the end (part two)

We head into the hotel, aware that with these few steps we are already beginning to leave our year behind. Our first interaction to support that fact is waiting for us just inside the lobby. He’s American. Businessman. Southern drawl. He makes a pretentious sounding request in English and then turns away from the counter with a bored look. His interest peaks slightly when he takes in our luggage. He shifts to support himself on the counter as he gears up to fire off what I can already tell is going to be a snide remark.

“Traveling light?” He sneers. Ohoho. Clever.

“Well, we’ve been living here for....”

But he’s not listening, already moving to the elevator. As he passes Katie and Alyssa, he tries his line one more time.

“Traveling light?” He’s obviously miffed that I didn’t give him his expected response, whatever it was. But they’re too frazzled to even acknowledge him, and he continues on to the elevator, disappointed.

Now the concierge are free to help us with our request. And what a request it turns out to be. All we need is to get into our room—we have ID and our room confirmation number, so checking in should be a piece of cake. Unbeknownst to us, however, are two important factors; the man behind the desk speaks barely any French or English, which is why he is the designated one on duty for 5am. Also, there has been a terminal collapse at Charles de Gaulle.

It does not occur to the concierge or his colleagues that anyone other than desperate passengers forced to change their travel plans would be checking in at this hour, and therein lies the predicament. He doesn’t even look at my confirmation number before he is typing up a flurry and staring inquisitively into the depths of the computer.

“Numero de vol??” He demands abruptly, with an accent so muddled that I can only stare at him quizzically.

“Your flight?” He taps at my paper print out impatiently.

“Ahhh…. Ok” I shuffle around in my bag, flustered, for the one piece of information that I didn’t think I’d need until tomorrow.

“176823F” Finally I’ve got it. Although it doesn’t seem to have helped anything, since he’s now furrowing his brow and typing more intensely.

“Ah!” He throws up his hands half-heartedly. “We don’t have more chambers. You can go next door, to the…”

“Non, non, non...” I stop him. This is ridiculous. I have a chamber. It says so right here on my print-out. I shove the number in front of his face and we’re off again, him typing manically and me yearning more and more for a soft bed.

“Ah.” He says, finally, hitting a button that sets the printer into motion. I breathe a sigh of relief. Finally. The last leg of our journey is about to be over. He hands me a key and a receipt to sign.
The pen has barely touched the paper before I yank it away again, realizing that I’m about to sign away 150 Euros. Good lord, let there be a stop to this cruel joke. The room is already paid for. Confirmed. Its so simple, so wonderfully logical, and yet so quickly spinning out of control.

“NON,” I state firmly and clearly in my best French, “J’ai DEJA une chambre. I've ALREADY paid. Here is the receipt and confirmation number from THIS hotel.”

He stares at the paper for what seems like a decade and heaves a long sigh. He turns resolutely back to his computer, and I have a wild urge to smash it off the counter. Instead, I grit my teeth and pray for this third time to be the charm.

But after about ten minutes something again pops up on his screen that gives him another troubled look.

“Non,” he insists, “Someone already in the room.”

Oh, let there be an end to this. I explain about Brendan, our friend who is sharing the room but arrived three hours earlier. The lucky bastard is probably sound asleep by now, amidst the clutter of room-service leftovers and the clamor of pay-per view TV. But the concierge doesn’t understand a word and finally, FINALLY, admits defeat. He flags over a young man in a white uniform who is passing through the lobby.

I give all the details all over again; our various confirmation numbers, the fact that our friend checked in earlier. And before I’m even done talking, a receipt is being printed out and three keys handed to us.

“Your room is on the fifth floor, last door on the right. Do you girls want anything from the kitchen before you go? I haven’t quite finished closing up.”

It’s the chef. The damn chef did a better job checking us in than the concierge. As the irony of this final interaction is sinking in, a whole bevy of male hotel staff seems to be materializing out of nowhere, and are insistent about proving their usefulness by offering to help us with our bags. They bombard us with conversation and pleas to come hang out in the kitchen, yapping away in English and Arabic-accented French.

We indulge them for a couple of feet but fend them off at the elevators, where we literally clamber on top of all six bags and ride happily to the fifth floor. We are free of the sketchy men and almost free of these beastly bags, and when the door finally opens we embrace our one last ridiculous moment of the night, sliding into the hallway, heaving the suitcases at each other, tripping over ourselves and rolling onto the nearby plush couches in exhausted laughter.

The climax to our hysteria comes after I have to go back into the elevator to pull our room key from the activation slot. Time runs out before I can dislodge it, and the last thing Katie and Alyssa see is my mournful look as the doors close and I am descended unwillingly to the lobby. There, my key suddenly decides to co-operate as the doors open, and I exit gratefully, before doing an immediate about face into the next door elevator as I see the onslaught of men come barreling around the corner in response to the bell.

Katie and Alyssa are still trying to figure out how to re-open the doors of the elevator they believe me to be enclosed in, when I appear at their side. That does it. We howl all the way down the hallway, tears of laughter streaming our faces, until we at long last arrive at the room.

We throw open the door, smack the suitcases onto the floor, and topple over them onto the bed which contains the peacefully sleeping Brendan. We pounce, scarcely waiting for him to wake up before we are rattling off the various events of the night.