He was talking about another world. In Michelle’s world, most cars were old and had plenty of mechanical problems. She’d never even looked inside a limousine. She’d seen them on the highway in San Antonio. Her father told her that important businessmen and politicians and rich people and movie stars rode around in them. Not ordinary people. Of course, Gabriel wasn’t ordinary. He’d said he owned a new Jaguar. Certainly he could afford to ride in a limousine.

“Do you think they’d let me look inside, when it brings her here?” she asked.

Gabriel was amused at her innocence. She knew nothing of the world at large. He couldn’t remember being that young, or that naive about life. He hoped she wouldn’t grow up too quickly. She made him feel more masculine, more capable, more intriguing than he really was. He liked her influence. She made him laugh. She made him want to be all the things she thought he was.

“Yes,” he said after a minute. “Certainly you can look inside.”

“Something to put in my diary,” she mused.

“You keep a diary?” he asked, with some amusement.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I note all the cows I’ve seen abducted, and the strange little men who come out of the pasture at night...”

“Oh, cool it.” He chuckled.

“Actually, it’s things like how I did on tests, and memories I have of my father and mother,” she confessed. “And how I feel about things. There’s a lot about Roberta and Bert in there, and how disgusting I thought they were,” she added.

“Well, Roberta’s where she can’t hurt you. And Bert is probably trying to find a way out of the country, if he’s smart.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He stood up and pulled her up beside him. “That’s a conversation for another time. Let’s go see if Carlie’s game show is off.”

“Don’t you like game shows?” she wondered aloud.

“I like the History Channel, the Nature Channel, the Military Channel, and the Science Channel.”

“No TV shows?”

“They’re not TV shows. They’re experiments in how to create attention deficit disorders in the entire population with endless commercials and ads that pop up right in the middle of programs. I only watch motion pictures or DVDs, unless I find something interesting enough to suffer through. I like programs on World War II history and science.”

She pondered that. “I guess there’s five minutes of program to fifteen minutes of commercials,” she agreed.

“As long as people put up with it, that will continue, too.” He chuckled. “I refuse to be part of the process.”

“I like history, too,” she began.

“There was this big war...” he began with an exaggerated expression.

She punched his arm affectionately. “No cherry pie and ice cream for you.”

“I take it back.”