Last weekend, Andy and I went out for the celebrate pregnancy dinner. I’d had my first prenatal doctor’s appointment, and we’d heard the heartbeat, which sounded like horses on a track. This made the pregnancy seem more real, but “more real” was still not quite real.

“Maybe it won’t feel real until we actually tell people,” I said as we headed out.

“So maybe we should start telling people,” Andy said.

“What?” I said, truly shocked. “We can’t tell people until the end of the first trimester. If we do we’ll jinx it!”

“Eve,” he said, turning to me, “people don’t tell people their pregnant until the end of the first trimester because the miscarriage rate drops significantly after that, not because of ‘jinxing.’ “

“Whatever,” I said.

“Since when are you so superstitious?”

Since we started walking the road to Babyville, actually. But, annoyed at his man-of-science-ness, I said, “It’s not really superstition. It just doesn’t feel right to start telling people now.” This was also true.

“Besides,” I added, “if I were really that paranoid, we wouldn’t be going to a celebratory dinner, would we?”

He nodded, conceding my point. Soon enough, we found ourselves at the restaurant.

Since it was a celebratory dinner, we’d decided to splurge and go somewhere “nice.” And, while there are plenty of “nice” restaurants in Brooklyn, going to Manhattan seemed somehow more festive. With these standards in mind, I’d made reservations at a restaurant near Union Square that everyone always raves about, the kind of place you go to with parents from out of town.

“When was the last time we went to a place like this for dinner?” Andy asked as we drove into town.

I cocked my head, thinking. “Maybe when that drug company was trying to woo your group to come and do research?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

I wondered aloud if we should do this more often.

“I don’t know,” Andy said. “I’m not sure if we’re really ‘nice restaurant’ people.”

I nodded, mulling this over, then said, “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

We arrived in the cavernous space a bit early, so the hostess asked if we’d mind waiting for a bit at the bar. We didn’t.

That is, until we were sitting there.

“This is the hot place for restaurants in the city,” the loud man next to Andy was telling his date. He was much older than she was, but she was much more attractive, albeit in that bleached-blonde tight-dress way that brings to mind the Bellagio Hotel. I noticed he was wearing a pinky ring.

“Uptown, you know, it’s too formal and stuffy,” Pinky Ring continued. “This is where the action is now.”

As he kept on with his lecture, Andy and I exchanged looks. It seemed fruitless to try to out-shout him, so we silently sipped the $4 ginger ales we’d ordered in nonalcoholic solidarity. I was thinking of that scene in “Annie Hall,” where they’re waiting in line for the movie. Only Pinky Ring was hardly waxing on things Marshall McLuhan.

He seemed to be winding down, but I found myself wondering how many people going out to a nice dinner in the city actually lived in the city. As a Brooklynite, I both did and didn’t. I may no longer have been living in the part of the city people meant went they said “the city,” but I had strangely less tolerance for non-city types now than I did when I’d lived on the Upper West Side.

Just then, the people next to me started up.

“We never asked you how Nevis was,” the redhead over my shoulder said, or, actually, semi-shouted to be heard over the restaurant’s din. She was one of a very corporate-looking party of four who were couple-dating. Glancing over at the women, I was struck by how casual Friday clothes paired with real jewelry could age people.

“It was amazing,” the other woman was saying. “You can’t match the Four Seasons for service.

“Being somewhere exclusive makes all the difference.”

I turned and looked at Andy again. When was the last time we’d been in proximity to this kind of conversation?

Probably the last time we’d gone out to a “nice dinner” in a Manhattan restaurant everyone always raves about.

The room was filled with the sounds of a bustling weekend night out, but, in our little corner of the bar, a thick, weighty feeling had set in. This was supposed to be a celebration, but it hardly felt festive.

If there had been a thought bubble over my head, it would have said, “I can’t tell Andy I want to leave; it’ll ruin his celebration.”

Then Pinky Ring started up again. “Now, if you want sushi, ya gotta go to Nobu. That’s in TriBeCa. They got a place in Vegas now, too.”

I squinted at Andy and said, “Would you be really bummed if I said, ‘Maybe we should go somewhere else to celebrate?’ “

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I was just sitting here thinking ‘I wish I could tell Eve I want to leave without ruining the celebration.'”

And with that, we paid our ginger ale tab and, after half-hearted apologies to the hostess, headed to our favorite East Village diner to celebrate over egg creams and pierogies.

“So I guess we really aren’t ‘nice restaurant’ people, “Andy said as we sipped our egg creams.

I nodded my head and said, “It would seem that we’re not.” But another thought had been creeping its way into my consciousness ever since our time at the bar.

“Maybe it’s not ‘nice restaurants’,” I suggested to my husband. “Maybe we aren’t Manhattan people anymore.”

The Brooklyn Chronicles appears each Friday. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.