Pete was on his back porch watching the sunset. It was Sunday evening at 7:30, a week after the last time he had been here. As before, he was sipping a scotch and soda and smiling at nothing in particular. He still could not quite believe that the three prettiest girls he knew had accepted him as their personal disciplinarian.
In the week that followed after their initial introduction to the hairbrush, Pete had, indeed, detected a reduction in the amount of drama he could hear coming from his three tenants next door. He managed to catch a glimpse of his system in action early one morning. He was picking up the morning paper, when he saw Laura and Lana through their kitchen window trading words about something.
But instead of it turning into a shouting match as in the past, Lana stormed out of the room and dragged Linda in. She stood and listened with Laura and Lana went back and forth for a minute, and then spoke briefly. When she was done, Laura frowned and Lana smiled and walked away. Laura walked to the fridge and wrote something on a piece of paper stuck to it and then walked away.
Pete remembered feeling quite proud of himself that it appeared that not only were the girls putting his system into practice, but that it was having a real impact on maintaining order and civility. He wondered which of the girls was going to be the one over his knee this evening. All three of them were adorable and had very spankable bottoms, and all three of them had been remarkably compliant during their first appointment. Pete could still hardly believe it.
The sun dipped below the horizon and Pete headed back indoors to set up the front room for the coming appointment. As before, there were four chairs in a circle around a small table. Three of the chairs were kitchen chairs, and one of them a large oak sitting chair. The table had the box of tissues and the hairbrush on it.
This week, the girls were punctual - the doorbell rang at 8 pm almost exactly. Pete opened the door and ushered the girls in. Linda led the way, with a little spring in her step. She was holding a small notebook in her hand. Laura and Lana both followed behind, their looks both much more dour. Pete was a little puzzled. He had said that whoever had the most demerits would be spanked, but then why were two of the girls looking like they expected the worst? Still, he ushered them to the circle of chairs. The girls took their seats, and Pete took his.
"Hello, girls. Thank you for being punctual. I'd like to say at the outset that I'm proud of all three of you - from what I can hear, you seem to be living together more harmoniously than you have in the past. What do you girls think?"
All three girls nodded. Pete continued, "Now, as I said last week, whichever of you has the most demerits knows what to expect. Linda, is that the demerit ledger?" He held out his hand and Linda handed it over. Pete said, "Let me just take a moment and see how the past week went."
He opened the ledger. He could see dated entries written in three different sets of handwriting. He asked, "So, Laura, can you explain how you've all decided to organize this?"
Laura cleared her throat, "We decided that whoever loses should make the entry. The entry has the date, who lost and why."
Pete continued to read as he listened. There were three pages of entries for the week - thirty demerits in all. Pete added up the totals, Linda had six, and Laura and Lana had twelve each - a dead tie. No wonder they both looked upset.
Pete raised his head from the book, "I see this week we have a tie. I can see from the looks on two of you that you have already realized what that's going to mean, haven't you?" Laura and Lana continued to look down while they nodded.
"I also think that twelve is a fairly high number. I expected that knowing what was going to await you would have lowered that number. Lana, do you have any explanation?"
Lana looked up at Pete and said, "I dunno. I guess I didn't think I was that bad."
Laura and Linda both looked at her in shock, Laura spoke up, "Really? You keep leaving the living room a mess and you know it!"
Lana glared back, "Well, maybe if I wasn't busy cleaning up your messes in the kitchen..."
Pete raised a hand, "Stop. Both of you. The entire purpose of this is to help you live more harmoniously. You're supposed to think of others and reduce tensions. I think what's going on here is that each of you is using your roommates' demerit counts as an excuse to not do your part, am I right?"
Laura and Lana both stared at him and the color drained from both of their faces. When he was done talking, they both looked at each other, then back at Pete and nodded.