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until sundown with an hour lunch (if we could stomach to eat ), and three thirty minute breaks. I used to love lunch and break time with a passion. I was only twenty-two years old, but my body had the aches of a man much older. Clearly, it was never my calling to do hard labor.
    My first few days, the deaths we encountered were from suicide and violence. New York had no shortage of tall buildings. Jumpers were everywhere. And they were a broken and bloody mess. The deaths by violence were both diverse and disturbing. I remember an old couple from Battery Park City who we found tied, gagged, and knifed up. Their apartment was smashed pretty ba d, and their food and valuables were gone.
    I remember a young family of five from Hell’s Kitchen who were murdered down to the infant. Husband, wife, young twin boys, and baby girl were forced to the floor in order, where they had had their throats slit . The carpet was saturated with spo iled blood , and I was grateful to have a helmet protecting me from the toxic air. It was awful. Three members of our unit quit that day. We also found individuals who were caught in their homes alone, at least two dozen. And often, both the men and the women were raped before they were murdered.
    One of the more memorable things we encountered was the aftermath of a Kool-Aid party. It was at Club Pictures on 27 th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. There were over five hundred and forty partygoers, and they all had had a last night out.
    From the evidence, they had one hell of a time. There was an abundance of cigarette butts, drug refuse, bottles of alcohol, panties, and sex paraphernalia scattered throughout the venue. But for the grand finale, they all had drunk cyanide laced punch from champagne glasses.
    It took us the entire day to clear out that club. The true tragedy was these people were beautiful, a nd in life, they had everything going for them. There were women who were obvious runway models. There were professional athletes whom anyone could have recognized from watching television. And there was even a famous star couple: Selma York and Gerald Lacoste.
    Selma and Gerald were known for their tabloid headlines. You could hardly visit a newsstand or browse a newsfeed without reading something of this handsome couple. And now, here I was, removing their bodies. I have to hand it to them, though. They went out in style. They both were dressed in thousand dollar outfits. Gerald’s cologne was hypnotic through my unfastened helmet , and Selma’s makeup was perfect, even in death.
    ***
    My last best friend in New York was David Patrov, a light-skinned man from the Republic of Oregon, with a medium height and build and a Harvard education. He was thirty, and had lived in Manhattan for five years. He was a classic Big Apple bachelor. He worked for one of the Chinese conglomerates on Wall Street as a negotiator, and he used to broker seven-figure deals with produce and commodities vendors. He boasted that he worked hard and played even harder. He said that his down time included frequent clubs, frequent vacations, frequent drugs, and very frequent women.
    I liked David, not because of his enviable lifestyle, but because of our similarities. He was a mutt just as I am. Both our mothers were Black and our fathers were Jewish. The distinct difference is his father was from Russia, while my father was a native New Yorker. He also came from a big family. He had five sisters and three brothers. Three of his siblings stayed close to home, while the rest lived in different parts of the globe. And out of all his siblings, he was the only one who had yet to have children.
    David said he was in his home the morning the news broke. He had left work early the day before, and was prepared for a flight to his hometown, Portland, at three o’clock that Saturday afternoon. When he learned that the virus was going to touch everyone, he tried calling his family; and like me, like billions of others, he