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Screw me pah-lease .
    “My rates double for after hours.”
    “I bet they do.” Taddy hoped he wasn’t flirting with her just for her riches. She didn’t pay for sex. Not blatantly at least. Tonight she’d be sure to find out exactly if Gilad’s intentions went beyond Pilates. “Let’s not let a little thing called money stand between us. I like to think large. Very large.”
    Gilad stepped close to Taddy. “Me too.” Ever so slightly, he grazed his hardness against her stomach. The body contact and the implied suggestion sent a chill up her spine. She didn’t jump back—rather leaned in close to him.
    “Taddy, let’s go,” Lex snapped. In a call for her attention, she clapped her hands.
    “One sec, darling.” Taddy shot Vive a look to rein in their moody friend.
    He turned his back to the rest of the girls and faced Taddy more intimately. “I’m free after ten.” Gilad adjusted himself, grinned and asked, “Shall I come by your penthouse, Miss Brill, for a home lesson then?”
    “Yes.” Taddy winked and slipped him her card with the details on the back. “Here’s my address.”
    “Can’t wait.”
    “I’ll tell my butler to expect you.”
    “Hello, I’m out of here,” Lex blurted extra bitchily. She waved her goodbyes to Gilad and pushed on the front door.
    Taddy followed Vive, who walked a few feet behind Lex, one block over to Juice Press on Third Avenue and East Sixty-Second Street for their liquid dinner. They didn’t talk. Once they received their shakes and sat at a café table, Taddy asked, “Lex, is there anything you wanna tell us?”
    Vive leaned in closer.
    “Mom’s sick.” Lex’s mother, Birdie Easton, widow to heavy metal icon Eddie Easton who also found fame in ‘82 when she hit platinum with her own two chart toppers “Am I Wicked” and “Lucifer’s Mistress”, always carried on just a little sicker than the norm.
    “Say what?”
    “Mom diagnosed herself with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a fatal skin condition.”
    “What do you mean diagnosed herself?” Vive spoke as if they were slated for a feature in Debauchery magazine.
    “Mom researched her symptoms online.” Lex pulled a few papers out of her gym tote. She gave them to Vive to inspect.
    “WebDoctorMD and DiseasePedia are not credible.” Vive’s journalistic eye skimmed the papers. “And the symptoms state patients with the disease show a hideous rash triggered by infected facial tissue. If that were true Birdie’s face would blister.” She passed the documents over to Taddy who read on.
    “I saw Birdie a week ago. She looked like her usual rock-star self,” Taddy muttered, convinced Birdie bathed in formaldehyde to maintain her youth. Lex’s mother might be a whack and frail but she was still gorgeous.
    Taddy dropped the papers on the table. “This journal cites excessive cocaine use as a possible cause.” Birdie’s decade-long partying in the ‘80s with drugs proved enough to swing Taddy’s convictions from “no way in hell” to “not really” as she considered what she’d read. It couldn’t be possible . “Birdie is a bit of a hypochondriac.” And a full-blown loon . Taddy shook her head and sipped her Acai Extreme Energy smoothie. She struggled to demonstrate any sympathy. Her empathy-feeling days for the Eastons were long past. This had to be bullshit.
    “Mom hasn’t been the same since Dad died.” Embarrassment washed Lex’s face.
    “No kiddin’.”
    “Birdie dove headfirst into the cra-cra pool, breaking her skull wide open eons prior to Eddie killing himself.” Vive snorted and rolled her eyes.
    “I know, I know.” Lex’s eyebrows furrowed. “The unauthorized biography on Mom really did her in.”
    “Ya think?”
    The book, titled Banging Birdie , was penned as a Kitty Kelley-styled tell-all slammer. True to all faults, the 506 pages depicted the Birdie Easton scandals. A legend in her own right, Birdie had become infamous amongst the music community for sleeping