Read an Excerpt
Sex and the Single Zillionaire
A Novel
Chapter One
The doorman delivered the FedEx envelope to Jeffrey, the live-in chef and household manager who set it down on the breakfast table in front of Steven Hudson's Wall Street Journal. Steven was just finishing a couple of delicious eggs Benedict. He put the newspaper down. The morning sun glinted off the gold-rimmed plates and polished silverware as he opened the envelope.
The letter read:
Acme Studios
Dear Mr. Hudson,
I have a fantastic idea! I am the Executive Producer of Acme Studios, and I want to make you the star of our new reality television show. I want you to meet and play with a dozen twenty-year-old stunningly beautiful girls and at the end of our thirteen week series you will marry the one you choose—she will become your bride on national television!
Clearly this is an outrageous idea—matching an older, single, wealthy man with young, sexy women—but it will be wonderful for the right man who adores women and who has a sense of adventure.
We will select the young ladies from an alluring array of models, actresses, athletes, and others based upon their appearance and personality. You will have the opportunity to know them in your home and at various glamorous locations, to see them competing for your love and attention. Of course, if at the last moment, you don't, or your chosen bride doesn't want to proceed, the wedding won't happen. But, you must understand that marriage is the whole point of the show, and you should enter it in that spirit.
This is not a frivolous proposal. We areauthentic producers with a long track record, and this show has a very high probability of being aired. If you are the right man, with the right chemistry, please call me. I am offering you a life enriching experience that will be impossible to duplicate.
Very truly yours,
Jessica James
Executive Producer
"My God, Jeffrey! What a letter! Can you believe this?" Steven passed the letter over to Jeffrey, who was starting to clear the table.
The portly, young chef read with an ever widening smile. "Boss, I'm sure it's for real." He passed the letter back to his employer. "You'd be a natural for the show, you know. You're rich, single, handsome, and well-known. Since Mrs. Hudson died, you've been pretty lonely, and you haven't had a lot of fun. It looks like a great idea! You going to follow this up?"
Steven wasn't sure if his long-term cook had gone barking mad.
"Jeffrey, despite what you may think of me, I do have a shred of dignity left. Can you imagine me cavorting around in front of a TV crew while a gaggle of gold-digging bimbos make me look like a fool? You know the saying 'There's no fool like an old fool.' Well, it ain't going to be me."
"Come on boss," Jeffrey said, removing the bone china plate. "You aren't that old. What are you now anyway? Sixty-one, sixty-two? You don't look a day over fifty. Those girls wouldn't be able to keep up with you."
"Thanks for the compliment, but this is a crazy idea and I'm going to deep-six it right now. Just chuck it out with the garbage, please."
Jeffrey took the letter with the remainder of the breakfast dishes and headed back into the pantry muttering to himself. "I wish they were looking for someone like me. Why do rich guys get all the action?"
Steven smiled. He settled back in his chair and returned to the Journal with one elbow on the breakfast table, his second cup of coffee within easy reach. It was one of those cold, clear winter mornings when the sun glittered off windows of midtown office towers and white clouds of steam rose from the roofs of nearby buildings into the crisp air. The view from his forty-seventh floor penthouse was as spectacular as ever. Five years ago he'd closed the big house on Long Island and moved into this sleek, ultra modern, minimalist, yet somehow very comfortable, glassed and terraced condominium. It had taken five years to hunt down and buy a fortune's worth of contemporary art, paintings, and sculptures to furnish the penthouse. Yet his lavish attempt to create a new, different home for himself had utterly failed to replace the empty longing that now occupied the center of his soul. The contentment he'd once taken for granted had been replaced by a gathering gloom.
Steven and his wife, Yvonne, had been a dazzling couple, constantly photographed for the society pages at openings, the opera, and charity balls. He was tall, slim and strong, with a movie star's chiseled looks. Yvonne had been marvelous, a lovely woman who created beauty in everything she did. Then came the doctor's diagnosis of cancer. A painful two years' struggle had been followed by death and, for Steven, a grief that seemed endless.
Steven had always assumed he would be the first to go. After all, he had the high-pressure career. Hadn't Time once dubbed him "America's Power Investment Wizard"? Type A guys like him were supposed to drop like flies, weren't they? But not women like Yvonne. Yvonne had been so wonderful, never losing her charming French accent. Her grace, her beauty, reminded people of the film star Catherine Deneuve.
Could he have spent more time with her? Could he have traveled more often with her back to her beloved Paris? And could he have spent more time with their two children, Henry and Helen, while they were growing up? Sure, he'd risen from a working class background—God rest his parents' dreary, unimaginative spirits—and become a "Titan," a "Wall Street Lion," but had he been neglectful? The guilt gathered.
"Boss, I'm keeping the letter." Jeffrey broke into Steven's downward spiral of thoughts, and he looked up, mildly startled. "You might not want to be a curmudgeon forever, even though lately you're getting really good at it," Jeffrey added.
Sex and the Single Zillionaire
A Novel. Copyright © by Tom Perkins. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
