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orDadaist joke? She was smiling, as if I had confirmed her intuition about me. I knew that whatever I did, I would confirm her intuition.
    I wanted to fling the bottle against the wall, but she was already pressing another corkscrew into my hand, an identical one. I didn’t want it, but I didn’t see any way of refusing. I gave the thing a little preliminary twist in the air, just to see whether it would hold together. The original screw was still in place and with some trouble I managed to get it out. Then I worked the new one in, even more deliberate now. It took me five minutes to get it all the way in. I turned it evenly, so as not to put any unnecessary stress on the handle.
    I pulled very gradually, gently at first, then more strongly. Nothing happened. The cork didn’t budge. I couldn’t imagine why not—it wasn’t as if this was an ancient bottle of wine that had been sealed by time itself. To get a better purchase, I put the bottle on the floor between my feet.
    What came next still seems incredible to me. Sometimes I think it didn’t actually happen, that my memory is playing tricks. But it did happen: Before my eyes, I saw the corkscrew slowly emerge from the cork. It didn’t break off; the cork didn’t crumble. The screw simply straightened out, so that I was holding in my hand something that resembled an ice pick.
    I felt like a person in a dream. I shook myself, tried to collect my wits, to stop the blush that was rising to my face. What should I have done? What would Henry Miller have done in my place? Otto Rank? Edmund Wilson?
    Anaïs took the bottle and the corkscrew and put them on a table. Perhaps she had never meant for itto be opened. She turned and looked at me through narrowed eyes. I can see, she said, that you are a most interesting young man.
    In her diary, there was nothing about the corkscrews, but I was described as “handsome, sensual, ironic.” I wasn’t fooled: All the young men in her diary were handsome, sensual, and ironic.

6
    L iving with Sheri was a process of continual adjustment. It was like living in a foreign city: You learn the language, the currency, the style of the people. You find out how to make a phone call, how to take the subway, where the stores and restaurants are, the parks, the public pissoirs, the post office. You try to feel like a native, not a foreigner; you progress from grammar to idioms in an attempt to talk as if you belonged. Still, you never succeed in feeling at home. You remain a visitor, perhaps only a tourist.
    There was always something else, something more, another even larger adjustment to be made. She would come out with a new twist that meant I had to start all over. When she announced one day that she had a bad heart, it was as if she had been saving this for last.
    It was nighttime and we were in bed. She grew very inventive at night; she ran through in a rush all the day’s unused possibilities, the leftovers of her sensibility. Iwas almost asleep when she came out with her revelation: You know, I have a bad heart.
    Of course, I didn’t take in at first what she was saying. There was no context for it, no natural leading up. Just You know, I have a bad heart, as if she was saying, Good night, or Move over a little. It was dark and statements in the dark are different.
    Also, I never knew whether she was speaking literally or figuratively. As I’ve already mentioned, she liked to talk in metaphors. I’ve never known anyone who used so many figures of speech. So when she said, I have a bad heart, I thought she meant as opposed to a good heart, a bad heart as in bad faith, a hard or black heart, a disloyal heart.
    She liked to make me work at interpreting her. Not knowing exactly what she meant, I would give her credit for things she had never even thought of. It was like when I used to read Surrealist poetry in French—I imagined all sorts of marvels until I began to use a dictionary.
    I was half asleep. We had made love and I was