Page 51 of Maybe Some Other Time

The audience cheered again as the performers shook their feathers and their naked breasts to Rosemary’s vocals.

The ones closest to the audience handed out glittery ribbons as souvenirs.

Many happy men and smiling women took pieces of ribbon from the dancers’ bouquets as the song wound down and the performers lined up on the stage again.

When the curtain fell, Thelma realized she had been leaning over the armrest and clinging to Gretchen the entire time.

“Ever thought you’d do something like this when you were growing up?” Gretchen asked as Thelma grabbed her purse off the floor.

“Maybe!” She has no idea how many panties I saw at dances in the ‘40s. Including her own. When Thelma said she had once Jitterbugged, she meant it. “Then again, I don’t think I’ve seen that many breasts at once since a high school locker room. Very different environment.”

Gretchen took her hand as they stood. “I bet. Me, I avoided it as much as possible.”

They headed toward the Ferris wheel not too far away from the building.

With night now fallen, Thelma took in the bright lights of Vegas, including the ones illuminating the Ferris wheel in the near distance.

As soon as they lined up to wait their turn, Thelma checked her phone and saw two messages from Megan.

“Hey, are you okay?” “We’re going back to our room.

Could you wait to come back until like… after 11? Thanks.”

“They’re so doing it,” Gretchen said while looking over Thelma’s shoulder.

“Gretch!” Thelma shoved her phone in her purse. “That’s none of our business.”

“Trust me, I used to babysit that kid. I don’t wanna think about it, either.”

Their turn to enter an “observation cabin” came only a few minutes later.

Thelma assumed it was a typical Ferris wheel that allowed a pair to watch the world go by in private, but wasn’t opposed to sharing a moving room with twenty other people who mostly kept to themselves.

She and Gretchen picked a spot that let them see the length of the Strip as their cabin leisurely ascended.

Music played and lights created a dazzling display, but Thelma was more into hanging onto the rail and gazing out into the distance with her date beside her.

“I’ve had a lot of fun tonight,” she told Gretchen.

Behind them, most of the other guests gathered together to take pictures for some club they were in.

The lights dimmed while the music continued to play.

Soon, all that remained was Thelma and the woman next to her.

“Thanks for inviting me out. I can almost forget having to go on a plane again tomorrow.”

“I should be thanking you for distracting me from how boring this town is when I’m by myself. To think, I really tried to get out of it.”

That gave Thelma a recurring thought. “Perhaps you saw a sign. Or heard a sign, as it usually happens for me.”

“A sign, huh?”

“Yup! Like that song we danced to. ‘Twilight Time,’ by the Platters.”

“As sung by Willie Nelson,” Gretchen reminded her.

“The point is that the original song was playing at one of the most important moments of my life. Just a few months ago. Shortly before we met.”

A flash of light from the Strip briefly illuminated Gretchen’s face. “Is that so?”

“We don’t really think about those things while they’re happening, you know?

But then they keep coming back like a guardian angel.

I like to think…” Thelma faced the window, breathing in deeply for strength.

“I like to think things happen for a reason. There are no true accidents, like the major things. Maybe we forge our own destinies to some extent, but…”

“But, what?”

Thelma pivoted directly into Gretchen. “But it’s no coincidence, right? That right when I needed someone the most, they appeared.”

“You mean me?”

“It’s not like I was looking…”

Gretchen hugged her again. Every time we’re ensconced in one another…

Thelma felt a little lighter. A little more protected.

She nuzzled her nose against Gretchen’s shoulder and maneuvered a hand beneath her jacket.

For a few blessed moments, they watched a city like Las Vegas slowly pass by, giggles, laughter, and shouts of disbelief erupting behind them—but never distracting them from each other.

“I’m glad I met you, Gretch.”

The hand on her waist momentarily lightened before squeezing her with every ounce of strength in Gretchen’s body. “I’m glad I met you, too. Even if you’re Robert’s niece…”

“About that…”

But Thelma had no intention of sharing the truth that night. Let her think whatever she wants about me. Thelma knew a kiss was coming, and she would be damned by her own guardian angel if she passed the prime opportunity.

She wasn’t sure, but Thelma swore that fireworks exploded in the distance the moment her lips landed on Gretchen’s.

The silliest thing wasn’t that Thelma went with Gretchen up to her room. It was that Gretchen thought Thelma might be nervous to be alone with a bed present between them.

If anything, she couldn’t wait to close the sheer curtains while leaving open the blackouts. Gretchen’s view of the Strip wasn’t grand, but it was inspiring enough for Thelma to remove her denim jacket and toss it atop Gretchen’s on the back of a lounge chair.

“This is a big leap up from my couch with my cat watching,” she joked as she came up behind Thelma, who still gazed out the window. “but, you know, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want—”

She was cut off by Thelma pushing her back from the window. Toward the bed.

“There’s a lot that I want,” Thelma sultrily declared as Gretchen sat on the bed. “But rarely do people let me tell them what that is.”

“Well, uh…” Ever the consummate date, Gretchen maintained whatever veneer of confidence her own guardian angel had graced upon her. “What do you want, Thel?”

Thelma reached behind her back and tugged on her zipper. “To feel like my own woman in this very confusing world.”

Gretchen said nothing. She merely watched as Thelma lowered the bust of her dress before letting it all pool at her feet.

Gone were her days of garter belts and heavy-duty bras.

The physique Gretchen beheld was a bra fitted on her by a kindly helper in a department store and a demure slip that allowed her to keep some semblance of modesty beneath her dress.

Too bad I don’t have a bunch of feathers.

Thelma reached behind herself again and unsnapped her bra.

Gretchen’s mouth fell slightly, but she did not protest the unveiling of Thelma Van der Graaf’s breasts.

“And…” Thelma bridged the gap between them, hardly aware that more than her nipples were peaked. “I want you.”

She was high on the fever this woman, this new life, gave her.

This sinful city has me in its clutches.

Bibles burned at the pulpit of her youth as she tossed her clothes onto the floor and announced her nudity to the only woman who would know what to do with it now that they were alone in a hotel room.

Thelma had earned this. After everything, from the fears consuming her adrenaline-riddled body one foggy night, to the realities of a brand-new world, she wanted to face a new year in a new universe with her spirit bare and free.

I’ve earned this.

She had checked off the what-ifs from her list. She had followed the what to the if and ended up here, with Gretchen, a woman who brought her down onto the bed with the hunger of someone who had never wanted for another’s companionship—yet she was eager to know Thelma’s, as if their angels had conspired to shield them from the world with feathery wings.

I’ll fly away before I let her out of my sight.

Thelma abandoned who she was and who she once had been.

There was only the person who had dreamed of the kind of serendipity that swelled with waves and blew on cool breezes.

This body—the one that had been through a Depression, rations, and given birth to two babies in three years—was hers to wield and to experience the world through as she gave everything to Gretchen, who soon had her pressing into the mattress with the full weight of her body.

Sweat from their shared movements was nothing less than the hot, whimsical days at the beach with friends and her favorite cousin; cries of carnal desperation echoed down the midnight hallways of an all-girls’ dorm; fervent flirtations danced between bites of cucumber sandwiches and sips of freshly brewed iced tea.

They were all Thelma’s memories. As tactile and lush as the memory she created now.

Kisses crashed all over her body, and the sheets moved with her limbs.

She explored a new part of herself while getting to know every delectable inch of Gretchen’s emerging, womanly form.

A whole new life, a new avenue of potential opened before her that went beyond white-picket fences and children playing in the yard.

None of that is here right now. How could it be?

She was in Vegas. She was in this ephemeral plane of non-existence that was akin to a heavenly purgatory.

Maybe she had died all those months ago. Maybe her steadfastness carried her this far, and soon, she would ascend.

She saw the performers’ neon feathers swaying before her blurry eyes with every thrust of their entwined bodies.

If there were such things as angels, did they have to be all white?

Could their wings be baby pink or a light, dewy green?

What would happen if Thelma stole one and used it to fly high, high above the thickening fog that consumed her one fateful night?

She was consumed now. By something else.

By freedom. By love. By her sense of self.

She had followed the what-ifs and pulled on their thin threads. Thelma unraveled the universe that had been waiting for her. She followed the signs. She heard the voice of her guardian angel whispering to her from sixty years into the future, guiding her to where Thelma Van der Graaf belonged.

“My, my…” Sandy stood in the bedroom doorway, surveying the scene of naked Thelma and the new lover who devoured her like a damned dame possessed. “What have the angels delivered to me today?”

When Thelma clasped a hand that was not her own, billowing with burgeoning pleasure, she finally let the past go.