little bit after my coffee had arrived. "Seth!" he said, with his trademark cheerful Amadeus swagger. "So good to see you, man!" He ordered an excessively sugary blended drink at the counter, and then slid into the second seat at my table and began talking my ear off about utter nonsense, primarily involving the Mets game last night (which for all my knowledge, didn't actually happen). Once I had finished my coffee, and he had slurped up his sugary nonsense and probably given himself a brain freeze, he grinned wildly and said "Well, we'd better head to the subway if we want to catch that hockey game!" Then, he tossed his cup in the trash, I put my coffee cup in the used dishes tub, and I followed him out the door to the nearest subway station.
At the station, Mozart handed me a prepaid metro card; I later learned he had a stash of these, purchased strictly with cash over the last few months at unconnected subway stations. He boarded the train with confidence. I followed him. At various points in time that I couldn't measure, we switched lines, got off and waited for the next train (with an exaggerated charade by Mozart of how he just realized he had gotten off at the wrong stop), and finally exited at a station somewhere deep in Queens. I wasn't sure if the elaborate train-switching would confuse any law enforcement or government personnel, but it had certainly confused me: I had no idea where in the borough we were, and definitely couldn't have found where I was on a map. The only clue I had was the distinctive sewage-and-salt smell of the East River.
The subway trip had taken us so long that the sun was already setting by the time we had exited the station. I followed Mozart down winding alleys as streetlights sputtered on next to the all-seeing eye of security cameras. The trepidation I had felt at the Botanical Gardens, which had faded into the background as I had blindly followed orders, rose back into my chest. If Mozart's tricks to avoid detection succeeded, that meant he could murder me here in the middle of Queens and no one would be the wiser. If his tricks failed, we could be arrested any minute for conspiracy to do pretty much anything that went on in the depths of Queens.
Before my thoughts could get the better of me, however, Mozart skidded to a halt, and I almost crashed into him. We were facing a block of dirty, rusting warehouses. Mozart approached one of them, pulled a key out from his pocket, and swiftly unlocked the padlock from the door, pulling me into the darkness within and shutting the door behind us.
A light flickered on, illuminating the darkness. I wasn't sure at first what I was looking at. A couple of dirty mattresses and an equally dirty couch, but all three of which were flung with brightly colored crocheted blankets and pillows. A table with three screens and bags of chips spread across it, with a large PC console shoved underneath. A giant whiteboard with a complicated map of interconnected spokes and nodes that I couldn't decipher. And on the far wall across from me, spray-painted words in the exact same handwriting, signed with the exact same star, I had seen across so many cities in the last few months: Tattoo me on your walls and I'll compose the future.
I turned slowly towards Mozart. "The graffiti...."
"Welcome to The Troublemakers."
"I...I don't understand."
"Oh, Mr. Salieri, don't sell yourself short. I'm pretty sure you do understand, you're just too scared to believe it. I thought you didn't want to be a coward?"
"You did all the graffiti? It's spray-painted all across the country!"
He laughed, and it echoed across the warehouse. "I didn't do all of them! But yeah, I started it, in the Tri-State area. And then plenty of other troublemakers repeated the chorus. We're orchestrating perfect harmony, here from a warehouse in Queens."
"And I assume the billboards were you too?"
"All of those actually were us, even the ones on the West Coast! My sister Nannerl's a genius with tech, she said the electronic billboards were way easier to hack than most of the stuff she works on."
I shook my head. I felt as if I was losing my grasp on reality. "I still don't understand. Why? Why the graffiti, and the billboards, and all of this? And why am I here?"
He cocked his head at me. "You still don't see it? We're thinking the impossible, here in this warehouse. Thinking about how we can make a better world, where the Patriot Party doesn't rule the country under its fascist grip, where everyone can be fed and clothed and housed and cared for, where the police don't terrorize you if you aren't white, where my sister and my girlfriend can be their own selves without needing a male guardian--"
Girlfriend. It was like a bucket of cold water was poured over my head. I almost shivered. "None of that explains why you brought me here," I said, and I couldn't hide the ice from my voice.
Mozart sighed. "You seem so smart, and yet you're being such an idiot! I need your help, of course."
"What makes me think I'd help you with--" I waved my hand around at the junk which filled the warehouse. "--all of this?"
"Because I know that you're unhappy. I know you're better than the work you do. And I've seen you talk to all the trolls on Twitter and Facebook. I know you have a way with words. I know you can help us."
"You're asking the impossible," I spat out. "I work for the Patriot Party. I'm loyal to the President. I've made so many sacrifices to get myself a stable job, where I can make some money and keep my head down and keep myself safe. And now you want me to become a terrorist?"
"We're not about to kill anyone! But sometimes you need to take drastic measures to change what's going on. We want to motivate the people to rise up, to say no to the Patriot Party policies, to be so loud that they can't ignore us. Do you really think that any of this--the xenophobia, the misogyny, the racism, everything--is normal? Don't you think we need to do something about it?"
"What's your plan, then? To make a bunch of billboards and hope that somehow the Patriot Party dissolves through the sheer force of your graphic design?"
"We fire up the people, make them think that--"
"No. You don't have this planned out. If you want to change hearts and minds, you can't just get the message out and hope it'll stick. You have to make people care. You have to give them concrete examples, show them exactly what the ramifications of abstract policy decisions are. It's not enough to talk about vague ideas. You have to show people how they're suffering, how their loved ones are suffering. How their wives and daughters and girlfriends can't work or live independently. How their black friends can't walk alone without being arrested, how their Latino friends have been deported, how their non-Christian friends have left the country, how the elderly neighbor down the street died from heatstroke when this summer was again the hottest one on record, how their gay friends--" I choked on my words and paused to catch my breath, then waved my hand weakly. "You get the idea."
A smile had crept its way onto Mozart's face. "You do believe in what we're doing, then."
"I...." I knew the answer. How could I not believe in what Mozart was trying to do? "I do. I think."
"That's good enough for me." His smile widened. "I knew I could rely on you."
I let my face soften for a moment. Before I could respond, though, there was a clang, and the door to the bunker slammed open. Standing in the doorway were two women, one in front of the other. The one in front was smaller, with light brown hair pulled back into a wavy ponytail and topped with a black hat. Somewhat scandalously, she was wearing pants; somewhat stressfully she was brandishing a knife at Mozart and I. The woman behind her had loose blond ringlets cascading over her shoulders and the sleeves of her short purple dress and was wielding a large can of what I assumed to be pepper spray or mace.
"Hey!" the smaller woman yelled, approaching me with her knife still pointed at me. "Get away from my brother!"
Mozart burst out laughing, pushing me aside to run towards the women and pull them both into his arms, without any worries about the weapons they were holding. "Nannerl, it's all right!" He kissed the taller blonde on the cheek, and she giggled. I tried not to vomit. "I brought him here on purpose."
The shorter woman gently extricated herself from Mozart's embrace and approached me, her knife still pointed towards my face. "You invited a stranger to the warehouse?"
"He's not a stranger, he's a fan!"
The blonde-haired woman sighed. "Wolfie, you really can't bring fans here. I know how nice it is to get positive feedback, but you know it's not safe..."
"I brought him here on purpose, to help us. He's a really good writer and knows all about how to help persuade people."
"Oh yeah?" the short woman said, and lowered her knife slightly. "Have you fully vetted him?"
"Well, it's hard to do that, since he's currently a Patriot Party employee," Mozart replied.
Instantly, the woman had rushed behind me, pulling my shoulder down so that her knife reached across my neck. "Wolfie, I appreciate your optimism, but this is not a good idea!" she cried. I held my breath. This would be the worst possible way to die, murdered by a hysterical revolutionary in a warehouse in front of my childhood idol.
"I promise you, Nannerl," Mozart said, and approached the woman--presumably named Nannerl--to place a hand over hers which held the knife. "I trust him. He's going to help us actually be effective with our messaging. We'll be able to reach more people, convince them to turn against the Party."
Nannerl sighed, and released me from her grasp. "You know I can't say no to my little brother..."
"I know!" Mozart said with a huge grin. "And I will always take advantage of it." Nannerl gave him a swat, but she was matching his grin.
Nannerl then turned to me. "If my brother trusts you, then that will have to be enough for me. I'm Nannerl."
"She's my older sister and she is brilliant," Wolfgang added. "Have you heard of The Butterfly?"
"The hacker collective that's always in the news for hacking another billionaire's bank account? Of course I have."
The blonde woman, who had since walked in from the doorway, giggled. "That's no collective. That's just Nannerl. She really is brilliant." She extended a hand to me to shake. "I'm Constance, Wolfgang's girlfriend."
I shook her hand, but as soon as I had let go, Wolfgang wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her another loud kiss on the cheek. "She's also brilliant!" he announced. "She's made connections with activist cells all across the country. We wouldn't have been able to get billboards up on the West Coast and in the Midwest without her!" He wrapped his other arm around Nannerl. "I'm so lucky to be working with such amazing women."
I tried to tamp down the jealousy rising up in my throat, but to no success. If Mozart was surrounded by so many beautiful women, then why did he need me?
Constance herself broke my inner complaining. "It's getting pretty late, Mr..."
"Salieri. Antonio Salieri."
"Mr. Salieri. Where are you staying? I wouldn't want you to get lost in Queens."
"I actually took the train up from DC." I realized in a flash of panic that I hadn't booked a return ticket. I had been so blinded by...what, exactly? Getting to flee the country into the sunset with a handsome revolutionary by my side? I was an idiot. "There's a late night train," I said. "I should be able to catch it if I leave now." I had no idea if this was the truth or not, but with Constance's face smiling at me, and Mozart's arm around her, his lips still a little pink from kissing her, I suddenly felt claustrophobic. "I have to go," I blurted.
Mozart's face twisted; I couldn't tell if it was disappointment, anger, regret, or something else entirely. "Will you at least reach out over Signal? I really think your help could be valuable. And I know you want to do something to help, right?"
My vision was tunneling, focusing only on the way Mozart's fingers curled around Constance's waist. "I don't know. I don't know. I have to go."
Constance smiled. "I completely understand; it's a lot to process," she said gently. "I know I was quite trepidatious the first time Nannerl and Wolfgang brought me here, but I feel so much better knowing that I'm helping those who need it and working to put an end to the Patriot Party."
Her face was so kind that I wanted to scream. "I don't know. I need to make that train." And before any of The Troublemakers could say another word, I turned on my heel and walked out the door.
As soon as I was out of the warehouse, I practically ran down the two blocks that separated me from the East River and proceeded to vomit out the contents of my stomach into the already putrid waters. When I stood back up, I caught the eye of a man standing a couple dozen feet away from me, also leaning against the rails that barred us off from the river.
"You all right, man?" he called. "No offense, but you kinda look like shit. I know where folks have got some tents and a fire going, if you need a place to stay."
In the darkening twilight, still wearing the old grey sweatshirt Mozart had given me at the Botanical Gardens, there was nothing to separate me from the man who stood next to the East River with me. Nothing other than luck, and the privilege that genetics and my parents had given me, would take me back on the train to DC while this man slept in a tent in Queens. I bent over the railing and threw up into the waters again.
"I'm fine," I coughed out, when I had stood up again. "I've got somewhere safe to go."
Once I had steadied myself, I walked a few blocks away, until I felt free of the man's watchful gaze. Then I pulled out my phone, called myself an Uber back to Manhattan, checked the train schedule and confirmed there were no trains leaving that night, and found myself a hotel room near Penn Station. I fell asleep to the sounds of the television, to drown out the image of Mozart's hand on Constance's waist and the eyes of the man at the East River.