The first cancellation came two weeks before her operation. Deposit paid. No explanation.
I didn’t think much of it. Women get nervous before surgery. They usually rebook.
She didn’t. And over the next few months, neither did the others. My waiting list kept thinning, and nobody would tell me why.
Then one morning I bumped into her in the street — the woman who’d cancelled first.
I look at under-eyes the way a dentist looks at teeth. I can’t help it. Hers stopped me mid-sentence.
The bag I’d measured, photographed, and booked an operating room for was gone. Flat. No scar. No bruising. Nothing to operate on.
I assumed another surgeon had done it cheaper, and I asked her straight out: who?
She laughed. There’d been no surgery. She reached into her bag and put a tube in my hand.
A completely new kind of product — one that didn’t exist a few years ago: an instant eye tightener.
Something that pulls the under-eye flat — physically — while you watch. Ninety seconds in the morning. It costs about as much as a lipstick.
I told her it was impossible. She told me to order one.
And suddenly the cancellations made sense. Those women hadn’t lost their nerve. They’d found this.
What happened next put me out of the eye bag business.
