Aztec Lounge

The Aztec Lounge is the hotel nightclub where Willie Keith unexpectedly finds May Wynn singing with Walter Feather. Its glaringly public setting—advertised in a grand hotel lobby, entered through doors painted with feathered serpents, and decorated with Aztec designs—frames a private reckoning. Among empty tables and a polished dance floor, Willie and May confront the changes between them; the lounge becomes the place where his return culminates in a renewed proposal.

Setting and Introduction

The lounge first appears through a signboard in the lobby of a crowded, ornate tourist hotel. Marty Rubin leads Willie there after recognizing what he wants to know, and points him to the notice advertising the nightly music of Walter Feather in the Aztec Lounge. The hotel is familiar to Willie even after three years away: he recognizes its characteristic deodorant perfume. That sensory recognition makes the discovery feel immediate, while the sign supplies the crucial news in a conspicuously public form: May is here, and she is performing with Feather.

The lounge’s name and decoration establish its show-business atmosphere before Willie sees May. Green-and-yellow feathered serpents are painted on the closed doors; inside, green paper palms screen the entrance to a large, garish room. A wide polished dance floor is bordered by many empty tables. The room is dressed for spectacle, but at this moment its emptiness leaves the stage and the people on it exposed to Willie’s gaze.

Performance and Reunion

When Willie and Marty enter, the band is playing Anchors Aweigh. May is on the orchestra platform, singing, and Willie is startled by her bright blond hair. The scene presents her first as a performer, at a distance and in a changed appearance, before she can respond to his return. Marty watches with Willie and asks how she looks; Willie’s blunt answer signals how strongly her appearance unsettles him.

The encounter becomes direct when the band stops and Feather calls a break. The musicians leave the platform, and May puts a camel’s-hair coat around her shoulders. She and Feather walk toward the door side by side, their habitual closeness jarring Willie. He steps out from behind the paper palms in his gold-buttoned bridge coat, white scarf, and tarnished hat, and greets her. May recoils, catches Feather’s arm, and stammers in surprise. The contrast between the couple’s easy proximity and Willie’s sudden appearance gives the lounge doorway the force of a threshold: he is no longer watching from behind the palms but entering the changed life he has come to face.

The Private Conversation

Feather invites Marty for coffee, leaving Willie and May alone in the vast dance room. Its Aztec-painted walls, empty rows of chairs and tables, and polished floor now surround a conversation rather than a performance. Willie challenges May about dyeing her hair and calls the result cheap and hard; she asks whether he likes it. Standing less than two feet apart, they face each other like prize fighters. The scene’s sharpness belongs to the setting as much as to the exchange: the broad room offers no crowd to absorb their discomfort, and their confrontation occupies the space left vacant by the show.

The interruption that brought them together has not resolved their history. May responds bitterly when Willie asks for time to get used to her appearance, questioning how little time he thinks that should take. Her guardedness makes clear that his return cannot simply restore their former relationship. Yet the lounge also gives them a place to speak without Feather present. The music and stage recede; the meeting shifts from May’s public role as a singer to the unfinished bond between her and Willie.

Proposal and Significance

Willie eventually looks at May and asks her to marry him. She treats the proposal as an act of nobility that he may regret by morning, rather than as proof that everything between them has been repaired. He answers by acknowledging that he loves her, that he is responsible for what went wrong, and that he believes they belong together; he takes her hand and asks her to marry him if she loves him. The lounge is thus the setting for a renewed commitment, not a simple reunion without conflict.

The scene’s movement across the room gives the location its narrative shape: the hotel lobby’s sign reveals where May is, the screened entrance lets Willie watch before approaching, and the deserted dance floor becomes the ground on which the two speak alone. The Aztec Lounge joins performance and private feeling without confusing them. May’s work with Feather is visible to Willie, but the decisive exchange happens after the musicians leave and the bandleader takes Marty away. In that pause, amid the lounge’s theatrical décor and empty tables, Willie makes his proposal and May must answer the man who has returned.