There is a yiddishism: kitsey.

That hair on your neck, forearms a-shiver feeling? Sitting in the 4th grade during social studies after lunch, sleepy, slightly off, knowing you should be paying attention, touching the chewed, red-nub eraser on your #2 eberhard faber lightly to the skin outside your jugular, or perhaps to the small ring of hair in your ear canal, trying not to touch flesh, just brushing the hair so your scalp creeps a little, puts the cold shudder between your shoulder blades -- while the teacher talks about the Louisiana Purchase, and you get it just right, touching all the pale, near-invisible hairs in that small and tender hole, almost blocking the sound as she says "the pirate Lafitte", and you breathe so evenly, with your belly, hypnotized; not blinking; chilled, even in the falling sun as it glows warm from the initialed, scarred, and worn-out wood of your inherited desk; and she says something else, and you touch-touch, touch, so gently, making icy little waves up your spine?

That's kitsey.

I feel it when I go to the doctor sometimes, usually just with the nurse, as she weighs me and takes my temperature -- in my ear! -- and the sound of polyester slacks, rustling, the feathery touch of her green-and-blue smock sleeve as she leans in and brushes my wrist, forearm; as she wraps the blood pressure cup, pushes my sleeve up once, twice, a bit more; the rip of the velcro as she re-adjusts; her busy notes at each step; her methodical, crisp handling of me.

I get goosebumps, neck shrugs, scalp tightening. Kitsey.

It happened today. My wife sat across from my perch, reading Pillars of the Earth. I shivered in small waves after the nurse left; every small shift on the paper under me, the sound of it, every small kick of my free feet. If I turned my neck just so, lowered my eyelids just a bit, made my movement rhythmic, short: kitsey. 

My wife does this, too, in her way; she twirls a small strand, just 50 or so hairs, about one-and-a-half inches northwest of her right ear, while she reads. I've asked her: shiver? yes. Kitsey. 

Sometimes when she sits and listens to her boisterous, multilingual, loving family, at Thanksgiving, or on Passover, after the meal, with coffee? I see her do it: twirl that hair, mesmerizing herself, watching her parents, cousins, children, a small boutonniere of delight on her lips, betraying: kitsey.

She did it today as she read, at the clinic. She looks young when she reads like this. Her finger finds that strand, turns it, twirls it, she pulls it a tiny bit, smoothes along its length, lets it go, finds it again, repeats.

The two of us, finding cool inner spirals in the bland warmth of the antiseptic exam room.

The doctor came in. His brusque friendliness, authoritative questions, habit of closing his eyes while he listened to me answer, prolonged my kitsey self-hypnosis: how's the tremor? it spread to which leg? have you altered any of the doses? do you shake more in the evening?

I wanted to brush my palm on my close-cropped head as he asked me these. He listened to my heart; the cold of the stethoscope, the way he moved my shirt up so precisely -- an absurd and private and fleeting  bliss.

He didn't like my answers.

He pulled my hands in front of me, turned them. Do this, he said. Now do that. Touch my finger. Now your nose. He played tricks, moving his index target, waving his other hand as he abruptly had me do some other thing with my eyes. I tried to follow his changing instructions.

I should have been concerned, but still: kitsey. All the while, the fractional major chords, diminished, of kitsey, played my vertebrae. Hypnotized, I say. Pleasurable, this was. Silly, eh?

"Hold, out your hands again."

"Touch each finger with your thumb. Backwards now."

He stood and looked at me. My wife didn't move. He sat, turned, jotted on a pad, then tap-tapped into the laptop on the wheeled station, notating Me on the screen.

I looked at her; she was worried. I had not done well?

He swiveled back to me and said: "This isn't just the stress. You might have a neurological incident. An issue, I mean."

I might have had a stroke? Neurological, I heard.

You'll make an appointment, yes? more to her than me. They discussed where, who.

I told him my grandfather died of a stroke. Too young, too. He was basilisk; "You'll want to tell the neurologists this, your whole history. They will take a CAT scan."

I told him: the day this happened? when I had my breakdown? I heard it. I felt it. Something changed. Something broke.

"It might not be anything. Let's just get you tested. You shouldn't have these tremors still."

I took too long to find his finger. I had to concentrate. I hesitated, false starts.

Deborah, my wife, had that look, like the night her Gedalia died, when the call came in. I knew the small of her back was damp. 

She curled her fat paperback in both fists.

And still: kitsey. I shivered. I felt OK.

__

Later, three turkey vultures circle in the darkening cobalt sky as I walk across town. I stop in the empty bank parking lot and turn in a circle, head straight up, neck strained, watching them. I flex my gloved fingers. The sun is just gone, the light lingers. The slivered moon blurs in my cold, wet eyes. Two faint stars, no clouds.

I can see each serrated wingtip, as they turn and change places, slowly, but always they face a sun only they can see.

I will be late, I think.

But I stand and watch them. They aren't scouting food, I think. It's too late. It's too dark. Can they smell death, on such a cold night?

No matter how they move, wheeling so close to each other, they always face the light. I turn slowly, eyes always on them. I take my trembling right hand and squeeze it tight under my left arm, until it quiets, transfers and mutes its endless quiver to my torso.

I loft with them, up there. They are not hungry, I think. I think: they love to fly. They love each other.

They are not always waiting for death. They love the last light.

I shiver, and even in the bitter cold: kitsey.

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