Book excerpt: "Dr. No" by Percival Everett

It's not James Bond. "Dr. No" is author Percival Everett's clever comic romp about a math professor who specializes in the study of nothingness, whose work attracts the attention of a supervillain.

Read an excerpt below.

It was my expertise in nothing, not absolutely nothing, but positively nothing, that led me to work with, rather for, one John Milton Bradley Sill, a self-made billionaire with one goal, a goal that might have been intriguing to some, confounding and weird to most, idiotic to all, but at least easily articulated. John Milton Bradley Sill aspired to be a Bond villain, the fictitious nature of James Bond notwithstanding. He put like this: "I want to be a Bond villain." Simple.

We were sitting in a coffee shop on Thayer Street. It was eight on a Monday morning in November, the semester winding down and so the students who had dragged themselves in there were nearly sleepwalking. I was much like them. I had discovered only recently that I needed a full twelve hours of sleep to function properly but had sat up much of the night thinking about the meeting with Sill. I hardly ever remembered my dreams, which seemed right and fair as I rarely recalled my waking life during sleep.

"What do you mean by Bond villain?"

Sill held a spoon like a cigarette. "You know, the sort of perpetrator of evil deeds that might cause the prime minister to dispatch a double-naught spy to thwart me. You know, evil for evil's sake."

"A sort of modernist villain," I said.

"Precisely."

I stared and stirred my tea. I didn't want to look at him, but I did, realizing, as he came into focus, that he was certifiable. But jolly. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, slightly racially ambiguous, an equine face and tightly curled hair. He was a slight man. "You look too nice to be a villain," I said.

"Thank you," he said. "Appearances are only that."

"Have you ever performed an evil deed?"

"Like what?"

"Have you ever killed anyone?" I asked. "Bond villains kill indiscriminately." I was speaking out of my ass. I didn't know the first thing about Bond villains.

"Some do, some don't." Sill poked the air with his spoon. "Have you ever seen Goldfinger?"

"I think so. Let's say no."

"Goldfinger robs Fort Knox."

"Where they keep the gold," I said.

"Where they keep the gold." John Sill looked around, measuring everyone in the room. "Do you know what's actually in the vault of Fort Knox?"

"I don't."

He leaned forward, actually resting his chin on the palm of his hand, like a lover or at least like someone who had known me for more than a quarter hour, and said, "Nothing."

"You mean there is no gold there."

"I mean there is nothing there."

"Nothing," I said.

"Precisely that. I am not telling you that there is no gold there. I'm telling you that there is nothing there. What you have been looking for."

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Still, I was convinced he meant that the vault was empty.

"I'm telling you that the vault is not empty." As if reading my mind.

"And?"

"You, my friend, are going to help me steal it. I've done my research. You know more about nothing than anyone. How much power must there be for anyone who can possess nothing."

Excerpt from "Dr. No." Copyright © 2022 by Percival Everett. Used with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

     
For more info:

• "Dr No" by Percival Everett (Graywolf Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Indiebound