Kane whistled from beneath his hard hat, leaning against the steel girder he was supposed to be welding to take in the metropolis spread out underneath him.
‘Would you look at that view?’ he marvelled to nobody in particular.
‘Pretty nice, isn’t it?’ came a voice from behind him. Kane twisted around as far as his harness would allow to see who it was. A man walked towards him across the structural steel walkway, lunchbox in one hand and grin firmly affixed across his tanned face.
‘You been up here long?’ he asked Kane.
‘A couple of weeks,’ Kane shrugged, turning back to the city. The sun was just beginning to set behind some of the skyscrapers below them. ‘Never get tired of it though.’
‘Thank god for the good quality metal suppliers in the Melbourne CBD,’ the man laughed, tapping a boot against the girder they were both resting on.
‘Yeah…’ Kane laughed uneasily. He’d gotten over his vertigo after a week on the site, but he still didn’t like being reminded of how high he was. ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’
‘Call me Luke,’ the man grinned.
Kane frowned. ‘Because… that’s your name?’
‘Close enough,’ Luke shrugged. ‘Say, how do they even make these things?’ He tapped on the side of a girder again and it rang dully, barely audible over the sounds of construction around them.
‘I don’t know, man,’ Kane grumbled, annoyed that his serene moment had been interrupted. ‘Probably just hired whoever were the best structural steel fabricators around Melbourne. It’s not that complicated.’
‘Yeah…’ the man murmured, clearly not listening. He placed a palm against the cool metal, looking up at the structure with awe. ‘Pretty interesting.’
‘Do you even work here?’
That got Luke’s attention. ‘What’s that?’
‘Do you actually work on this site?’
‘Why would you ask that?’ he grinned nervously.
‘Because,’ Kane frowned, ‘your hard hat is the wrong colour and nobody carries around their lunchbox at the end of the day — we have a breakroom.’
‘Right…’ Luke nodded. ‘Different hat. No lunchbox. Got it. Can you blame me though?’ he asked with a smile. ‘It’s a hell of a view.’