apinkyandthebrainhomage by KZ Rochelle (of course)
See what K & Z were up to in the previous episode of The Days of Our Pandemic or follow K & Z from the beginning.…
No one would know it from the looks of things outside the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane (largely because no one stood outside the lavender house with blue violet trim on Wonky Way Lane, not with the Venice-canal type COVID cleansing diminishing the human traffic and debris on the road), but things inside the house became drafty after the busted pipe and water park bathroom episode.
“I’m going to draft the best players!” K told Z as she combed her hair and capped her head to hide the graying roots near her scalp.
“Mmhmmm,” replied Z who was not at all listening to K. She was too busy contemplating the plan she planned to enact, the plan she kept planning for success, the plan she kept having to redesign, the plan that kept getting thwarted.
“I have to get the best players if I’m going to win the tournament, Z,” said K.
“Mmhmmm,” said Z.
“And then I can run through the house with arms up in a Rockyesque victory.”
“Ahhh,” said K.
“Z! Are you listening to me?! You hate Rocky but you love sports.”
“Hmmm?”
“I said it’s Draft Day for the football card tournament. I’m going to draft Peyton Manning and Randy Moss and Emmett Smith.”
“I thought you said today was Draft Day.”
“I did.”
“Then why aren’t you drafting today’s players? Or at least, just-before-Covid players?”
“I am! I’m going to go for Harry Kane and Lionel Messi and, of course, Virgil van Dyke! The best footballers around.”
Z breathed deeply. “K, those men do not all play the same sport.”
“They do, too. It’s a football draft so you have to draft footballers.”
“And what is a footballer, K?”
“A baller who foots,” said K. “Which can be confused with a ball with feet, but it’s not the same.”
“I don’t even want to know.” Z rolled her eyes. “Whatever sport you end up in, find the women. They’re able to see in ways the men cannot. If you forget the women, you forget half the game.”
“Oh, Z,” said K. “How can I forget the women? I am the women!”
Z thought about it. She knew it was not what K intended to say, but, in a way, she was right. K and Z, Z and K. They were the women. Z a mirror’s reflection of K’s visage — though how her intelligence multiplied in on itself and never refracted to K was a bit of a mystery.
“Do you want to play, too, Z? You can have only women. If you want.”
“No, K,” said Z. “I do not want to play. And you won’t either. We will be far too busy to play any kind of football.”
“Why, Z? What will we be doing?”
“The same thing we do every day, K. Trying to escape the world enclosed by these four walls!”
A beleaguered Rochelle attempted a cackle that sounded like a whimper. And who could blame her? K battered Rochelle in the previous attempt to escape the world enclosed by these four walls. She nearly knocked a hole into one of the four walls of the bathroom where K and Z got ready each morning, where they discussed the day’s plans, where they stood now. Plastic and duct tape covered the wall which K claimed was a remodel and an improvement. She added a new window. Z told her that if that’s what all windows looked like, the world would be a cold and lightless place where the boogeyman could always get you. Hearing this, K, being K, decided to boogie, man.
And K boogied now, thinking about her footballing team.
“Can you please cease that needless gesticulation?”
“You want me to stop dancing, Z?”
“Yes, K.”
“Why, Z?”
“Because I need a plan and I cannot think of a plan with all dastardly distraction drowning my creative drive.”
Has Z’s creativity run dryer than her social life? Will she be able to plot her way out of this one or will she succumb to the entrapment of her mind as well as the four walls which surround her? Find out next time in The Days of Our Pandemic….
KZ Rochelle 