Face to Face Read Free Page A

Armando. When that day came, the bogus count assured himself glumly, the bellowing kine would turn to greener pastures.
    So at this stage of his life, Armando decided, he could not afford to make a mistake. Undercover he made a financial survey of Glory Guild that would not have shamed an ace credit agent. What he found out heartened him, and he stripped down for the conquest.
    It was not easy, even though Glory was receptive. She had become lonely and restless, and what she was seeing daily in her mirror dismayed her. Between her need for companionship and attention and the hurrying truths revealed by her glass, a young man like Carlos Armando was inevitable. Because she had heard stories about him and glimpsed him for what he was, she hired a reliable agency to check his background. It confirmed what she suspected, and she was determined not to go the way of all the female fools in his life.
    â€œI like having you around,” she told Carlos at his proposal of marriage, “and you want my money, or as much of it as you can lay your hands on. Right? Well, I’ll marry you on one condition.”
    â€œMust we speak of technicalities at a time like this, my darling?” asked Carlos, kissing her hands.
    â€œThe condition is this: You will sign a premarital agreement renouncing in advance any share of my estate.”
    â€œAh,” said Carlos.
    â€œEven the one-third dower share ordinarily guaranteed by law,” said Glory dryly, “the gleam of which I can see in your eye. I’ve consulted my attorney and, properly drawn up, such a contract would be perfectly legal in this state—I mean in case you have an idea you could break it later.”
    â€œWhat you must think of me, bonita ,” mourned Carlos, “to make such an unfair condition. I am proposing to give you all of myself.”
    â€œAnd quite a hunk it is,” said Glory Guild fondly, ruffling his hair (he caught himself in time to keep from flinching). “So I’ve worked out what the lawyers call a quid pro quo.”
    â€œAnd what is that, my enchantment?” asked Carlos, as if he did not know what a quid pro quo was.
    â€œA tit for my tat.”
    â€œI see … Time?” Carlos said suddenly. He was intuitive in all matters relating to women.
    â€œThat’s it, baby. Give me a minimum of five happy years of married life and I’ll tear up the contract. I’ve had you investigated, Carlos, and the longest you’ve ever stuck to one woman was less than two years. Five are my terms, then zip! goes the contract, and you come into your normal legal rights as my husband.”
    They looked each other in the eye, and both smiled.
    â€œI love you madly,” murmured Carlos, “but love is not all. Agreed.”
    â€œLove, shove,” said Glory.
    And so it was arranged; and he signed the prenuptial agreement, and they were bound in not so holy matrimony.

4
    â€œI met Carlos in Easthampton,” continued Roberta West, “while I was doing summer stock. It was at the tail end of the season, and he and Glory came backstage. The director was an old man who made a great to-do over Glory, but she was no more than a name to me—I was a little girl when she retired—and all I could see was an overweight woman with stupidly dyed hair looking like some aging Brünnehilde out of a second-rate opera company and clinging to the arm of a man who seemed young enough to be her son.
    â€œBut I thought Carlos was cute, and I suppose I was flattered by the fuss he made over my performance. There’s something in Carlos’s voice,” she added gloomily, “that gets through to women. You know he’s a fake, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not so much what he says as how he says it … I suppose I sound like a gullible idiot.”
    Neither man, being a man, said anything.
    â€œWhen the stock engagement was over, I hadn’t been back in town twenty-four