Okay, major drama for the day... out of the blue, Eric told me he's going to Las Vegas for the weekend for some conference. I instantly got the feeling that he was pulling away from me, that he wanted "space" as he called it.

And I got nosy.

So I looked at his itinerary in his home office desk.

The airline tickets were for a round trip to San Francisco-- not Las Vegas.

Hmmmm....

My instinct was, as always, to ask Eric what was up-- but did I ever go with my instincts? Nope. For some reason, I decided to keep the knowledge to myself. I sensed something bigger than I imagined was going on and silence was the tool for finding out what it was.

I desperately wanted to talk about this with Greg -- but Greg was on his latest "bizarre behavior." He told me he couldn't be around gay people for a while. Okay, WHATEVER. Greg was obviously going through some major identification issues so I decided to give him time to "find himself." In the meantime, I was on my own. And desperate for a sounding board.

I called Fran-- she was out.

I called Hugo-- no answer.

I called my sister in Atlanta. She said she'd have to call me back.

Damn.

I went to work to tie up some loose ends and to stop thinking about this latest mystery in my life.

*****

John Daniel came into my office, pissed off.

"What's the matter, JD?" I asked.

"I'm firing the new receptionist. She lost seven messages for me while I was at lunch. I've been waiting for days to get a callback from the Mayor of Pasadena. Now I have to call the Mayor's office because the idiot doesn't even remember if the Mayor's office called us! She 'thinks so!' Well, I think she's fired."

I offered to call the Mayor's office for him, "I'll tell them a temp screwed us up for the day and I was following up."

JD was so happy with my solution, he smiled. "You and me, kid. I have two tickets to the Men's Volleyball Championships in Long Beach this weekend. You wanna go?"

He was making another pass. I could feel it. I smiled and thought about what my weekend plans were... and I remembered that Eric was going to be off on some secret adventure.

"Sure, JD. I'd love to go."

Two could play at this game. I had the strongest feeling that Eric was about to have an affair... correction-- another affair. Well, two could play at that game, couldn't they?

"Nothing like a bunch of men jumping around in trunks!" I smiled. And so did JD.