Free The Lonely by Paul Gallico

child.
    He got in and gave the address, 12 Severn Avenue, Westlake Park. The driver looked around. “Cost ya a fin, bud. I gotta come back empty.”
    “That’s okay.”
    The driver set the cab in motion and headed for the parkway that would take them out on the island. When they were rolling, he half turned his head and asked: “Well, how’s things over there?”
    Jerry said: “Over where?” and meant it. His body had been transported to America, but his mind had not yet made the transition. He had been thinking of Gedsborough Airbase, Sam Bognano, his ship, and the crew.
    The driver said: “On the other side. Ain’t you just back from there? I see by them ribbons you got on . . . I got a kid in the Pacific. How’s it—pretty tough?”
    Jerry replied: “It gets a little rugged sometimes.” He looked at the photograph and name of the driver on the identification placard inside the cab. It was Edgerton Bibber, Long Island City. The last time he had been in a cab had been a fortnight ago in London with Sam Bognano, his pilot. They had gone to a night club in one of the tiny-bonneted, high-fashioned London taxis, driven by a cockney who had a son with the Eighth Army in Italy. There had been a V alert on at the time, but the cabby paid it no mind and told them about driving all through the blitz of ’40.
    The driver of the Yellow remarked: “I guess you fellers get a bellyful . . .”
    Jerry did not reply. His mind was impaled upon something he could not catch. Then it came—the name of the driver. Patches would have loved it, and would have started to make a song about it. They had collected odd names seen on shop fronts and hotel registers all through their trip together. There was one in particular he remembered they had come upon at Stronachlachar, a gentleman by the name of Peabody Twitillie, and they had cycled to its refrain for hours.
    Jerry started a couplet—“Oh, Edgerton Bibber, he was a . . .” But it wouldn’t come. It wasn’t any good without Patches. Nothing was any good without Patches. That’s why he was bowling along Grand Central Parkway in a taxicab to go and talk to Catharine and get straightened out.
    He had to get a grip on himself, to put his hand down and feel the leather of the seat and look up again at the name placard of the driver and beyond to the familiar traffic of the parkway. Home and Catharine were beyond, and Patches had only just pulled out of St. Enoch’s Station, wearing that silly little hat with the blue cornflowers on it, and holding up her hand to him, framed in the window of the railway carriage until she was out of sight.
    In Jerry’s mind the coughing of the taxi motor turned into the chuff-chuff-chuff of the long, packed train as it snaked its way out of the station in Glasgow; he no longer saw the parkscape of Long Island, but only the grey canopy of the terminus and the gap left by the departed train. “Chuff-chuff-chuff,” and then the mournful shriek of those damned English locomotive whistles. He’d never get the sound out of his ears.
    Patches ought to be in Kenwoulton by now, back to the dismal, lightless brick house in Bishop’s Lane, with the chimney pots like rabbit’s ears—back to the war, back where she started from with her fat little bag and her wistful, shadowy smile. It was there at the foot of the stairs that she had looked at his watch and timed the beginning of their adventure together. He wondered whether she would glance at the time again and note when it was ended . . . The cab reached the end of the parkway and swung off. Only a few more miles. Oh, God, he was in a mess! . . .
    When they approached Westbury on the Jericho Turnpike, Jerry said to the driver: “Never mind taking me to that address. Drop me on the edge of town somewhere. I’ll tell you when . . .”
    “Whatever you say, bud. Guess you don’t want to walk in on ’em too sudden, eh?”
    Jerry let it go at that. Actually now that he was nearing Westbury and passing