“Did you enjoy the exhibit?” Rachel smiled as she took the red audio tour devices from the two women, disconnecting the player and handing the headset to Jason to sanitize.

“It was… unbelievable,” the blonde woman said.

“You have amazing tour guides,” said the other. They shared a look and walked away laughing.

“Tour guides?” Jason asked.

Rachel shook her head. “No clue. We don’t have anyone on the floor tonight, right?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Jason said.

Rachel shrugged.

“Check it out,” Jason nodded behind Rachel. She turned to see an older couple – early sixties probably – staring around in a daze. But apparent confusion wasn’t what caught Jason’s eye, it was what they were wearing. The woman had a well-worn black coat over a navy dress dotted with small yellow flowers, while the man had a long trench coat over a suit with a dull black tie and a brown fedora. Both outfits looked very well used, but more than that they seemed… dated. Other patrons fluttered past them without taking notice, and the woman noticed Jason and Rachel looking at them. Saying something to her husband she pointed, then they started hurrying over.

When they came within a few feet, Rachel gave them her best warm smile and said “Guten Abend!”

The woman’s face lit up. “Oh! Du sprichst Deutsch?” and she took her hand to shake.

“Ja,” Rachel replied, “Ich bin ein wenig aus der Übung…”

The man beamed as well, “Es ist ein Glück, dass wir dich getroffen haben!”

“What are they saying?” Jason asked.

“She asked if I spoke German. I said yes, but I’m a bit out of practice. He said it was lucky they ran into me.”

“You speak German?”

“Year abroad in Berlin. Will you cover for me?”

“Yeah,” Jason said a little surprised at the exchange. “No worries.”

“Bist du hier für die Ausstellung?” I asked if they had come for the exhibition.

“Oh, ja, ja!” the woman confirmed.

Rachel suggested they check their coats so they’d be more comfortable and led them to the coat check.

“Hey, Taylor, these two would like to check their coats.” Turning to the couple – Hans and Emma – how the coat check worked and handed them their ticket. “Thanks Tay!”

“You know them?” Taylor asked.

Rachel looked at the couple who were grinning with excitement now that they had a guide. “Just met them. But I don’t think anyone else on staff knows German, so I figured I’d take them around the Baumann exhibition.”

“Have fun!”

They took the elevator up to the fourth floor and as soon as the doors opened the tail of the line snaking out came into view. This looked longer than Rachel had seen the exhibit.

“So many people!” Emma exclaimed in German.

“Yes,” Rachel replied in German. “The exhibit closes this weekend. Everyone wants one last look at Baumann’s work.”

The two exchanged a prideful look.

Rachel led them past the serpentine line up to the front where Aly metered the number of people going into the exhibition at once. “Hey Rach,” she started. “You know no passes, right?”

“Oh, I know – nothing during the last week. These are VIPs,” Rachel explained. At the museum “VIP” had a very quantifiable designation and referred to those who donated an obscene amount of money.

Aly looked them up and down. “Really? They don’t look like VIPs…”

Rachel knew she was going to have to bluff, but she decided to bluff big. “They’re from Germany. One of the largest and oldest shareholders in Volkswagen.”

Emma and Hans waved at Aly enthusiastically.

“You wouldn’t know it…” she said, suppressing a sneer. “Go on in…” she waved a hand at them and turned back to the line.

“Thanks, Aly!” Rachel led the couple into the exhibit where they walked to “Toy Horse With Duck”, one of Baumann’s first successful paintings where a toy hobby horse lay on its side, with the viewer up above and in front of it. Looming over the horse and stick was the deep shadow of a yellow ducky toy.

“That’s the horse you gave him when he was four!” Emma said to Hans.

“Yes, yes,” he agreed. “I don’t remember the duck, though…”

They had a running commentary on just about every painting. “Was this when he was visiting Dusseldorf?” and “Really! Affe should have some decency – that woman has no clothes on!” and “I just don’t understand.”

When we came upon “Harvest at Mainburg,” Hans and Emma stopped in awe. Hans discretely dabbed at his eyes, while Emma openly sniffed and let tears run unchecked down her cheeks. “Heimat” Hans said putting his arm around Emma and holding the woman tight against him. Home.

“This was one of his favorites,” I explained. “He never sold it. Never parted with it until he died.”

Hans closed his eyes and nodded solemnly.

By contrast, when we stood before Baumann’s widely regarded masterpiece, “Moon Over Dresden,” Hans and Emma stared openly impressed, but not moved in the way they had been. “When was he in Dresden before the war?” Emma asked Hans.

“Before the war? I didn’t think he’d been there…”

“The left side there is clearly Dresden before the bombing. Didn’t your brother live there before the war?”

“Oh, Gerhard, yes, yes. That must have been it.”

Rachel watched fascinated at the contrast of the two older people bickering over logistical technicalities while the patrons around them gawked in amazement at the painting.

They continued on through the rest of the exhibit, their comments less personal for the second section, and more simply appreciative of the works. Finally they came to the end and Rachel escorted them to the coat check to retrieve their coats.

“Thank you so much, Rachel! We are so grateful you were able to show us around the exhibit,” Emma said, embracing Rachel in a tight hug.

“Yes, thank you so much. Seeing Werner’s work was… such a treat. Thank you.”

“Habe einen wunderschönen Abend!” I called after them as they headed down the main stairs.

“I heard you said they were VIPs,” Jason said. “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to get busted?”

“Not in the slightest,” she said as she pulled out her phone and started browsing.

Jason shook head, “Seriously? Who were those people?”

Rachel turned the phone to Jason, showing him a photograph of the same couple, younger by perhaps a decade. The sepia-toned picture had scratches and was marred around the edges. The caption read, “Hans and Emma Baumann.” “They died in the camps during the war,” Rachel added.

The blood ran out of Jason’s face as he stared at the picture and Rachel took the red audio tour devices from the family coming out of the exhibit, disconnecting the player and handed the headset to Jason to sanitize.

I don’t go to the museum much, but when I heard there was a Werner Baumann exhibition coming to the MOMA, I absolutely had to go. His “Moon over Dresden” ranks high on my favorite paintings ever – his use of colors to evoke both the sleeping city with its streets featuring dabs of faint streetlights below and the exuberantly luminous yellow and gold moon above never fails to take my breath away. A poster of “Moon Over Dresden” adorned my dorm room wall never failed to lift my spirits.

Unfortunately, life being as it tends to be I didn’t get an opportunity to go until the week before the exhibition ended. They’re open late one day a week, and Sarah agreed to go with me. I figured the line for the exhibit would belong, and the long snaking line of people didn’t disappoint! Fortunately, the line moved faster than I expected, and between the people watching and gabbing with Sarah, we found ourselves ushered into the first room of the exhibit with “Werner Baumann: From Surrealism to Late Modernism in Post War Germany” projected on a wall with an blown up detail of “Moon Over Dresden”.

“Oh my God, Sarah!” I excitedly tapped her on the shoulder.

“Right, girl?!” she beamed back.

Entering the exhibit I was struck suddenly by how little I actually knew of Baumann, especially looking at his earlier, more surrealist works.

We stood in front of a painting I hadn’t seen before of a garishly colored airplane that looked like both a biplane on one side and a more modern single-wing fighter on the other. Both Sarah and I fiddled with our little read audio tour devices. “Jenna, what’s the number for this one?” Sarah asked.

I craned my neck to read the small print on placard next to the painting. “5-4-0-7,” I read.

“I wouldn’t bother, ladies,” a voice came from behind us. “Baumann eschewed much of his earlier work. This painting in particular he called ‘obvious’ and ‘amateurish’. It’s only here because the Ernst museum overpaid for it at auction and insisted it be part of this traveling exhibit to try to boost it’s worth,” she gave a little scoff, “good luck with that!”

We turned to see a woman in all black, the palette the museum docents wore. Her dark hair was up in a tight bun under a jaunty beret which stood out because none of the other docents wore hats. She didn’t have a name tag, but saw our quizzical looks and quickly added, “Good evening, ladies.” Putting a hand to her chest she introduced herself, “Greta. And put those dreadful things away,” she waved at the audio tour devices. “I’ll take you around.”

Sarah and I looked at each other. “Are you sure?” Sarah asked. “It’s pretty crowded. Is it okay for you to just take us around?” she added emphasis on “us” because, well, we weren’t the fanciest (read: hoity-toity-est) dressed around.

“Absolutely! Please, let’s step over here to ‘Nude #12’ which Baumann remained proud of throughout his life. Pay particular attention to the line detail in the body of the model and contrast that with the more rough lines in the face…”

We drank it in. Greta didn’t stop at every painting, but waved off some as “lesser” and went on at length for some time on others. And like with the airplane painting, she provided backstories for many of the pieces. “Werner kept this on display in his house when he was living in Berlin,” she explained in front of one landscape. “Dealers practically hammered down his door trying to buy it off the wall, but he loved this painting. These are the rolling hills outside of Mainburg where his family grew hops. He loved that area tremendously,” she smiled as if recalling a memory. She snapped out of her reverie and started, “Pay no attention to this next painting – just a commission,” resuming her tour.

It took us a good hour to get through the majority of the exhibition. Ocasionally I noticed the side-long looks of other patrons, but I chalked it up to envy – no one else had a docent for just their party. More surprisingly, though, no one tried to eavesdrop on our tour. I’ll admit I’ve been known to position myself near enough to be within earshot of a tour guide giving an explanation in a museum, but not so close that I’d have to actually join the group. Blissfully, Greta was all ours!

The currator clearly wanted to save Baumann’s most famous work – “Moon over Dresden” – until near the end, and when we came into the room my breath caught audibly as I saw the painting I’d adored for so long alone and perfectly lit on the far wall. “You’re never quite ready for it, are you?” Greta said. “I could go on for hours about this one, but I’ll just let you enjoy it.” She said standing back and letting me openly gape. After a long time – though no period of time could have been enough – I tore myself away and rejoined Greta and Sarah and we started into the last room of the exhibition.

Sensing the end, I said “Greta, thank you so much for this tour!”

“Yes,” Sarah added, “This has been an invaluable wealth of information. Thank you!”

“Oh,” Greta dismissed us with a hand wave, “I’m passionate about Werner Baumann, and I’m happy to share my knowledge! Come, there are a few more you have to see!”

And there were! The last room represented the late years of Baumann’s career, and the surrealistic nihilism had given way to vibrant, rich colors and scenes that clearly grew out of the meteoric success of “Moon over Dresden. Greta had finished describing the influences behind a still life, and we regarded it with rapt attention for a few long minutes. When we didn’t hear Greta insisting we move on to another painting, I turned and gasped.

“What?” Sarah said and turned. “Oh my god.”

Greta stood behind us, but not in person. The final painting in the exhibition perfectly captured her unmistakable features, her hair in a bun under a beret, her black outfit. In the painting she sat reclined on a red sofa, a wry smile on her face, her eyes staring directly at the viewer as if having shared a joke – or an anecdote. We cautiously approached the painting. Sarah and I traded looks and we both fumbled for the red audio tour. “Number?!” Sarah asked hurriedly.

“5-4-7-3,” I said.

A moment later we had the earphones on and a short melody played before a man with a deep voice began, “Baumann only painted longtime companion, Greta Holzer, once despite the many years the two spent together. An American, the two met after the war during one of Baumann’s infrequent trips to the United states. Married at the time, Baumann kept in correspondence with Holzer, an up and coming artist in her own right. After his wife died, in 1962, Holzer moved to Berlin and the two were inseparable, though they never married. Following his death, Baumann championed his work until her death in 1975. Many of the works here are from the Holzer family private collection.”

We turned in our audio tour devices in an utter daze.

“Did you enjoy the exhibit?” the smiling woman receiving the devices asked.

“It was… unbelievable,” Sarah said.

“You have amazing tour guides,” I said, leaving the woman to trade a quizzical look with the man cleaning the headsets.

The man stood on a dirt service road that ran the perimeter of the vast wheat field. Though not yet full, even in the dead of night he could see furious movement throughout the field – the rustling of many stalks of wheat, the quick patter of feet, and the slow methodical plodding of tamping down stalks.

“Quite an operation, isn’t it?” The voice from behind him made the man jump. He turned to see an older man – clearly a farmer. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you…”

“It’s… it’s okay.”

“Name’s Deke,” the older man said, offering his hand.

“Eliot,” he said, shaking it.

“Haven’t seen you around here before, Eliot,” Deke said, staring out over the field.

“I, uh… I just got here. I, well, I…”

“You died. Come on, you can say it. We’ve all been there,” Deke said with a grin.

“I died,” Eliot managed with effort.

“Atta boy,” Deke said slapping him hard on the back. “So I betch’er wondering what’s goin’ on out here?”

“Yeah, I was trying to figure it out…”

“Where you from, Eliot?”

“Had a soy bean farm up in Illinois….” He drifted off thinking about it.

“That how you died?”

Eliot nodded slowly. “Yep… tractor accident.”

“Goddamn, that’s a shame. But Oklahoma is pretty far afield from Illinois…”

“Well,” Eliot started, “I couldn’t bear to sit around and watch my family mourn me and go on without me. Watching them without being able to do anything to help… that felt like hell.”

Deke coughed out a wry laugh, “Don’t I know it. Don’t I know it.” He took off his hat, scratched the short gray hairs around the perimeter of his head. “So you decided to take a walk and see what the rest of the country grew,” he said putting the hat back on his head.

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Eliot, what if I told you it’s possible to go a lot farther than you can imagine?”

Eliot raised an eyebrow. “I don’t follow.”

Deke nodded slowly. “Well, we’re part of a group…”

“We?”

Deke gestured out to the jostling in the field, “the collective we. Some of us have traveled pretty darn far since passing on.”

“Like Australia?”

“Like Alpha Centauri.”

“The star?”

“Mmm hmm,” Deke said. “And farther. Once you realize you’re not tethered to one place and you’re not bound by physics… sky’s no longer the limit,” his gaze tracked up to the moon above.

“Huh,” Eliot said, trying to take it in. “Find anything?”

“Oh yeah. That’s why we’re here in this field.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Eliot, in the vernacular of our lamentable president, there are some serious bad hombres out there. But unlike the aliens that Cheeto in the White House complains about, these aliens really do mean us harm.”

“Really?”

“Sure as shit. So we learned their language, their lore, what makes ‘em afraid. Like, blood-chilling, hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck (if they had hair) scared.”

“There’s things that scare aliens?”

“Words. Symbols, really…”

“And you guys are… drawing them?”

“Press calls ‘em ‘crop circles.’” He shrugged, “they can call ‘em whatever the hell they want. When the scout ships break atmosphere, spot an ancient warning symbol, they high tail it for the next habitable star system.”

Eliot was silent for a long time. “I’ve got a question, Deke.”

“Yeah?”

“What do you care? You’re dead… you’re all dead. Aliens can’t hurt you. Who cares?”

Deke chuckled a low bass rumble. “You’re new dead.”

“So?”

“You’re gonna learn that there are things even the dead fear. The Grays? They don’t discriminate between the living and the dead. In fact, they’re obsessed with figuring out what makes a ghost a ghost… and harnessing that for themselves. It ain’t pretty.” Deke shivered and fell into silence. Finally, he added, “You’ll see. In time.”

“This is a lot to take in.”

“Damn right it is.”

“What about everything else that’s rumor?”

“Such as?”

“Bigfoot?”

“Real.”

“Loch Ness Monster?”

“Eh,” Deke held out a hand and tilted it back and forth. “It’s complicated.”

“Chupacabra?”

“Heh. Real. There’s a story there…”

“Elvis?”

“Didn’t you ever hear ‘Jailhouse Rock?’”

“Of course, but is he still alive?”

“Oh, hell no. He’s been dead.”

“Vampires? Werewolves?”

“Fake as shit.”

“Okay,” Eliot nodded. “This is a lot, but… it makes me feel better. I feel like maybe there’s a purpose for me.”

“We can always use more hands,” Deke said. “Lemme introduce you. We’ll put you right to work. We’ve got to finish this one by dawn and we’re a little behind.”

“What’s it say?”

“Fuck you, you fucking fuckers,” he saw the look on Eliot’s face. “Well, that’s a loose translation…”