Three.

"Sundays are life on pause." That's what his wife would say to him. Back when life was worth pausing. Now he just wishes it would hurry the hell up.

These days his wife just sighs and wonders within his earshot whether or not he's actually going to mow the lawn. Didn't he mow it every week since they'd fired the help? Wasn't he out there at 10am sharp, every sunday, pushing through that heat and that grass? Why, he wondered, weren't they still paying someone else to do the labor? They were perfectly capable of paying someone else to sweat down the lawn. God knows there were plenty of laborers looking for work. Instead he was wasting the one day a week he had to himself fretting about the stupid useless lawn. So what if he slept in real late last sunday? So what if he went to the bar and had let time sneak away from him. He worked hard and frankly, he didn't know how to stop. So on Sundays, at least occassionally, he'd like to play as hard as he worked. If that meant a few too many beers and a drunken call to his wife for a ride home, if that meant she'd refuse to come pick him up and that he'd have to call a taxi, if that meant that he'd have to stumble inside and through the house, a drunken and slightly sweaty mess, to find some cash to pay for the cab ride home, if that meant his kids would have to see him in a way they'd never had before.... so be it.

And suddenly, for just a moment, he felt as though he were on to something. His wife was monopolizing his day off. He felt resentment and it bubbled to his face in a burning red rage. But then... it wasn't quite that his wife was stealing this time from him. Everyone was stealing time from him. And he knew it. Here was his one chance at existence, his one and only sure chance at consciousness and it was being squandered on maintaining the quality of his front lawn. And for what? So that his property matched everyone else's? Was it that his wife took pleasure in knowing her neighbors would see her husband physically toiling towards perfection? Like somehow what they'd accomplished was the product of having worked harder than anyone else. And that was just it!

He knew deep down that for all his hard work he'd also been occassionally lucky. He knew that some people worked just as hard without nearly the same financial success. He knew that instead of sharing his good fortune he invested it in his own future. And most of all he knew he'd invested it in all the wrong places. Children were starving, but that was half a world a way. He could double his money with a well timed investment property and maybe convince his wife another cruise could fix their marriage.

Screw the lawn. Sure it was long now. And in another week it was going to be a real hassle to clean up. Maybe he'd some home early sometime this week and do it then. Or maybe he'd just pay someone else to do it while his wife is away at work. Right now he's thinking he could use a good walk. Maybe bring the dog with him. It's been way too long since he spent some quality time with that goofy mutt.

He thought about leaving his iPod behind and just enjoying the sounds of his panting dog and the suburban life around him, but thought better of it. Truth be known, the suburbs freak him out. It's fantasy land. The rides are boring and the price of admission becomes more everyday.

With the dog fairly leashed and his music finely arranged he heads out, pretending he can't hear his wife yell after him. He hurries out the door and tries to embrace the music and the walking. His dog is excited to be outside. He tries again to get into the music.

He wants to give the melody a hug.
He wants to kiss that beat you can't deny.
He hopes that someday he may again feel naked for the first time with the music.
That as he walks his dog around the block to nowhere he may again find how to rhyme his footsteps with the rhythm.

For now, the music is stale and wasted on him. The sound of it against his ears reminds him of trying to write on cardboard with an old dull pencil.

He needs a shake up in his bones. He needs a shock to his system. He needs an earthquake on his soul.

And he knows that now is the time to set his plan in motion.

He hurries home in a race against reason for he knows he must act before his sudden confidence crumbles. He calls his work week friend and says to him, "Friend, let's lose our jobs tomorrow." And his friend replies, "Friend, lets risk our lives the day after."