The Last Orphan (Orphan X)

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To Caspian Dennis and Rowland White My UK copilots Special Relationship indeed The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. —Milton, Paradise Lost I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest. —Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde PROLOGUE Behind the Scarlet Door Johnny was twenty-two years old and only wanted to have sex. Other things, too, he was sure of that, but they receded so far into the background haze of his conscious state that they generally went unregistered. That’s what had driven him, post–high school, from Massachusetts to Manhattan, where he was ostensibly a stagehand but really just a dude hanging around the theater scene to meet beautiful, smart, talented women drawn to the promise of the Big Apple. He’d lucked into a square jaw, a decent fastball that gave him athlete cred, an ounce of acting ability from his mom, and if he worked out twenty minutes a day, he could keep a six-pack. It seemed unfair, almost, the advantages the world had given him, and he wanted to make sure he was respectful of those gifts. And grateful. Lacey was all-American—round face with dimples, long hair with bangs, curves all day. She was young and firm and he was young and firm, and he knew enough to know that he should appreciate every red second of this phase of his life. Johnny Seabrook, a helluva wasp name for a kid whose grampa was a carpet installer. The real family name, Schetter, was changed at Ellis Island for obvious reasons. It had taken his family four generations to get from Needham across Wellesley Avenue. As academic as they were now, they still had blue collar running in their veins. That’s what Johnny loved so much about New York. Everyone there was dying to reinvent themselves, and they were all happy to embrace whoever you wanted to be as long as you returned the favor. He and Lacey had fast and furious sex whenever they could. Over lunch break. On his futon at night, pausing to watch a movie, then twice more before falling asleep. She was great, soft, and her hair smelled like green apples and money. She came from the Hamptons and was hooked into that party scene, too, which he’d only gotten a glimpse of on reality-TV shows. But it seemed like that’s where it was at, “it” being the future he’d been aiming at for as long as he could remember. They’d only been seeing each other a few weeks when she’d rolled over after one of their midday trysts and mentioned a party out there over Labor Day. Some rich finance dude who kept a constant party going, like that Gatsby guy from the novel. Lacey wasn’t gonna be around, a family trip to the French Riviera, which to Johnny was as fantastical a place as the fifth moon of Jupiter. But she was fine with his going without her, even booked him an Uber through her account ’cuz she knew he didn’t have the dough. She said a few of her girlfriends would be there and it was cool if he wanted to get with them because it’s not like she wasn’t gonna be hooking up with French guys. New York women, man! So different from the Boston folks he came from, with their New England rigor, Puritan practicalities, and flinty work ethic. The place was on Billionaire’s Row, Lacey said, and when he asked for the address, she replied with a word: Tartarus. Some of the places there were named, she explained, like on the Cape. He didn’t have any paper in reach, but he found a loose marker on the floor next to his futon so he’d written it down on the white midsole of his throwback Vans. The next Saturday a bit before ten at night, the Uber dropped him off at the end of a winding road that looked like some kind of royal drive. These weren’t oceanfront houses so much as coastal palaces. A wide-open vista overlooking Shinnecock Bay on one side, soft sand beaches on the other. Even at this hour, Johnny could hear the crash of waves and the cries of seagulls pinwheeling in the southwest summer wind. He could taste the sea. He followed the folks streaming up Meadow Lane to an enormous house with a private dock. Cliques and clusters, the young and gorgeous mixed with the mature and well-preserved. An old-fashioned wooden sign announced it as Tartarus, the wide letters painted with a tartan pattern like from a kilt. Moonlight glinted off the quartz stone of the circular driveway, and valets in red vests were lining up vehicles worth more than his parents’ house. He was swept along with a cluster of little-black-dress types through a foyer the size of his apartment building, past a tumbling waterfall feature, and then out into the backyard, where the party was in full swing. A squat man with Warhol glasses—some famous designer?—wheeled and offered him and the women a snort of something from a no-shit silver spoon. Johnny figured it would be rude to decline. The party swirled and eddied, and the lights were oh so bright, and he was laughing hard, and anyone