This article is inspired by the author’s screenplay, “The Tycoon and the Teenager,” which is being proposed for Hollywood production.

Terence is the greedy go-getter tycoon. Therese is his newly hired intellectual teenage rebel, a summa cum laude graduate with no work experience, hired for her devil-may-care perspective that none of his best executives have.

THERESE: How many people did you cheat to get to the top?

TERENCE: Are you accusing me of being a cheat?

THERESE: Yes.

TERENCE: Just a few.

THERESE: Be honest with me, Terence, please, I beg you.

TERENCE: Okay, okay, more than a few.

THERESE: My gut feel is that you cheated a lot of people.

TERENCE: Yes, Therese, a lot.

THERESE: I knew it. Make a list, a complete detailed inventory – names, when, how much more or less, as far as you can remember.

TERENCE: I can’t remember.

THERESE: You mean you won’t remember.

TERENCE: Okay, I will do it.

THERESE:That’s your ticket to heaven, you know. Not one stone shall be left unturned. You have to return every penny.

TERENCE: Plus interest?

THERESE: Plus interest. Your accountants can do everything. If those you cheated are dead or you cannot find them, give the money to the poor.

It took years for Terence to pay back the people he had cheated. He established a cancer foundation where he placed the money he could not return to those who had died or were missing, following the suggestion of Therese.

Terence discovered later that Therese had terminal cancer — that was why she was so devil-may-care about everything. She drank tequila every day in the hopes that it would hasten her death. But it did not. Terence let her manage the cancer foundation, which surprisingly healed her own cancer. The doctors had said she had six months to live. Five years later she was still alive and kicking.

TERENCE: To what do you attribute your defying death, Therese?

THERESE: It’s simple, Terence. First, the Lord still needs me to pay off your lousy debts to the people you cheated. Second, when you heal others, you heal yourself.

TERENCE: I agree.

From her salary, Therese put aside money with her sister to take care of their aging mother. She bought a modest beach house in Martha’s Vineyard on Cape Cod and a second-hand Mercedes Benz. Terence was envious of her beach house, and he bought one nearby, bigger, more elegant.

THERESE: Are you following me?

TERENCE: Nope. I’m following Him.

THERESE: Oh. How nice. So, we’re both headed His way.

TERENCE: (Narration) Therese and I, the tycoon and the teenager, watched a thousand sunsets together, over Cabernet this time, as she could no longer handle tequila. We brainstormed regularly on how to give more love to this chaotic world. It was expensive, we realized, but we didn’t care because I had the money, and it triggered our adrenaline — hospitals, senior homes, even a vast open-air theater for concerts featuring the likes of Julio Iglesias and the Croatian cellist Hauser. The theater income would go to the poor and to a drama school for poor kids.

When Therese died, I had a hard time giving my vast empire away for the Lord because there were just too many people I had cheated. Now, I spend my sunsets alone on the beach, writing my book on the meaning of life, as Therese taught me in one frenzied afternoon in my office. The title will be “Sunset Girl.”

Everyone thought I was mad to get rid of my empire, except the Lord, of course.