Last week, Andy and I had dinner at the fish place on Court Street.

It was the first time we’d been there, and we were pleased to discover that the space, which had gone through many incarnations, was now warm but not fancy in the nice Brooklyn way – cozily tiled in multiple shades of blue with an extensive raw bar, but with cheap American beer offered in cans. It was a shame I couldn’t enjoy it more.

“You look tense,” Andy said, as we perused the menus.

“I am tense,” I said. Nothing strikes fear and doubt in the heart of today’s pregnant woman like a menu full of fish. There was a time my greatest challenge in ordering seafood was tray-guilt left over from Hebrew school. Now I have bigger fish to fry – or worry about being fried, as they may or may not contain too much mercury.

Who knew that my daily tuna sandwich, once so blissfully considered healthy, was the equivalent of Love Canal on wheat with mayonnaise? “No more tuna,” my obstetrician had ordered, just after freaking me out about mercury staying in your system. Was it any wonder that citybaby’s expecting message board, the Internet destination that was my daily obsession, was filled with posts of the worried-about-what-to-eat variety?

“I know I shouldn’t get the tuna,” I said to my doctor husband. “But what about the salmon? I know one kind’s better than the other – but is it the wild or the farm-raised? And with salmon is it mercury or PCBs?”

Andy shrugged. “I have no idea.”

The nose-pierced, belly-exposing waitress, who looked to be about 22, was equally clueless. So, while Andy ordered the flash-fried wasabi snapper that was the house specialty, I glumly said, “I’ll have a hamburger.” And, though I tend to like my meat bloody, I said, “medium-well, please.” Luckily, someone on citybaby had posted a link to a study that said chocolate was good for gestating babies, so I consoled myself with thoughts of dessert.

Just as I thought the fish fiasco would be the most interesting thing to happen that night, I saw what looked like a familiar face.

“Is that Naomi Kellerman?” I asked Andy, squinting and poking my chin towards the bar where a woman in cat glasses and pigtails was draping a leopard skin coat around a chair.

She looked an awful lot like my freshman year roommate – though at Barnard we didn’t say “freshman,” we said “first year.” She dressed a lot like her, too. In fact, she could have been wearing that very same outfit the last time I’d seen her, which was – I quickly did the calculation – six years ago, maybe.

“I don’t know,” Andy said, squinting in the low light himself. Possibly-Naomi tilted her head back and gave a throaty laugh, and Andy and I said, nearly in unison, “It’s her.” Taking this as further proof that everyone we knew had ended up in Brooklyn, I called out her name to get her attention. “Oh. My. God!” she shrieked, calling the rest of the restaurant to attention. Naomi never had been shy. She headed for our table, waving her hands and repeating the “Oh. My. God!” until she got there.

“I cannot believe this! Do you guys live in the neighborhood?” We told her we did, and she said, “I used to. But I just closed on a brownstone in Bed-Stuy. My parents are freaking out,” she said. Adopting the trademark vaguely whiney tone she used to imitate her Westchester-dwelling parents, she added, “‘You’re paying that money to live in Bedford-Stuyvesant?’ They don’t understand it’s the best place to go for original details. The place needs a head-to-toe renovation, but the mantles and floors are to die for.” “Sounds great,” I said, because it did. For the past couple of years, I’d heard about enough friends of friends buying homes in Bedford-Stuyvesant – and about the prices they paid – to make me think that the neighborhood was up and here instead of up and coming. It struck me that for Naomi, buying a fixer-upper brownstone in Bed-Stuy was not unlike her vintage shopping – she always found high-quality goods that were quirky but far from inexpensive.

“So it’s been – what – six years?”

“Yeah,” I said. “About that long.” We’d had dinner once the winter after Andy and I were married. At the time, Naomi, who’d been hectored by her parents into going to law school, had just left her law job to become a legal headhunter. “I realized I liked talking on the phone way too much to be a lawyer,” she’d said at the time, and referred to her new career as “legal matchmaking.”

“Are you still head-hunting?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” she said, producing a business card, which showed she was now a vice president of the firm. “What are you guys up to?” We gave the one-sentence summary of our careers, and then “but the big news is …” and I stood a little to show off my now-protruding belly.

“Oh. My. God!” she said. “You’re pregnant!” I smiled and nodded. “I’m divorced!” she said, as if the two were somehow parallel.

“Oh …” I said, not sure how to respond.

“Yup,” she nodded, pigtails bobbing. “And I’m paying him alimony.” There was only one response to this info. “What?” Andy and I said in unison. And here I’d thought running into Naomi would be the most interesting thing to happen that night.

“You heard right,” Naomi said, with a rueful little smile. “My 33-year-old, able-bodied ex took me to court. The female judge said I had to support him in the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed. And, to top it all off, I’d paid his entire film school tuition.”

“That’s unbelievable,” I said as my jaw continued dropping. Though, as shocking as a 33-year old man demanding alimony from his same-aged wife seemed, the film school part made it somehow more plausible.

“Well,” I said, grasping, “I guess in some way that’s empowering?”

“Yeah,” Naomi nodded. “But I’d rather keep the cash.”

“That is one of the weeniest things I’ve ever heard,” Andy said after Naomi rejoined her dinner mates. “That guy must be a real piece of work.” Later I would ask the question, “Would this be so shocking if the genders were reversed?” but right then, I was hung up on another angle. “Are we really old enough for things like alimony?” Andy didn’t have to answer; apparently, we were.

The Brooklyn Chronicles, a work of fiction, appears each Friday. Previous installments are available at www.nysun.com/archive_chronicles.php. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.