Threat Level

“Oh, my word.”

May looked up from the bodice-ripper she’d grabbed from aisle three.

“Now, why’d she have to go and do a thing like that?”

Holly at the next register over had her nose in one of the tabloids, aghast and shaking her head at whatever it was she was looking at.

“What’s wrong, Holly?” May asked.

“Oh, Christine, just—look at this.”

Holly turned the magazine around to show a scatterplot of blurry paparazzi photos, clipped out and collaged together to prove that stars were just like them. Taylor Swift and her meathead fiancé had not forgotten, per the caption, to, quote, “make time for date night!” Amanda Seyfried, meanwhile, was squatting down to “scoop up the poop!” her dog had dropped, half off the curb, in between two parked cars. And, in a noticeably clearer shot, Madison Beer remembered to “stay hydrated!” with an artisanal seltzer, the brand name on the can tilted perfectly to camera.

May didn’t know which star to be aghast at. She spun the wheel and took a guess.

“Uh, yeah, Madison Beer really shouldn’t be going out like that. Those leggings do not leave anything to the imagination.”

“Who?” Holly asked, cocking her head.

She flipped the magazine back to herself and scanned the pages, confused.

“Ohhhhhh, her! Now, who the Hellman’s Mayonnaise is that little creature?”

“She’s a singer,” May said.

“No idea! But never mind her, Christine, I mean her!”

Holly turned the magazine back around with her finger pointing to the opposite page. On it were a bunch of photos of actresses tiled together in a grid, dressed to the nines on various red carpets, each of them rated 1 to 10 on a scale of “Frump!” to “Fab!”

“It’s that Emma Stone!” Holly sounded genuinely concerned. “She looks…different, you know?”

“Huh,” May said, squinting at the picture. “Now that you mention it, she does look a little different.” She did her best to sound like she hadn’t already seen these photos weeks ago, much less long since privately concluded which facial procedures the actress had undergone.

“I think she got that—oh, what was it called… That’s right, bew-kle fat! They were calling it ‘bew-kle fat removal’ in this article I read. Do you think that’s what she did?”

May leaned in a little closer to the picture, trying her best to look like she was actually mulling it over. Inside, however, she was screaming: Buccal! Buccal! Oh, my god, buccal! It’s pronounced ‘buckle,’ you stupid bitch! And second of all, no she didn’t! She just got a bleph and a facelift!

Holly was a prime example of what she and April used to call “the surgically illiterate,” those folks who couldn’t correctly identify cosmetic work if their life depended on it, even if they were in the O.R. observing the surgeon from start to finish. They’d see a singer’s eyebrows crawl halfway up her forehead, the tails of those brows tilting around from eight to ten and four to two, and swear to your face, their hand on a Bible, that “they look the same to me.” Or else they’d learn some buzzy new term and apply it incorrectly, confusing cheek implants for buccal fat removal and calling all facial work “Botox.” But April wasn’t here anymore, and May was May no longer. She was Christine, Christine from up north, and she didn’t know what she was looking at. Her scalp had never been peeled back, her forehead never shaved down. There were no silicone sacks in her breasts, and she’d certainly never gotten “TrapTox” done, much less ever heard such a fiendish portmanteau uttered. And even if she had, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have found it ironic; she would have simply nodded, for she’d have thought, “That is just what it’s called.” Her nose had always looked like that. Her chin and mandible, too. Her pussy was not elementary school age. It, like Christine, was 29 years old, and she’d had it since before she was born.

May looked up from the magazine to meet Holly’s anticipatory gaze.

“Hey, I think you’re right! She definitely got something done. What did you call it? Bew-kle whatever?”

“Bew-kle fat removal.”

“Yes! Totally. Definitely that. She definitely got that done.” May leaned in closer, looked both ways, and whispered conspiratorially. “Between you and me, I think she also might’ve gotten some Botox, too.”

Holly stifled a laugh and said, “My gosh, you really think?”