In The Kitchen At Work

I was heating up my lunch in the kitchen in my office today. It's was my day in the office. There was a woman in the kitchen reading the newspaper.

I get my lunch out of the microwave and give it a stir.

"Oh, that smells nice," she says.

"Oh, thanks," I say. I mean, what else can you really say to that?

"Do you make your lunch every day?" she asks.

"My partner makes my lunch," I say.

"Oh. That's a bit sexist, isn't it?" she says.

"No," I say.

"Can't you make your own lunch?" she asks. She smiles.

"Oh, you think so, do you?"

"Yes," she says.

"Can you see any reason why that isn't sexist?" I ask. You know, kind of light heartedly.

"No, not really," she says. She smiles, I think, to soften what she was saying.

"No?"

"No." She laughs.

"No?" I kind of say in a joking kind of way.

She just looks at me with that, what would you call it, certainty in what she was thinking.

"My partner is a guy."

"Oh." She looks embarrassed. Her face flushes red. "Oh," she says again.

She goes back to her newspaper.

I continue preparing my lunch.