74. But . . .

While I was drawing this, a woman wearing a frown crossed the street toward me and, standing right in front of me, hands on hips, began talking at me.
‘What are you doing, sitting in the street like this?’ she asked, staring down at me.
‘I’m drawing that house over there,’ I said taking off my headphones, and pointing to the house I was drawing.
‘I can see that,’ said the woman, who was dressed in blue slacks and a grey fleece with a picture of three cat heads on it. ‘But why on earth?’
I explained to her the A Hundred Houses project, and that I was up to number 74, and that she would be the story for this house.
‘Oh,’ she said, now smiling. ‘I know about stories. My husband writes stories.’
‘Oh, he does?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said, the frown returning. ‘But he’s not very good at it.’
‘What are his stories about?’ I said.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He’s always asking me to read them, but I don’t.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘I prefer television,’ she said, now smiling, ‘but not just any old television.’
‘What do you like to watch?’ I said.
‘I’m not terribly fussy,’ she said, frowning again, ‘but nothing with murder.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘like drama, or comedy or something?’
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling again. ‘Adventures – but only if Tom Cruise is in it.’
‘So Top Gun, or Maverick or Mission Impossible . . . or . . .’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, I love him in Mission Impossible, but not that silly Magnolia thing.’
‘What about Born on the 4th of July,‘ I said, ‘or Risky Business?’
‘Yes, he was good in that war one,’ she said, now laughing. ‘But he was better in his underpants.’