Well, it’s official. I am “showing.”

For months, I had been using the cute counter staff at the adorable sandwich-and-smoothie shop as my personal pregnancy litmus testers.

I am convinced that every pregnant woman needs at least one of these: an objective outsider who sees you often enough to notice and then comment upon the fact you’re pregnant. People who know you’re pregnant are expecting you to look pregnant; showing up to a lunch date in a poncho can yield comments along the lines of “you can totally tell.” A pregnancy litmus tester is the only way to know for sure that you look pregnant to the world outside your circle.

But pregnancy litmus testers are hard to come by. How many people do you see often enough to witness your transformation, have a familiar enough relationship with that they’d mention it, yet are distant enough not to be offended because you didn’t tell them the news in the first place? Apparently, if you live in Brooklyn, many people fit this bill.

“My dry cleaner was the one who confirmed it,” one friend told me. “And it wasn’t because of the clothes, either. I’d only been bringing in my husband’s shirts.”

“The deli guy,” another confided. “I’m there every morning buying the paper.”

“The women at my nail place,” someone else said. “Those women have no fear of embarrassing you if they’re wrong.”

This last sentiment was part of what guided me in choosing the cute counter contingent as my litmus testers. But it was less that they wouldn’t care about offending me than that their youth and apparent lack of guile would lead me to trust their assessment. The adorable sandwich-and-smoothie shop workers seemed to exist in an almost Hobbit-like state of well-meaning, surprisingly non-cloying friendliness epitomized by the motto on the shop’s cloth awning: “Eat, drink, smile.”

So, when I went in earlier this week for what has become my afternoon usual – a chocolate-chip cookie and a soy chai latte – and the girl with the braids, trucker cap, and Sergio Valentes said, “Oh my God, when are you due?” I smiled and answered and knew that I’d joined the ranks of the Obviously Pregnant. If the city baby message board were a reliable guide, it was only a matter of time until I started complaining about people not giving me seats on the subway. Then I would truly have arrived.

I took a seat with my treats, then headed for the shop’s magazine rack. I used to use this place as a place to get work done without the usual home office distractions. But, though my laptop was still with me, lately, more often than not, it sat in its bag while I read trashy, mindless magazines. The adorable sandwich-and-smoothie shop had gone from being my second office to being a second doctor’s waiting room.

I attributed this to Placenta Brain – the hormone-induced spaciness that comes with pregnancy – but, wondering if I was really just lazy, told myself I was using the likes of Us Weekly to “warm up.”

And there was the possibility that looms over every time you become a “regular” somewhere: that of someone I knew stopping by. Someone like my fellow pregnant regular and new sort-of friend, The Celebrity.

Though our relationship had been confined to smoothie-shop encounters, last week The Celebrity had, to borrow from Emeril Lagasse, kicked it up a notch. She’d left a note for me with the counter contingent saying she’d be in L.A. for a week but hoped to see me when she returned. It had made me wonder if she’d be at the Oscars, and I’d been mildly disappointed watching the Red Carpet coverage when it turned out she was not.

Now, thumbing through People almost a week later, it seemed my passion for Oscar had not abated. The whole issue was devoted to Oscar night and, warm-up or not, I was devouring it.

Along with the gown recaps were full-page spreads on the stars in progress. There was Cate Blanchett, complete with lipstick-applier and dress steamers, dolling up in a hotel suite. There was Kate Winslet, curlers in hair. There was Gwyneth Paltrow, in full glamour shot, confiding that the hardest thing about Oscar prep was getting dressed while expressing breast milk.

By the time I got to the spread of a fully decked-out Hillary Swank, post ceremony and parties, stopping in to a fast-food joint for a late-night burger, I realized there was a trend at work here. the more glamorous the movie star, the more important it was to seem like a real person.

I turned the page and there, in a layout devoted to Elton John’s post-Oscar bash, was The Celebrity. She was wearing a clingy aqua strapless dress with a matching sequined shrug – the kind of pregnancy outfit no one in her right mind would ever spend the money on. The text below her photo read, “‘I won’t be drinking tonight,’ the pregnant HBO star said, ‘but I’ll make sure to party for two.'”

Before I could process the strangeness of seeing my newfound pal in People, someone called my name out. “There you are,” The Celebrity said. She was standing right in front of me.

Like a guilty teenage boy caught looking at Playboy, my first impulse was to shut and hide the magazine. Looking back on it, my reaction makes sense; celebrity gawking is some strange form of pornography. And also, our relationship seemed strangely predicated on me not caring she was a celebrity. It was a real-life version of those “the stars, they’re just like us” photo spreads that had been so carefully orchestrated.

But, right then and there, I had no idea how to play off the fact that the person dressed to the pregnancy nines in People was the same would-be bohemian in front of me in yoga pants and a poncho.

“I guess I don’t have to ask what you were doing in L.A. last week,” I said, smiling, and holding up the picture. Calling it out seemed the best way to show The Celebrity I was no celebrity-obsessed ogler.

“Ugh,” she said. “I hate the way my smile looks in that. It’s too wide or something.”

I looked at the picture again. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Well,” I said, “your outfit looks cute.” I stood to return the magazine to the rack, hoping that with nonchalance, she’d think the magazine had been left on the table by the ogler here before me.

“Wow,” she said, and I stopped mid-pace, thinking she was about to say something about my stalker-ish behavior. Something like, “I hadn’t pegged you for they type of person who sits around reading People.” But The Celebrity surprised me. Instead, she said, “You’re really starting to look pregnant.”

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