We dashed to Carmen’s decrepit Toyota, Carmen jumped behind the wheel, and we prayed that the engine would start. Carmen glanced in the rearview mirror before pulling out into the street. The last rays of sunlight were long gone. I looked through the rear window. A car was waiting behind us. A late-arriving party animal who wanted our parking space? No. A cop.

Carmen said, “There’s a cop. Hide the booze!”

I kicked four cans of Miller Lite under the seat. The sudden thrust pushed them against something sharp, puncturing them. Beer gushed out, filling the car with the stench of a brewery. Carmen and I screamed. We were trapped in the car with our seatbelts on, as panicked as if we were being stung by swarms of giant mutant killer bees.

Carmen screamed, “Throw it out the window!” as if I were near a hand grenade that would explode within seconds, blowing our bodies into a billion fragments.

Carmen usually epitomized grace under pressure, making it easier for me to stay calm and to do just what she said, but I yelled, “I can’t! It’s stuck.” Then I felt rain on my lap. But it wasn’t raining, and I was inside Carmen’s Toyota, which wasn’t a convertible. I looked up. Copious amounts of beer had sprayed all over the car’s ceiling, which was now dripping down, like drops of rain flowing to the ocean. The ocean of warm beer in my lap.

“Quickly!” Carmen added, “Before the cop sees.”

I finally managed to free the beers and toss them out the window onto the lawn a few feet away. The cop’s spotlight came on. The only sound was the spraying beer.

“Too late,” said Carmen.

I turned around and saw the policeman at Carmen’s door. He said, “Please get out of the car with your hands up.”

We got out. What else could we do? Floor it and head over the cliff into the Pacific Ocean, the way Thelma and Louise drove their car into the Grand Canyon? Carmen’s car would probably land on the tarry sand, ten feet from the surf, and we’d be spinning the wheels in deeper when the cop finally walked across the beach to the Toyota.

So I found myself soaked with beer, standing on the sidewalk next to Carmen, who had somehow, miraculously, avoided becoming completely doused with beer. What I mean by that is that her blouse was still dry in a few places, here and there.

“Have you been drinking?” he asked.

We were sopping wet, reeking of beer, and leaving a college party. “Yes,” I admitted, figuring that denial would be insane, under the circumstances (which included the fact that my father didn’t live in Beverly Hills, wasn’t a multimillionaire, didn’t count senators or members of Congress among his closest friends, and wasn’t a brilliant defense attorney; his work as a school janitor was probably not a great bargaining chip for getting the cop to agree not to file a police report).

“Which one of you is more sober?” the officer asked.

He wasn’t bad looking. He was probably in his mid-twenties, not that much older than I was, clean-cut, about 5’10”. Carmen’s type. She doesn’t go for “bad boys”; as we’ve seen, altar boys are more her speed.

“I am,” said Carmen, who probably realized that even if she’d had more to drink than I had, she had better self-control and was better at talking her way out of a bind than I would ever be. The sad thing, I realized, was that in this, she was absolutely correct. “Haaaaaah,” she exhaled into the officer’s face. I hoped she’d been too busy with Ray at the party to mosey on over to the keg for more beer.

“No,” the officer concluded. “You both appear highly intoxicated.”

So much for my brilliant theory.

He added, “Do you have anyone you can call for a ride home?”

“No, sir,” I said, retreating into my last defense: the respect for authority that my mother had drilled into me. “All our friends are at the party, and they’re all drunk.”

“Maybe you could give us a ride home?” Carmen said coyly. “Aren’t you supposed to serve and protect the public?”