“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.”

“Listen, I’m flattered,” I said, “but—”

He silenced me by lifting his hand from mine and holding it ominously in the air between us. “You won’t have to do a damn thing. All I want from you is an ongoing consult. Answers to a few questions. For example, when I open the vault, and I will, how will I know that nothing is there? It’s a big vault. If it is full of nothing, then how will I move it? How does one transport such a thing? Does it need to be refrigerated at minus 273 degrees Celsius?”

“You’re serious,” I said. “Which is not so different from ‘you’re crazy.’”

“I am that,” John Sill said. Another glance around and he pushed a yellow slip of paper toward me.

It was a check. A check with many zeros before the meaningless decimal point. It was a cashier’s check issued by the Bank of America.

“This is real,” I stated, but it was really a question.

Sill nodded. “All you have to do is advise me, answer my questions about nothing and not with some off-the-cuff shit that you save for graduate students and panels. I can get that shit from anyone. I can get that from any number of books. I want your pure, honest confusion.”

“Anything else?”

“Of course, this is to remain confidential. I mean, really confidential, really, really confidential.” He caught my eyes with his and for a flashing second he looked like the Bond villain he aspired to be. He scared me for that briefest moment. “Okay? Wink, wink, Bob’s your uncle.”