9:45 a.m. - 2007-06-18
FORGET PARIS
Cheri and Merri were leaving a bar late night/early morning. "I'm too drunk to drive!" laughs Cheri. "No, I'm too drunk to drive," giggles Merri. Somehow the subject of calling a cab never comes up. Cheri gets behind the wheel.After all, it's her car, and Merri's license has been suspended.
Almost immediately they get lost. Then they notice that they're driving down the wrong side of a boulevard. Cheri turns into a parking lot, weaves as she turns back toward the road, and clips one of the parked cars. She says the F word, backs up too fast, and hits another parked car. Speeds toward the exit now, clipping a fender on the way.
Both girls say the F word several times now.
Driving down the boulevard--going in the right direction this time--Merri asks, "What's that sound?" And indeed Cheri's car, which has done more than its share of demolition derby work in the past few minutes, is emitting some clanking and scraping noises that were never mentioned in the owners manual.
Before Cheri can comment or even raise her eyebrows, a police car pulls up behind them and flashes its lights. Cheri pulls over, proud of handling that maneuver so flawlessly.
The officer saw their vehicle leaving the parking lot, noticed the three or four damaged parked cars they left behind, and pulled them over.
"Would you submit to a sobriety test?" he asks Cheri.
"What's that?" she wonders aloud.
"Oh, she wasn't driving back there," insists Merri in a burst of personal loyalty and fictional creativity. "I was."
The officer checks Merri's license, finds it suspended, and puts her in the back of the police cruiser for driving without a license and leaving the scene of the accident.
Then he returns and administers the breathalyzer to Cheri, who--on the advice of Merri--has been desperately chewing some peppermint gum in hopes of fooling the test. There is some flaw in this plan, some gap in Merri's basic knowledge of chemistry and physiology, and Cheri joins her friend in the back of the squad car, charged with drunk driving and leaving the scene of an accident. Several accidents, actually.
At the police station Cheri calls her friend Corey to come bail her out, but Corey is at the bar himself, too drunk to risk presenting himself at the police station.

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