Kat stood in the middle of their bedroom, a guilty blush turning her face scarlet. On the carpet in front of her, where they had fallen from her purse, were a handful of parking tickets, still unpaid. Andrew stood and watched as she picked them up, one by one, his face a cold mask. A moment ago, she had playfully tried to steal a kiss as he had been buttoning his shirt and fastening his tie, before she changed from her working suit into an elegant gown for their anniversary trip to the theatre. Then he had pressed her back onto the bed and straddled her as he covered her face and the base of her throat with hungry, passionate kisses. She had moaned, deep in her bosom, and reached up to pull him down onto her, opening her lips invitingly. At that moment, her purse, forgotten in their passion, had sprung open and deposited its contents in a flurry of papers and cosmetics across the bed and onto the floor. Laughing, he had slid off the bed and bent over to help her pick the things up and that was the moment he had noticed the handful of unpaid parking fines. Picking them off the floor, he had glanced over them, ticking them off one at a time.
"I thought we'd sorted this out," he growled, "This isn't an emergency, this is sheer idleness. You could have parked on the multi-level at the mall, but these are for parking on Main Street."
Kat just stood in front of him, trying to look meek and crestfallen. Andrew flicked through the tickets again and she could almost hear him totalling the fines in his head. At last, he put them carefully on the dressing table and sat on the stool in front of the mirror. Kat stood with her head bowed and her hands clasped in front of her. Andrew sighed and ran his fingers through his dark wavy hair, flecked in one or two places with grey. He took his eyeglasses off and polished them on a tissue from the box on the dressing table and then looked at her, still standing in the middle of the space at the end of their bed.
"Did you think they would just go away?" he snapped, "Twelve hundred worth of parking fines would just vanish, if you waited long enough!"
"No," Kat whispered, "I thought I could borrow the money and then pay it back a little at a time."
"Borrow the cash? Who from?" he demanded, "What about interest? Collateral?"
"I hadn't thought about that," she confessed, "I just thought that it would let me pay the fines without having to borrow from you."
"And now?" he asked.
"I don't know," she admitted.
"I suppose you would like me to make you a loan so you could pay the fines off," he snapped.
"Oh please!" she exclaimed, "I'd be sooo grateful."
"I'm not going to do this for nothing. You'll have to pay me back," he warned, "with interest."
"Oh yes!" Kat gasped, "Anything."
"Right!" he snapped, "I'll pay the fines, and you will pay me back over the next twelve months. I think you should pay one hundred a month, plus interest."
"How much interest," Kat asked, warily.
"I think that, rather than money, we should agree a form of interest that will act as a reminder of how you got into such a mess," he told her, "I think that each month you should receive twelve stripes of the cane, as a reminder and as interest. One stripe for each hundred."