"Oh, no…no!" Grace exclaimed, as she pawed through her handbag.
"What now?" Will asked.
"I lost the photo of Jack I had in my purse," she wailed. "It must have been at the restaurant. That's the only time I had it open since we got back yesterday. We'll have to go back there and ask if anyone found it and turned it in."
"Great," Will grunted, disappointed at the delay. He was anxious to get started on the search again.
But on inquiring, the missing photo was not to be had, at least at the restaurant. Grace and Will decided to go together and resume searching. Time was wasting; it was getting near lunch. They picked up the search at the mission where they had abandoned it the previous day.
Norma awoke fairly late, but her first thought wasn't about Chad as it usually was, she was thinking about Jack. "Maybe I should get him some new clothes. He's been wearing and sleeping in what he has for two days," she mused to herself. She tried to remember what sizes he took from the labels she saw when the doctor removed them. She considered what nearby clothing stores might be open on Sunday. On her way she would stop by the mission to double check on the sizes.
The lunch crowd was light, being a Sunday, so Greg didn't disturb Jack whom he assumed was still sleeping in the other room. He hadn't seen their guest yet – he promised Norma he wouldn't impose on him. Greg looked up to see Will and Grace entering, so he started to dish up a couple of bowls of soup to serve them. They weren't familiar faces and didn't look like typical mission patrons.
"Sorry, we didn't come here for food. We just wanted to know if you'd seen this man," Will said, holding out his photo of Jack.
"Greg studied the picture a second, the handed it back, "No I haven't," he responded truthfully. "A friend of yours?"
"Yes. He's been missing about forty-eight hours now," Will offered.
"Too bad, but I'll keep my eye out. Where can I get in touch with you if I see him?" Greg wanted to know.
Will fished in his back pocket and extracted a small pad of paper and a pencil. He wrote his name and cell phone number down and handed it to Greg saying, "Call ANYTIME, day or night."
"Sure will," Greg promised.
"Thanks," Will said simply. "C'mon, Grace, let's keep looking," Will suggested, pulling
Grace away from gobbling down one of the bowls of soup that Greg had served.
About a half an hour after Will and Grace had departed, Jack appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the sleeping room, yawning. Greg wasn't present, so Jack helped himself to some sandwich fixings and coffee, the sat down at a table in the dim corner to eat. Greg appeared behind the counter with some small bags and started to refill the sugar bowls at the coffee station and the saltshakers on some tables. He noticed a customer at one table but didn't really pay attention to him. He had his chores to do. As Jack finished his meal, so did Greg finish his tasks and returned the salt and sugar to the back room. Jack bussed his dishes to the counter and decided to get freshened up again. He walked out of the dining room towards the lavatory. When Greg returned, he saw the empty dishes and moved them to the dishwasher and started the machine, assuming the patron had finished and left. This masked the noise of the running water from the other washroom. Jack checked his progress in the mirror. His eye was almost completely open now and his bruises were rapidly disappearing. Only five more days and the sling could come off. When Jack was finished with his grooming, he looked down at his clothes. They were getting a little wrinkled and gamy, after all he had been wearing and sleeping in them for over forty-eight hours. He though maybe the man that Norma said would be at the mission would know someplace he could get some inexpensive clothes and underwear to tide him over. He walked towards the kitchen again. He heard somebody rattling the utensils behind the counter.
"Hello, anybody here," Jack called.
"A blonde head shot up from underneath the counter, started blankly at Jack a few moments, then exclaimed, "Ho-lee cow!"