"Don't stay in the crane booth too long."
John's supervisor unwrapped his sandwich, aluminum foil crackling as it was balled up and lobbed into the garbage bin.
John remained silent. Sensing the unspoken question, his supervisor went on: "People get strange up there."
Evidently the supervisor decided that was a good place to end. The story was truncated by a large bite of ham, cheese and rye bread.
The two men were sitting, as they had done for the last 2 weeks, at the base of a skeletal structure of concrete, rebar and steel pipes, trying to pretend the half hour lunch break they were allotted each day wasn't about to end in 5 minutes. John couldn't remember what the building was supposed to be for - probably some kind of community club, judging by the rough layout.
John's supervisor's name was Mr Judd. A peculiar name, for a peculiar man. 2 meters tall and stocky to boot, his nickname around the worksite was 'the Lighthouse', named for his uncanny ability to spot any horseplay and shut it down, hard. His unblinking stare, framed in a blocky, almost cuboidal face, was the source of many jokes, all of which he tacitly permitted for
purposes of boosting morale. Although everyone else referred to him by his given name, John always called him 'sir'.
Mr Judd finished his sandwich in 3 large bites, brushed the crumbs from his hands and trousers simultaneously and stood up with an ease that spoke of strength and flexibility. For some reason he had taken to John, perhaps because John didn't joke around like the other new construction workers and didn't talk much either. Mr Judd liked that in a man. Economy of words.
"You stick with me and I'll show you everything there is to know, kiddo. Needa take a piss." Clapping John on the back, Mr Judd walked off.
"Yes sir."
John stared at his retreating back, then down to the pavement, where a group of worker ants had begun feverishly dragging the bread crumbs to some subterranean nest.
—-
John was relatively new to the construction site. His aunt had suggested he try working some part time jobs while he waited for his university term to start. In 6 months, he would start his Medicine course in John Hopkins University, after which he would start a residency (specialty as of yet undecided) and grind out a living. Maybe he would even get married.
They had made him a "crane operator assistant" after a week of shadowing the main crane operator, watching as the older man, Blaine, cranked cranks and pulled levers that swung the big arm to and fro, transporting beams and metal to the upper floors. These days, Blaine had been coming four to five hours late to the job. Nine times out of ten he showed up angry and drunk out of his mind. They would be letting him go soon, until which time John was assigned to fill the position. He was alone in the booth most of the time, which suited him just fine.
Today he was working a little later than usual. A large shipment of stone had just arrived from the quarry, and they needed to deliver it to the topmost floor. Peering down the 6-story ladder from the booth to the ground, John decided that it wasn't worth it. He only had 15 minutes of lunch break left. Unwrapping his sandwich, he took a bite.
"Mind if I join you?"
Unaccustomed to any sound other than the creaking of the crane arm in the wind, John spun around, dropping his food in the process. Tuna mayo spilled all over the floor as he stared at the girl standing in the booth behind him. Some distant part of his mind noted that her hard hat was tucked under her arm, violating a number of workplace safety protocols.
He had never seen the girl around the workplace before. Underneath the fluorescent safety vest all workers were mandated to wear, she wore a light blue t-shirt and jeans, which were,
impossibly white, despite the dust and dirt which spiraled in little eddies with the wind, coating buildings, truck seats and boots with brown sediment.
The girl laughed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. I'm new. They sent me up here to learn about-" she gestured vaguely, "all of this. It's nice to meet you..."
She peered curiously at his plastic nametag, then stuck out her hand. "John."
They spent the rest of the day talking. John showed her how to work the controls, while she nodded with polite interest, masterfully stifling several yawns. He told her that he was going to start medical school soon, and she asked him why he wanted to go into medicine. As he trotted out the template response he had given to all his relatives, John was impressed by the fact that despite her best efforts, she didn't seem to believe him. Everyone else had. But something about her eyes seemed to pierce through the layers of pretensions and nuance that kept him silent most of the time.
30 minutes before closing, she left. As John powered down the crane, he realized 2 things: One, he had spoken more that day than he had in the past 2 weeks combined.
And two, he had never gotten her name.
—-
She told him her name was Lily the next day. It was a slow day, with not much to move around, so they mainly spent the time discussing books and chocolate. Lily loved chocolate. She was also very enthusiastic about the works of Shakespeare, Tolkien, E.R. Edison and e.e. cummings, which suited John just fine. On most days, John counted down the minutes to the precious lunch break they were given, but as he listened to her talk, he realized he had almost forgotten to eat.
"I'm not hungry." She politely declined his proffered sandwich half, before eagerly turning to him again -
"Do you have chocolate?"
He happened to have a half-melted chocolate bar in his bag, which she gratefully accepted. The bar was gone within 5 minutes. When he suggested they go down to join the other workers to eat, she frowned.
"I'd rather stay up here. I like the view."
"Okay." He sat next to her and watched the clouds go by. 6 stories down, Mr Judd stared up at them, before shrugging and proceeding with his lunch.
—-
On the 5th day, John told Lily about his parents. They had died in a car crash in Johor 4 years ago. He recalled the lilies that adorned the caskets they had been cremated in, his mother's favorite flower.
"She always told me lilies were a special flower because they came from another world." Pale, otherworldly, dancing in the wind. After the funeral, he had been given a week to pack his belongings and move in with his aunt. He didn't think she liked him very much.
Lily patted his back. They sat at the edge of the platform in a comfortable silence, legs swinging over the edge like schoolchildren. And as John stared at the horizon, the sun set, and the world was temporarily bathed in a gentle brilliance that turned the dust motes into small diamonds, swirling and falling on the indifferent shoulders of the people walking down below.
—-
Mr Judd cornered him one day, 15 minutes before the end of shift.
"You gotta come down for lunch break. The others are starting to talk." To his surprise, John realised he was annoyed.
"We have 30 minutes to eat. I spend about 10 minutes climbing up and down the ladder to the crane."
Mr Judd shook his head.
"It's not about the time it takes. It's about the solidarity." He gestured to an imaginary crowd. "We're all down here. We're working together on this. It's not right to just go off by yourself." "I'm not alone!" John snapped.
"What?"
"Lily eats with me."
Mr Judd looked at him with a mixture of concern and pity.
"Who's Lily?"
—-
John took the ladder two steps at a time, heartbeat pounding in his ears like a drum. As the platform drew nearer, he wondered how he could have been so blind. How she never seemed to
eat anything. How he never saw her after shifts. She always stayed late, was always the last to leave.
Perhaps she never did.
Lily greeted him with a sad smile. She was crying.
"So you found out my little secret, huh? Took you a minute." As usual, John didn't know what to say. He sat down with her. How had he never noticed? For the first time, he took a good look at her. He had always thought it was strange that she was so pale, far too pale to be a construction worker. Now as she wiped her tears, he saw the whole skyline through her forearm.
Lily followed his eyeline, choked out a laugh.
"Guess I should have been more transparent. Have you ever wondered what used to be here before they tore it down to make space for your construction project? I used to live here, you know. This was my apartment." Some lucid part of John's brain recalled the architecture courses he took back in junior college, estimating the current height of the crane booth to be around 8 HDB storeys up.
"When you told me your parents passed away, I told you that I understood how you feel. And I do. I never knew my parents. My relatives used to drop by this house, when I was smaller, to drop off food and clothes and stuff. They never stayed over though. For as long as I could remember, it's always just been me here."
John realized he had been holding his breath, found his voice:
"What's it like? Being..."
"Dead?" Lily crooked a brow. "You can say it, you know. It's...strange. I don't even know how I ended up here. I think perhaps I died of a carbon monoxide leak, or maybe of loneliness. I just went to sleep one day and the next..." She held up her hands, peered wistfully through her ethereal palms.
"I never found any kind of afterlife. Things kind of continued the way they always had, except now I can't leave. Not to go to my old school, or go to the library to read, or buy chocolates. I think..." She paused.
"I think I'm trapped here."
—-
The last day of John's job approached as silent as a thief in the night. And as the days passed and the building neared completion, as the metal scaffolding was enveloped in concrete and glass and plaster like flesh on bones, John fell into a deep, depressed haze. Every time he thought of what he would do next, his mind would bring him back to Lily. She was funny and
charming and she loved reading stories and eating chocolate. And she had died the way she lived - unnoticed, unimportant, desperately unloved.
—-
"The building opens next week?" "Yeah."
John paused, deep in thought. He was sitting on the edge of the booth in their usual spot, while Lily floated in midair, pacing the empty space that was her prison.
"I'll try not to scare anyone. I'm sure it'll be fine."
"You think? I don't know. What if you don't like the people in the new building?"
"Don't worry about me! Worry about yourself. You need to spend more time with people your own age, you know." Lily teased. "I'm technically 80 years old and even I think you're too uptight"
"Very funny."
"No, but really."
"I like spending time up here with you."
"I'm serious." John turned around to find Lily glaring down at him, hands on her hips, looking very serious indeed. "In a few days, the building will be done. And you'll need to start making real friends and mixing around with people, like it or not."
There was a long silence.
For a brief moment, she seemed to be about to say something more, before deciding against it. Then she leaned over and hugged John impulsively, a gesture startling in its sweetness. John hadn't been hugged since his parents died. He tried to hug her back, and his arms closed on empty air. But suddenly, his nostrils were overwhelmed with the sweet fragrance of calla lilies, and he began to cry, choking back sobs that seemed to rip from his chest, sounds of hurt from somewhere deep inside where he had been crying, crying, for years, with no one to listen.
Unfazed, Lily stroked the back of his head. "You know, I've enjoyed our time together. More than you know. You'll be off in university, studying to be a doctor, saving lives. And I'll be here. Hey...think of me every now and then, won't you?"
And in that moment, John looked into her eyes, full of concern, and made a decision.
—-
Over the course of the next week, John's neighbors, friends and coworkers were mystified by John's requests for their library cards. He visited every single library in the area, maxing out the cards and amassing a vast horde of books, works of poetry, literature, history, fantasy. John carted crate after crate of books to work, filling out a nearby storage container he had rented for that express purpose. He spent the entirety of his earnings from his part-time jobs on chocolates, milk, dark and white chocolate. Godiva, Magnum, snicker bars, Kit-Kats, all kinds of brands went into a suitcase that he brought to work, emptying it into the storage container, which grew more and more full by the day.
And on the last day, John took hold of the crane controls and picked up the container, bringing it to the level where Lily's old apartment used to be. Task finished, he stood back, admiring his handiwork.
"Lily?"
She appeared next to him, took his hand.
"You will never be alone again." And with that, John drained his cup of cyanide-laced coffee. Suddenly, the weight of her hand pressed into his palm, soft and cool. And as he looked at her, she became solid, real. And this time, as he pulled her into a tight embrace, he felt her heart beating, like the wings of a bird that has escaped a cage where it had waited all its life through the dark solitary years. And an urban legend soon took root, across the decades and in all the following buildings that were torn down and rebuilt in the place of the original, that if one was to walk by a particular window in the east side, at just the right time of day, when the golden rays of sunset suffused the landscape with gentle light and the moon rose to greet the falling sun, one would see two figures, a man and a woman, sitting at the edge, reading books and eating chocolates.