Title: Miriam

Genre: Fiction

Word Count: 375

Type of Critique: This is an assignment for my intermediate fiction class, so I would like general impressions, what works, what doesn't work, but this is pretty short so any line-by-line edits would be greatly appreciated!

Third Person Perspective: Miriam was stationed at the round table farthest from the wedding party, shoulders slumped and posture lazy like the shiftlessly typed email sent out to her subordinates with last-minute delegations on Friday afternoon. Legs crossed at the knees, she wore a shrink-wrap black dress that exposed more of her thighs than it covered. Even fifteen years out of high school, she still dressed to rebel against the years of modesty that her mother forced upon her via chunky turtlenecks in her adolescences. Judaism was the only value her mother passed down to Miriam, and such was compulsory. Even so, her mother said she looked like a shiksa after Miriam moved into the city and converted her brunette mane to a strawberry blond bob. Now her hair was chopped close to the scalp and gave the illusion of a halo. But any speck of sanctity in Miriam had been wiped away after her second divorce, which ended in a messy dispute over an antique silver menorah.

Character’s Perspective: Have you ever unknowingly committed a crime in front of a security camera? Nothing major, in fact, something that you wouldn’t have been caught doing otherwise, such as stealing an item no one would miss. A traffic cone, for example. At the Metzger wedding, Tal and I cut out of there before they could do the same to the cake. The valet boys were busy smoking something behind the dumpster, so we took our keys from the podium and we brought one of the traffic cones with us. Call it a trophy of sorts, a souvenir to mark another ceremony thrown in vain for a coupling that was sure to end in divorce like the last Metzger marriage. Miriam, the divorcee herself, sat facing the window and picking at her cuticles while her sister rotted under the spotlight with her tubby shmeliel of a groom. Miriam could have been witness to our caper if would have been looking out the window instead of scheming for husband number three, as evident by wearing the tightest black dress this side of the Hudson. Fortunate for the family gossip mill, the Metzger matriarch reviewed the night’s security footage and spotted us stealing the traffic cone, watchdog Miriam or not.