Hmmm. Maybe not. In the crowd, I saw a familiar face. It was the buddy of Customer #3!
"Sir? Sir! Do you remember you and Customer #3 were here before?"
"Now don't you go bringing him into this! I asked you nicely but now I want the room. Give me the fucking room."
"Sire?"
"Well, uh, I thought it was 129 or something."
"Not 404?"
"Hey, I'm in 404."
"So, 129?"
"Maybe, I'm not positive."
"What does he have to do with this? I don't care about him! Just give me my room." interjected the groom.
"Sir, there is a drunk person passed out in your room." I said, giving up all pretenses that the situation was in any sense under control.
"Kick him out! We're the newlyweds, dammit. We paid $8000 dollars for this and now we can't even get a fucking room?! Either give me the room or give me $300 bucks to I can check in at the hotel down the street." that was tempting, but I knew it wouldn't be as easy as he made it sound.

At any rate, it was too late for him to prevent me from solving his problem. I had just been given what turned out to be th crucial clue. Room 129 had no card filed. According to Lodgenet, the television in the room was switched off. All the other rooms had failed these two crude vacancy tests. I was willing to try anything at this point. I grabbed the master key and again set out on a mission. The light was on, but the room was... EMPTY! Empty and CLEAN! Yessss! I now had a place to move Customer #3, the good natured drunk who was in the eye of the hurricane that was ravaging the hotel. This required a team effort, so I set about assembling a team. I ran up to the bar (thank goodness that the door that was supposed to lock people out of that area was malfunctioning as usual). I asked Cutiepie if she'd seen the character I shall here refer to as the Captain of the Housekeepers, because I think he's a Navy vet, and he happens to be the night manager in charge of housekeeping. I finally found him in the restaurant and said:
"Captain! We have an emergency and we need your help. I checked the wrong guy into the wedding suite, and now I need to move him. Would it be possible for your housekeepers to clean it so I can check the newlyweds in?"
"Okay, no problem."
"Great! Thank you so much. I'll meet you there."

Cut to:
There we were, one of the security guys and me, at the door of the the much sought-after 331, where the groom's drunken pal was presumably passed out. I was with the security guard who kept talking at great length about his gun collection and various 'incidents' where he'd been forced to kick the shit out of people over the years. So, on the way up I briefed him about the fact that this was a simple misunderstanding, and not in any sense Customer #3's fault. I hoped that it would be enough-- I'd hate to add beaten-up guests to the already long list of awful things I've caused to happen that evening. We knocked, and eventually Customer #3 came to the door in his underwear. He was pretty understanding, given the situation. Right then Captain of the Houskeepers showed up, flanked by a crack squad of housekeeping commandos. Things were looking up. I went down to the lobby to tell the nice folks who would have had me shot by now if they had been a Mafia family that their room was going to be ready soon, and that this time I meant it. Also, the night manager had finally shown up, and was expertly keeping them at bay.
"We've been waiting here for 45 minutes! What the hell is taking so long?"
"Yeah, who the hell is in the room anyway?"
"I'm, er, sorry, er, I don't have that information on the computer."
"It's Customer #3 chimed in Customer #3's buddy."
"Customer #3?! It was all because of him? Ha ha ha!"
"num-ber-three! num-ber-three!" the crowd started chanting. Except the poor bride and groom, who were slumped exhaustedly in each other's arms on a nearby bench.
After a tense few minutes that of course felt like forever, especially to the wedding guests, who were not at all shy about telling us so, the Captain called the front desk with a "mission accomplished". We gave them their keys and slowly but surely the crowd started to dissipate. Oh, some of them called or walked back down with requests and complaints, but there was no mistaking it. The situation had started to unfuck itself. next ->

<-previous
This mostly-finished true story was sponsored by:

The Unfinished Stories Metanode