# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 20, "No Advice / Keys Here" — Round 14 (post-voice-repair verification)

Target: `output/chapters/chapter_20.md` (current text, post-voice-repair). Manifest requires scenes 02 (Ruth/Sam visit, file lines 23–57), 03 (Asha call, file lines 61–91), and 04 (Nia call, file lines 95–141). Scene 01 (0 dialogue lines) and scene 05 (1 quoted utterance, documentary text-message form) fall below the manifest threshold and are excluded from blocks; scene 05 was swept for standing-ban leakage only (none — "ok now the boring parts" remains documentary chat texture, spent per the tics ledger, and the chat form's exclusion from spoken-scene failure modes is honored). Read cold, attributions covered, against the voice cards for June, Ruth, Sam, Nia, and Asha; reading guide §§1, 2, 5, 6, 8; the fake-sharp cut-list; and the Ch20 prompt anti-tics.

Round-14 charge: the voice repair changed three dialogue sites since round 13's CLEAN — Asha's "Ninety days to benefits changes the math." (line 71, new grounding sentence after "That's not me being polite"), Asha's "Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices." (line 75, replacing "…and written access is real"), and June's Nia-call counter, which now reads "A hundred fifty more for the wall share and a north window" (line 125) instead of repeating "ten feet of wall." Those three sites and the registers around them are this round's prime suspects. Scenes 02 and 04's non-counter turns are verbatim-unchanged since round 13; both scenes are re-run in full anyway, because a clean prior round is not evidence about the current read.

Mechanical pre-sweep of current text (backing the standing-ban verdicts below): "load-bearing" 0; "follow your heart" 0; "choosing herself"/"staying for him" 0; "something" 0; "shifted"/"the air"/"tension"/"a beat"/smirk/chuckle 0 — the chapter is clean at the string level before judgment even starts.

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SCENE 02 (June's apartment, Ruth/Sam catalog errand, file lines 23–57):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — covered attributions across all 14 lines and re-sorted by ear; three assignable registers hold. Ruth: bare inventory, no images, no props ("We're double-parked," "We know how to deliver a box," "We have a car"). Sam: warmth routed through objects and physical room ("What's the freight?", the chair moved six inches, "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck."). June: routing logistics that fracture at the exposed seam ("The class is--" She stopped. "The class is the part that works."). Strongest counter-candidate: Ruth's "We have a car" beside Sam's hand-truck line — both convert forbidden advice into equipment. Survives: Ruth's is four words of fact with zero shaping; Sam's manufactures a joke object. Swapped, Ruth would own a second shaped construction her card (one editorial-sharp line per appearance, spent at line 41) does not license.
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — one true question in the scene ("What's the freight?"), answered by an over-long routing paragraph with a contingency tree, not a matched return; everything else is declaration, reversal ("Actually, no. Tell Mara I'm bringing the dish myself Tuesday."), partial confession, and refusal to confess. Strongest counter-candidate: the closing three short turns ("We have a car." / the hand-truck line / "Noted."). Survives: none is an answer to a question; the weights are unmatched — offer-as-fact, joke, and a thanks that fumbles its own syntax ("Both of you--thank you. For the box.").
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's mind is lit at every pressure point: the cardboard edge pressing "a line into her thumb" while she over-instructs; the glaze flaw read ("the cobalt had pooled and gone almost black, and it was the best part of the dish") motivating the reversal; "June looked at the receipt so she wouldn't look at Ruth"; "June did not turn the receipt over" registering exactly where Ruth's eyes stopped. Strongest counter-candidate: Sam's box-carry choreography (line 37), four clauses without June register. Survives: under two sentences of business between interiority beats, and the chair moved "six inches to the left" is June's optical measurement of Sam's care, not neutral blocking.
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — every interrogative checked; "What's the freight?" wants and gets its answer. Strongest counter-candidate: "I want to be clear that I'm not asking." — a position delivered as meta-statement. Survives: it is the scene's engine stated plainly (§2's protected direct register), and Ruth and Sam answer its content rather than its aura — a car and a hand truck, no opinion.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — attribution regular (tags plus owning actions); the short lines are priced by the announced double-park clock ("Two minutes"). Strongest counter-candidate: "We have a car," Ruth said. — four words at the scene's most loaded moment. Survives: the car is established fact from Ruth's first line, the clip is offer-as-inventory in her card's register, and Sam immediately un-strips it with the hand-truck expansion.
6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — the scene's one term of art, "freight," is asked while physically testing the box and answered with contents, count, owner, and route. Strongest counter-candidate: "leave them at Sonia's with a note for Mara" — three proper nouns in one instruction. Survives: all established persons/places, and the contingency-routing shape is itself the characterization (June pre-managing a Theo encounter she won't name).
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — covered-tag read produced zero mis-assignments; every turn is tagged or preceded by an owning action (Sam at the box, Ruth unmoved at the kitchen edge). Strongest counter-candidate: "She'll like that better than the dish," Sam said. — arriving directly after a June-Mara beat. Survives: tagged, and the warmth-through-hosting content is Sam's register regardless.
FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — all 14 lines run against the cut-list. Strongest counter-candidate remains "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." — the "not X. That's Y" template, quotable and joke-timed. Survives on the cut-list's own terms: the exchange does not exist to deliver wisdom (its content is a refusal to say anything wiser — advice converted into equipment, which is the scene's assignment); it is speakable in one breath by a person holding a box; Sam is licensed light here (June has forbidden opinions, not confessed anything); and its partner line is aggressively unquotable ("We have a car."). Template count re-verified post-repair: the full "not X. That's Y" shape occurs once (line 51); Asha's "That's not me being polite." (line 71) opens the family but resolves into a grounding fact, not a second shaped beat — the chapter still does not run the template as a rhythm. Second counter-candidate: Ruth's "I kept them to myself and called it manners." / "Some of it was easier for me." — "called it manners" carries editorial polish. Survives as her 1/1 licensed sharp construction, spent on self-implication, broken by the bag-strap beat, its second sentence left unfinished in content (what was easier is never supplied — friction kept per rule 8), and Ruth herself closes the door on the therapeutic turn: "You can leave that part out. We came for the dish."
INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — rule 9 both directions. Mind present (mode 3) and never doubling the lines: Ruth's admission gets an object response (eyes to the receipt), no narration about what it means; the hand-truck line gets "Noted," not appreciation; nothing names or rates the care mode (tics ledger marks care-without-advice fragile — re-verified: no line captions the behavior). Strongest counter-candidate: "The rectangle by the door was bare except for a strip of dust where the box had been." Survives as concrete absence with no gloss; the next beat is dishwashing.

SCENE 03 (Asha call, 4:05, file lines 61–91):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — this round's first two prime suspects live here; both were interrogated for Nia-bleed specifically, since "the math" and money-verdict sentences are the convergence risk the repair could have introduced. (a) "Ninety days to benefits changes the math." tested against Nia's column/payroll register: cleared. The syntax is dock-telegraphic — spec subject, plain verb, no enumeration — where Nia's math talk is institutional and relational ("I ran the math with you three weeks ago," a shared work session; "every line I have a column for," an instrument). "Math" as a noun crosses the two speakers once each, two scenes apart, and it is the literal work-world word for the thing the whole chapter is doing; each use makes a distinct claim (Asha: this benefit clock changes my solvency calculus; Nia: we already did this arithmetic together). Asha's card owns "hustle math" as her documented frame. Not convergence — but the coin is now at two speakers and should not reach a third (caution carried below). (b) "Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices." tested the same way: cleared, and it lands harder on Asha's side than the line it replaced — "pays invoices" is her card's exact lexical field (invoice/rate/load-in tics; "The install pays late, but it pays"), where Nia's field is paycheck/payroll/W-2/program; Nia processes invoices, Asha lives on them. The compound-subject-singular-verb looseness ("Forty-nine five and written access pays") is unworkshopped dock grammar — friction kept per rule 8. Neither line recites Asha's spent card samples; "Philly rent means I can have nights" varies the card's paint-at-night want into new syntax rather than quoting it. Strongest counter-candidate: June's terms recital ("Terms: W-2, $49,500, six months funded...") delivered in Asha's information register. Survives: narration prices it as recitation ("this part she knew without notes"), Asha demanded speed in line one, and June's unguarded line in the same call reverts to card ("I did want to feel less bad" — full form under exposure, no craft-noun armor).
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — recital, physical interruption (gate boom, pallet jack, off-phone shout), and radically unmatched turn lengths: Asha's Dana/Kessler paragraph (line 83) against June's seven-word "$2,643 and whatever paid crating I can get in December." Strongest counter-candidate: "Okay. Second thing?" / "Second thing is I'm in." — question and echoing answer. Survives as a single two-turn hinge; the echo is June accepting Asha's agenda structure, the call's power arrangement made audible.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's register at each turn: the capped pen ("this part she knew without notes"); eyes on GOOD in her own handwriting before the call's plainest sentence; the closing notation act (uncapping the pen, filling the right page) as feeling rendered in her card's medium. Strongest counter-candidate: line 83, nine clauses of Asha terms with no June register. Survives narrowly: first-delivery plot facts the reader must weigh, broken twice by dock events, and June's reaction is the scene's closing action rather than an inline gloss.
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — every interrogative checked, including the repaired site. "Say the studio clause again" (imperative wanting information, gets it). "Who writes that?" (self-answered in character — dock-floor incredulity resolving into a concrete endorsement: "She'll eyeball a run and put a level on it anyway"). "Why aren't you taking it?" is now followed by "That's not me being polite. Ninety days to benefits changes the math." — the repair strengthens this verdict: the speaker de-fangs her own question and supplies material grounds for asking, and June's deferral is visible as deferral ("That's tomorrow's phone call"), per §2's requirement that deflection read as deflection. "Can you get from here to March?" is answered with a number. Strongest counter-candidate: "So the real question: can you get from here to March?" — the "real question" frame flirts with portent. Survives: literal solvency arithmetic, immediately answered; the triage framing is Asha's schedule-awareness, not manufactured weight.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — clipped lines priced by the held freight door and the off-phone shout; environment beats keep the starkness situated. Strongest counter-candidate: "Asha hung up before the word was finished." — a stark exit. Survives: action, not stripped dialogue, and it amputates any landing room for the scene's shaped lines — the opposite of performed minimalism.
6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — the chapter's heaviest term load (W-2, W-9, net-45, load-in, deposit structure), each term arriving with its consequence: "You invoice the 25th, net-45, you'll see money in March"; "$980 all in with the wall, by December 10." The two repaired lines were re-checked for untranslated weight: "Ninety days to benefits" re-uses terms planted twice before (June's notebook line 9, her recital line 65), so the reader can weigh what it changes against freelance no-benefits-ever; "pays invoices" carries followable weight (steady money against her net-45 life) even in its loose spoken form. Strongest counter-candidate: "he needs your W-9 by the 15th" — the one form name never glossed. Survives: the weight is the deadline, not the tax mechanics, and June's notation ("DEC 15--W-9 KESSLER") confirms followability.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — two speakers, phone form, asymmetric environment (freight noise only on Asha's side) functioning as attribution. Covered-tag read clean. Strongest counter-candidate: "Okay. Second thing?" — untagged short turn. Survives: only Asha holds the agenda role at that beat, and June's reply re-anchors.
FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — the two repaired lines are this scene's center of gravity and were run against every cut-list bullet. (a) "Ninety days to benefits changes the math." — not an aphorism: no inversion, no balance, no noun-question setup; "changes the math" is ordinary spoken idiom (rule 7's unremarkable register, not a composed line); it exists to justify the speaker's interest, not to deliver wisdom, and its neighbors are flat function ("That's not me being polite" / June's "That's tomorrow's phone call"). Speakable mid-freight-dock in one breath. (b) "Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices." — the slogan test fails to attach: detached from this offer, "written access pays invoices" is meaningless (portability fails), the grammar is loose, and the line prices a job rather than pronouncing on work or art; it replaced a flatter abstraction ("is real") with a materially checkable claim, which moves the line toward Asha's register, not toward polish. Neither line completes a figure with a partner turn — (a) is answered by a deferral, (b) runs straight into "Philly rent means I can have nights," a plain want (plain-speech floor satisfied in Asha's own economy). Second counter-candidate: "Send my name because I'm qualified. If you're trying to feel less bad, don't." — edge at June's vulnerable moment. Survives the zinger-at-wrong-moment bullet: the ashamed party is June, not the speaker; it is the sanctioned referral-as-avoidance warning done in nine words of material ground, and the text refuses the volley — June's return is the chapter's plainest sentence ("I did want to feel less bad"), Asha's is its flattest ("Okay. Second thing?").
INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — no narration re-explains the consent beat, the referral ethics, or the admission; meaning lands in the notation act ("DEC 10--DANA, $980..."). Strongest counter-candidate: the beat after "If you're trying to feel less bad, don't." — a loaded line where June's register is owed (cut-list bullet 7). Survives: the silence is marked — June's eyes go to GOOD on the left page, the line's exact cost registered in object before she answers.

SCENE 04 (Nia call, Friday 10:40, file lines 95–141):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — the repaired counter line was the prime suspect: did trading "ten feet of wall" for "the wall share and a north window" push June toward Asha's rate-register or Nia's column-register? Cleared, and the repair sharpens the split: "the wall share" is June reading her own notebook aloud ("June read it off the right page" — the notation planted at line 11 and coined in speech at line 81), and "a north window" is pure painter valuation — Asha priced the same asset as duration ("north light steady most of the day"), Nia would never put a window in a column, and June names the object a painter buys light through. Three lexical fields hold across the two calls: Nia institutional clock-and-column ("Torres.", "I ran the math with you three weeks ago," "every line I have a column for," "I have payroll at eleven"); Asha dock-and-rate (scene 03); June press-and-surface ("The proof press in the back room. Trueing the bed, keeping it usable."). Strongest counter-candidate: June's "If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast" against Nia's "I know her invoices. She itemizes." six lines later — the same verb crossing speakers. Survives: "itemize" is the work-world's literal word for the practice both are pricing; each use makes a distinct claim (June's reliability offer; Nia's reference evidence for Asha); and June borrowing procurement register to keep a professional door open is a speakable move, not authorial bleed — her sentence's spine ("I want the wall anyway") is compression under exposure, her card's mechanism. The invoice/itemize family now touches all three speakers plus narration; adjudicated distinct at every site but at density ceiling (caution carried below).
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — Nia's prompts run one to five words ("But.", "Okay. Tell me the counter.", "You know what I'm going to ask next."); June's answers run one word to five sentences with a mid-turn breakdown ("Or the sink would--" She stopped.). The column exchange still refuses volley closure: Nia's doubled verdict → "It is," → object business (receipt turned print-side up) → June's want and disclaimer. Strongest counter-candidate: the opening prompt/answer/prompt/answer run ("Walk me through it" → walk-through → "But." → the Vandercook turn). Survives: radically unequal weights, and the second answer fails on the page, which volley rhythm cannot survive.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's mind runs through her hands on the decision objects at every turn: receipt under her hand at "I'm calling to say no"; finger on the crossed-out VANDERCOOK line at the want; touching the TASKER page while conceding the job's goodness; the receipt turned print-side up ("the Marchetti header, the faded total") at the exposed line 129; "June read it off the right page" grounding the counter recital as a physical act. Strongest counter-candidate: Nia's closing double-turn (the Asha acceptance through "come see it") passing without June register. Survives: the call's decompression, answered in the scene's own currency ("I will."), and the post-call register is object-rendered — phone down, receipt squared with the table edge.
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — Nia's interrogative force is all imperative prompt, her card's deadline mode; nothing rhetorical. Strongest counter-candidate: "You know what I'm going to ask next." — a statement standing where a question would go, the classic portent shape. Survives: the referent is established business (her card's own "If you say no, send me someone good"), June answers its content instantly and completely ("Send you someone good. I did the asking already, yesterday, with her permission."), and a cold reader can state what was asked and delivered — followability holds.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — short turns attributed or unambiguous; the starkest line priced. Strongest counter-candidate: "But." — one word, no tag, no beat. Survives: two-person phone alternation leaves no assignment doubt; the line is brisk elicitation matching "under pressure: deadline-driven"; and the scene refuses starkness elsewhere — office noise, the printer catch, key clicks keep the far end embodied.
6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — "Vandercook" arrives pre-weighted (the notebook's crossed-out line, planted at line 9, touched at line 113) and glossed in apposition ("The proof press in the back room. Trueing the bed, keeping it usable."). The repaired counter recital was re-checked term by term: every figure is established on the page before it is spoken ("wall share" at lines 11/81/83; the $340 room, net-45, and heat at line 83; the blank February at line 11), so the recital reads as compression of known weights, and its specificity survives the repair — "the wall share and a north window" tells a cold reader exactly what the $150 buys (shared painting wall, painter's light), which is more decision-relevant than the footage it replaced. Strongest counter-candidate: the recital itself (line 125) — four figures and a blank in four sentences. Survives: its last line is a cost, not a term ("February is a blank line in my notebook"), cashed later by the notebook itself (FEB = coat).
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — tags regular; far-end action beats (printer, keys) own Nia's side. Covered-tag read clean. Strongest counter-candidate: the run from "Okay. Tell me the counter." through line 129 — tags on alternating lines only. Survives: strict alternation plus register difference (column diction vs. want-and-line-item diction) leaves no doubt.
FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — the repaired counter line run against every bullet. "A hundred fifty more for the wall share and a north window." is the recital's least shaped sentence — an increment, a coined household term, a spec — and it is speakable in one breath because it is notation read aloud; the quotable-but-not-speakable bullet fails to attach anywhere in the four sentences. The recital's one shaped close ("February is a blank line in my notebook") survives as literal fact — FEB = . is on the page at line 11 and paid at line 155 — a reading, not a composition. The column exchange re-verified: "That's a worse offer on every line I have a column for" remains Nia's licensed single spreadsheet verdict, answered by "It is," and broken by object business; no counter-metaphor from June exists anywhere in the chapter. Second counter-candidate: "For the record, I didn't put the studio clause in to sweeten it. I meant it." — "for the record" plus a two-beat close. Survives as plain repair of a specific earlier fact (the clause June cited twice), humane without being wise. Third counter-candidate: "It's 10:52," Nia said. "Have her email before one. I have payroll at eleven." — a spoken timestamp could read as a composed exit stamp. Survives: literal deadline management by the deadline character, revising her own instruction ("email me today" → "before one") with a stated reason, and cashed as fact by June's text ("Said no at 10:52") — load-carrying data, not cadence.
INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — both directions. Mind present through object handling (mode 3), never doubling the dialogue: the refusal's reason is spoken once, in scene, with no narration gloss; the Vandercook want gets a finger on a crossed-out line, not an essay; the call closes on action ("turned the receipt square with the table edge") with zero summary. Strongest counter-candidate: "I know. That's why this is hard." — direct emotion-naming in the double-explaining shape. Survives under the guide's interiority rule: the naming is the event (the concession that the offer's best clause is exactly what makes refusing cost), spoken not narrated, unrepeated. June's bare "I know" concession-opener count re-verified post-repair: still two (lines 117, 129), non-adjacent, different content; the no-third-in-Ch21 watch stands.

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ROUND-14 CHARGE VERIFICATIONS (dispositions above, indexed here):

- Asha's "Ninety days to benefits changes the math.": her register — dock-telegraphic spec-plus-verb, grounded in her card's hustle-math frame — not a workshopped substitute (no shaped syntax, ordinary idiom, justifies rather than pronounces) and not Nia-convergent ("math" crosses speakers once each with distinct claims and opposite syntax; Nia's is relational-institutional, Asha's is solvency triage) (scene 03, modes 1, 4, and FAKE-SHARP).
- Asha's "Forty-nine five and written access pays invoices.": her register more firmly than the "is real" line it replaced — "invoices" is her card's tic field, the grammar is loose dock speech (rule 8 friction), portability fails detached from the offer, and it does not recite her spent card samples (scene 03, modes 1, 6, and FAKE-SHARP).
- June's "the wall share and a north window": speakable (one breath, notation read aloud from the right page — the act is on the page) and specific enough (both referents planted twice before the call; the phrase states what the $150 buys, which a cold reader can weigh); it removes the third spoken "ten feet" without installing polish (scene 04, modes 1, 6, and FAKE-SHARP). Diction ledger: "north window" now stands at three chapter instances (notebook line 11, spoken once at line 125, Dana's photo at line 151 — a setup/recital/payoff chain, not a tic), "ten feet" at two (Asha's spec, the photo); both families retire as diction in Ch21.
- Nia/Asha/June distinctness post-repair: three lexical fields verified under covered attributions — Nia payroll/columns/program/clock; Asha invoice/rate/load-in/nights; June press/surface/light/notation. The two crossing terms ("math," "itemize"/"invoices") are the work-world's literal vocabulary, each use making a distinct claim; no line survives transplantation into another speaker's mouth without register damage (scenes 03/04, mode 1).
- No dialogue diagnosis: full-chapter sweep of narration around every spoken line — zero wording/delivery/rhythm characterization; nearest candidates ("because this part she knew without notes" — knowledge, not delivery; "Asha hung up before the word was finished" — timing of action; "That's not me being polite" — Asha framing her own intent) all fall outside the banned family.
- No therapy-speak, no "follow your heart": absent chapter-wide (string sweep 0); "feel less bad" is plain diction; Asha's warning is material, not diagnostic; Nia's counsel never leaves material ground ("That doesn't have to happen" is a staffing fact claim, answered with a probability claim and other people's mornings).
- No fake-sharp quote volley: the chapter's shaped constructions (hand truck, Ruth's "called it manners," Nia's column verdict, the blank-line recital close) each sit alone against unquotable partners ("We have a car.", "We came for the dish.", "It is,"); no exchange completes a figure across speakers; the "not X. That's Y" template holds at one full instance.
- Contractions (rules 4–5): default-contract holds for all five speakers; full forms found are licensed — June's "It is" (bare agreement while conceding; ledger watch-only), "I did want to feel less bad" (emphasis under exposure), "I will." (commitment), Ruth's "I want to say one thing" (no contraction site), Asha's "the radiator is decorative" (deadpan spec, no natural contraction), Nia's "I am" absent (she contracts throughout). No stiff-formal defect, and the repair introduced no new full forms.

REVISION ORDERS: None. No verdict line above is a FAIL; every criterion carries its checked evidence and strongest counter-candidate per the stance requirement.

OVERALL: CLEAN

Standing cautions for Ch21+, carried as constraints rather than orders on this text: "the math" as a spoken coin is at two speakers — no third; the invoice/itemize family is at chapter ceiling and must not become any speaker's credibility default; "north window"/"north light" and "ten feet" retire as diction; "keys day one" and "in writing" remain at ceiling; no third bare "I know" concession-opener from June; "Noted" stays at two; the "not X. That's Y" template rests; the spoken-timestamp move is single-use; the forgive-the-room coin stays retired; Asha's card samples stay spent (this chapter's variations — "pays invoices," "I can have nights" — now join them); and the care-without-advice mode stays unnamed on the page.
