December 7, 1941

December 7, 1941, is the date on which Willie Keith’s first significant rise in nightclub work coincides with the news that the United States will enter the war. The contrast is immediate: he leaves a meeting delighted by a ten-dollar weekly raise, then encounters headlines announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a development whose importance he is slow to grasp.

The Club Tahiti Engagement

A couple of months after Willie’s earlier work in a cocktail lounge, the proprietor of Club Tahiti saw his act and hired him away from the Greek with a raise of ten dollars a week. They concluded the transaction during an afternoon interview in the club’s cellar, a dingy room furnished with papier-mâché palms and dusty coconuts. The date was December 7, 1941.

Willie emerged into the sunny street exultant. He had risen above the minimum union wage, and the new engagement seemed to place him on a path toward the success of Cole Porter and Noel Coward. The war had not yet displaced that ambition from the center of his attention.

The Headlines and the War

At a newsstand, Willie noticed unusually large headlines reporting the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He did not know where Pearl Harbor was and briefly placed it on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal. He understood that the news meant the United States would enter the war, yet judged this turn of events less important than his engagement at Club Tahiti. His high draft number helped him remain calm.

The Evening’s Conversation

That evening, Willie announced his career advance to his family. It dealt a decisive blow to Mrs. Keith’s faltering effort to bring him back to comparative literature. Talk turned to enlistment: during the train ride to Manhasset, Willie had absorbed some of the commuters’ war fever, enough to stir his conscience. At dinner he raised the possibility of abandoning piano and comparative literature to join the Navy, believing he could obtain a commission. Mrs. Keith looked to her husband, while Dr. Keith kept his cigar in his mouth and remained silent.

Narrative Significance

The date binds a private milestone to a national rupture without making Willie’s response immediately heroic or fully informed. His excitement over a small professional gain, his mistaken geography, and his delayed consideration of enlistment show how the war first reaches him: as immense public news that has not yet overtaken his personal prospects. The scene sets his entry into wartime life against the self-absorption he will have to outgrow.