By the end of last week, the whole being-pregnant-but-not-telling-anyone business had really gotten tiresome.

It wasn’t that I was so excited I was dying to share the news – though I was – or that my husband was dropping ever-less-subtle hints that my not telling was absurdly superstitious – though he was.

It was that morning sickness had come on full-force. A word about morning sickness: misnomer! This malady is so not limited to the pre-noon hours. In fact, the hours between 8 and 10 a.m. seemed to be the only ones wherein I felt halfway human – that is, if I could ignore the bouts of coughing/retching that came on every few minutes and the horrid taste in my mouth, present 24 hours a day, whose only alleviation – a temporary one at that – came from sucking on lemon wedges.

How does one explain one’s constant need to suck lemon wedges in polite company if one is not telling people one is pregnant?

I had yet to figure this out last Thursday, when I had a meeting over coffee with a junior producer from work. Claiming to be “a bit under the weather” – which, aside from the “bit” part, was certainly true – I’d suggested we meet at the adorable sandwich and smoothie shop.

I’d managed to go over upcoming story ideas with only a little coughing/retching, but by the time my colleague got up to leave I was dying for some lemon. Under the guise of getting more hot water for my tea, I got up with her as we said our goodbyes and made for the counter.

At the adorable sandwich and smoothie shop, all behind-the-counter guys were scruffy and all the behind-the-counter girls were cute. Some of the guys had beards, and others wore glasses, some both. Some of the girls wore their hair in pigtails and some wore their hair with flowers in it, some both. Sometimes a member of either gender would wear a trucker hat, which bummed me, but such was the adorable sandwich and smoothie shop uniform.

Once at the counter, I discovered that scruffy, blonde-bearded behind-the-counter guy and cute behind-the-counter girl in pigtails were deeply engrossed in conversation.

“She used to come in here all the time,” he was saying. “Then, just when I started telling people, poof! She, like, vanished.”

My lemon fixation abated. Could he be talking about The Celebrity? For a good two months, the star of an HBO series had been coming to this very teeny shop and, I liked to joke, stalking me. We’d make eye contact, exchange smiles, but never really speak. Then, just as it seemed we’d been on the verge of breaking the celebrity/civilian fourth wall, I’d stopped seeing her here. It had been almost a month now and I had strangely – pathetically, perhaps – been wondering what happened to her. Could this behind-the-counter guy have been wondering, too?

“Hmmm,” the-behind-the-counter-girl said, trying to relate to her co-worker’s angst. “What TV show did you say she was on?”

This left no room for doubt. How many other TV stars came in here? As a regular, I knew the answer: none.

“You’re talking about her, aren’t you?” I said, unable to keep from piping in.

“Yes!” the guy exclaimed, relieved the have another witness. It was as if I had seen his Celebrity Snufalufagus.

“I don’t have a TV,” the girl offered apologetically.

The behind-the-counter guy and I spoke for a moment about the Celebrity’s traffic patterns (mostly in at 11 or 2, just after breakfast or lunch rushes), and what she liked to order (breakfast burrito early in the day, tuna sandwich in the post lunch hours, usually with soy chai lattes) then wondered aloud if she lived in the neighborhood or had just been here temporarily while filming something.

“Wait a minute,” the behind-the-counter girl said. “Does she have, like, brown hair, sort of shaggy-cut?”

“Yes!” the guy said – another Snufalufagus-seer!

“And she kind of wears scarves in it sometimes? And Indian shirts?”

“Yes!” the counter guy and I said in unison, with that strange excitement you get when someone gets your reference.

“She’s not gone!” the counter girl said, matching our excitement. “She was just in here the other day!”

Apparently, the Celebrity had come up and complained. The soy in her soy chai latte “didn’t really taste soy-y,” and she’d wanted her peanut butter, banana, and nutella sandwich on toasted bread.

“I was like, ‘What’s her problem?'” the behind-the-counter girl said, re-enacting her annoyance. “But now that I know she’s famous, it totally makes sense.”

“PB and nutella,” behind-the-counter guy mused. “That’s a new one for her.”

Moments later, I was back in my seat with a plateful of lemon wedges, making follow-up notes from my meeting and sucking one intently.

I was engrossed in my work for a while – maybe 10 or 15 minutes – and so was surprised to look up and find someone standing at my table.

I looked up and was even more startled by who was standing before me. There in all her could-be-off-to-yoga-class glory was none other than the Celebrity!

From over the Celebrity’s shoulder, I could see the counter guy and girl, looking over intently. The girl mouthed, “Is she talking to you?” while the guy’s mouth simply hung open.

“I was wondering when we’d bump into each other again,” the Celebrity said, the first to break our silence.

I’d forgotten she was Australian. That had been what I’d planned to say the last time it had seemed we would finally speak – “you do a great Los Angeles accent on that show. I totally forgot you were Australian.” It would have acknowledged that I knew she knew that I knew who she was, but with a genuine compliment that was non-sycophantic: the perfect opening salvo.

But, now, instead, she’d fired the first shot and left me with little choice but to simply respond to it. I smiled, preparing to do so, only then realizing that, wedged between my lips and teeth was a sucked-on lemon rind.

As quickly and as gracefully as possible, I spit the lemon into my hand. The Celebrity seemed confused but, at least, not horrified.

Now I could pretend that what I did next was the result of some split-second decision, that I’d made the calculation that the Celebrity was safe; she didn’t know anyone I knew, and that, maybe, celebrity status trumps superstition or, in fact, brings good luck. But that wouldn’t quite be true.

The fact is, holding up the lemon rind, I apologized matter-of-factly with the words, “I’m pregnant.”

I would have been more surprised at myself had she not said what she did in response. “Oh my god!” the Celebrity said, her eyes widening. “I’m pregnant, too!”

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