Stinging Nettles - Part II (fiction)

Daniel wondered how long she had been with her boyfriend: this was the first that she had mentioned that there was someone on the scene, and yet dinner at the parents’ house indicated somewhat of a serious relationship.
He gave his head a small shake. What did it matter? She had a boyfriend, that was that. He was likely an exemplary human being and outstanding member of society. Butterflies likely landed on his head too.
He mumbled some disjointed account of what the weekend held for him, not mentioning that this was his Saturday to take out some of the residents of the Sunrise retirement home because he often felt that he was bragging when he mentioned it, except for the time he mentioned how he volunteered every second weekend to one of his coworkers and they had responded with, “Why?” which utterly stumped Daniel for close to ten seconds.
“Ah, you’re all coy and vague about your weekend: you must have something scintillating going on,” Janine teased. “Let’s see. What could Daniel possibly be doing that he wouldn’t want to share with his ever inquisitive coworker and spunky sidekick Janine?”
She cast a sly glance in his direction as she walked over to the truck in search of a pair of shears so she could set to work on the hedges. He watched her effortless gait, the way she literally walked with a spring in her step as though her destination was something other than a cargo box in the back of a Parks truck. She walked as though she was listening to some happy, inner music.
Grabbing the apparatus she needed she turned back to him. “I think that after work you duck into the nearest telephone booth – speaking of telephone booths, there sure aren’t many of them around anymore, are there? I mean, when was the last time you were in one? And when was the last time that you actually needed to use one? I bet you our kids will look at them strangely, the way we look at… I don’t know, eight tracks.
Anyways. Once you’re in the archaic and historically significant telephone booth, you change in to green tights and a flowing green cape and you set out to save the world from ivy and milfoil, stopping only to help little old ladies across the street and to rescue kittens from trees,” she decided.
“Firemen rescue kittens from trees, they don’t need me to do that,” he told her, inwardly happy that her image of him – though cartoonish – was noble. “And due to the serious lack of telephone booths in our society I now accomplish my rapid costume change feats in Esso bathrooms, after purchasing sugar-free gum in order to be allowed use of the washroom key, which actually works out great because I have fresh breath while ridding the world of invasive, foreign flora.”
Laughing, Janine told him that she loved his sense of humor. He gave a wry grin in reply instead of listing off one of the many things that he loved about her. The two that came most readily to mind: the way she took forever to eat an orange because, after peeling off the rind, she insisted on picking off as much of the white skein as she could because she told him she couldn’t bear its texture on her tongue; or the way she was almost totally incapable of peeling a banana with totally mashing the end of it with her repeated attempts to break the stem.