Security

French has been working security at an old warehouse these last few months.  It is a huge rambling building.  There are a few businesses in it, but the very back is vacant.

He was doing a night round and busted a guy who was living in an old office.  French said he spotted a can of fresh cigarette butts on a fire escape.  He went up the stairs and found a guy sleeping on the floor.  French woke him up a bit later with a Tim Horton's coffee.  His name was Marko and he told French his story.  He was in his mid twenties, and had immigrated from the former Yugoslavia.  He had Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian blood, so his family had fled the civil war.  The breaking point had come when a bullet had smashed through their wall and zinged right over the dinner table.  His family left that night.

In Canada his luck had not improved.  His father had died early on in a car wreck, and Marko had been left to fend for his mother.  She too had died just this past summer of Lupus.  Marko had been let go a couple of weeks ago from a seasonal job as a snowplow operator due to the lack of snow this year.  The rent was overdue, and he lost his apartment.  He'd been sleeping, and staying out of the cold by riding on the crosstown buses, but the Transpo cops had caught onto him.

French believed his story, and was able to convince the owner of the warehouse to let Marko stay, and to even let Marko have his security job.  French said, "It worked out for the both of us. I hate working security!"