# Figurative Language Audit — Chapter 13 ("The Memory and the Kiss") — Round 2 (repair verification)

**Stance:** Skeptical professional edit per `checks/audits/figuration_audit.md`. Every image guilty until it proves work; repairs guilty until proven executed. Sources checked: revised chapter text, round-1 blocker file (`chapter_13.figuration_audit_round1.md`), Ch13 packet (figuration dials sparse/material; word-as-object ban; closed wall-aphorism family; sentence-as-object ban; Ch12 noun caps on `card`/`memory`/`wall`/`white`/`water`), June voice card (perception → judgment → self-rebuke; cleans brushes she has not used; exits before asks), reading guide §2/§4/§6, `reading_guide_bans.tsv` (load-bearing ban — zero hits in chapter, verified by pattern search), mechanical gate report (chapter_13: 0 open findings, WATCH only).

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## Order verification

**Order 1 — CUT "The room made every partner a wall." — EXECUTED.**
The sentence is absent from the chapter; a pattern search for `the room made` and for `wall` returns no aphorism and no variant. The paragraph now reads: "Odile had set the easels in pairs, back to back. June understood the arrangement only after she put her palette down and heard Theo's jar behind her right shoulder, close enough to count the brush taps, invisible enough that she could not check his face." (chapter_13.md:9). Seam check: "understood the arrangement" now resolves into the perception itself — close enough / invisible enough — rather than into a maxim, which is June's perception-first rhythm done correctly; the deletion leaves no dangling referent and no cadence hole. Inheritance check: all remaining `wall` tokens are literal painted subjects ("I gave him a wall" :21; "more like a real wall for it" :31; "Theo's erased wall" :111; "the clean wall that would need screws by January" :185) — no aphorism, no summary-noun use. Round 1's conditional claim is now satisfied: room-personification is reduced to the single later instance (re-audited below).

**Order 2 — REPLACE-WITH-LITERAL on "The word showcase landed exactly where June had been keeping December." — EXECUTED.**
The caption sentence is absent; searches for `landed`/`the word` confirm no variant survives ("the panel had landed in the irritating middle" :61 is the painting, not a word — checked and cleared below; "June heard the word flyer" :83 — checked and cleared below). The prescribed stitch is in place verbatim: "Until tonight, the eighth Tuesday had been a date at the far edge of a packet, easy to leave stapled there instead of in the room. Now it had a door, a room of other people's coats, a table with plastic cups, and a label that might put PARK / BRENNAN under a thing they had made together." (:85). The clock now arrives as packet-to-room sequence with zero impact narration between Odile's announcement and the literal consequence. The paragraph gains a new close: "She rinsed gray out of her brush until the water clouded. Then she remembered she was not supposed to waste time cleaning a brush she still needed." — audited below as new material.

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## New / changed material — full battery

**A. "Until tonight, the eighth Tuesday had been a date at the far edge of a packet, easy to leave stapled there instead of in the room." (:85 — round-1 image 19, promoted from supporting sentence to paragraph lead)**
1. Clarifies June's avoidance mechanics now forced to carry the topic-sentence weight the cut caption used to fake: the showcase date as a stapled page versus an inhabited fact.
2. Yes — June manages dread through objects (packet, tote, cards); the promotion puts her object-mediated avoidance where her reaction belongs, instead of a narrator's impact report.
3. Yes — the PARK / BRENNAN packet is a signed, literal continuity object since Ch02; staple, door, coats, cups, label are all showcase logistics.
4. Sharpens — the paragraph now moves packet → door → coats → cups → label with no abstraction in the chain; the dread is the inventory.
5. Not portable — requires this packet and this roster label. The only borrowed element, "Until tonight," is a stitch, not a vehicle.
6. Accept invisibly; the reader gets the clock without seeing the writer install it.
`EARNED — "easy to leave stapled there instead of in the room" — literal anchor: the showcase date as a page in the signed class packet, converted to a room with a door; focalizer basis: June's object-mediated avoidance, now leading the paragraph without an impact caption above it.`

**B. "She rinsed gray out of her brush until the water clouded. Then she remembered she was not supposed to waste time cleaning a brush she still needed." (:85 — new)**
1. Clarifies displaced stress: hands busy on a brush that does not need cleaning while the deadline becomes real.
2. Yes — verbatim from her card's stress repertoire ("cleans brushes she has not used"); the second sentence is her canonical self-rebuke third beat.
3. Yes — sink, gray wash, brush: this scene's materials, ten lines after she mixed the gray.
4. Sharpens — the feeling (the clock just became real) is carried entirely by a wrong action caught in the act; no naming.
5. No vehicle to transplant; this is literal action, below figuration threshold, audited here only because it is new. The `water` token is the chapter's single use of a Ch12-capped noun, literal and gag-free — sub-threshold, feed the tics tracker.
6. Accept invisibly.
`EARNED — "cleaning a brush she still needed" — literal anchor: stress displaced into unnecessary brush care at the sink; focalizer basis: June's documented busy-hands stress response plus self-rebuke rhythm.`

**C. Standing-constraint check — "Mara said something pleased and low; June heard the word flyer and wished she had not." (:83)**
1. Clarifies a literal auditory fact (one word legible out of a low remark) and June's dread of documentation.
2. Yes — overhearing plus a dry wish is her register; no judgment is assigned to the word's delivery.
3. Yes — the flyer is this scene's concrete object, paid off forty lines later by Mara's photo call.
4. Sharpens — plants the photo pressure early; June reacts ("wished she had not"), the word does nothing. Tested against the banned family: this is not a word-as-object impact caption — the word does not click, land, level, or carry weight; it is heard, and the consequence is June's, not the vocabulary's.
5. No vehicle; nothing to transplant.
6. Accept invisibly.
`EARNED — "heard the word flyer and wished she had not" — literal anchor: one overheard word with a concrete later payoff; focalizer basis: June's dread routed through her own reaction, not through impact narration — clear of the word-as-object ban.`

**D. Standing-constraint check — "Instead the panel had landed in the irritating middle: a fourth-floor shaft, some laundry pins, a grocery price, a pipe in need of paint." (:61)**
1. Clarifies the painting's achieved register between the two named failure modes (dear / bleak).
2. Yes — June grading her own panel against Odile's spoken rule.
3. Yes — the four-item list is the panel's literal contents.
4. Sharpens — "irritating" is the earned word: success that gives her nothing to admire. Tested against the sentence-as-object ban: the subject is the panel, a physical object whose register is her professional judgment to make — not a word or sentence; "landed" here is assessment of a made thing, the exact activity her job consists of.
5. Near-dead idiom welded to a non-portable inventory.
6. Accept invisibly.
`EARNED — "the panel had landed in the irritating middle" — literal anchor: the finished airshaft panel graded between sentimental and performed-bleak; focalizer basis: June's craft self-assessment — clear of the sentence-as-object family, which governs language about language.`

**E. Re-audit of the conditional pass — "June looked at the room because the room had been looking back all evening: paired easels, sink, tape scars on the shelf, windows black with work-lamp reflections." (:89 — round-1 image 24, passed contingent on Order 1)**
1. Clarifies why "this room" is the right joint subject: the room — cohort, camera, paired easels — has been the evening's witness.
2. Yes — wry chiasmus, immediately cashed in her colon-list of literal fixtures; perception-judgment-evidence in order.
3. Yes — the surveillance (photo session, roster, paired easels) is this chapter's literal condition.
4. Sharpens — motivates the After Class subject without a speech.
5. The chiasmus shape alone would travel; the condition round 1 set is now met — with the wall maxim cut, this is the chapter's only room-personification, and the four-item literal inventory pins it. Holds.
6. Accept; some will admire. Still the nearest-run pass in the chapter.
`EARNED — "the room had been looking back all evening" — literal anchor: an evening of being watched in this room, cashed in literal inventory; focalizer basis: June's perception-judgment-evidence sequence; condition from round 1 (sole room-personification) now verified true.`

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## Unchanged earned inventory — concise re-confirmation

Every round-1 EARNED image was located verbatim in the revised text with deployment unchanged; batteries from round 1 stand. Confirmed present and undisturbed: "as if either action could count as preparing" (:7); "Do not punish it for being ordinary." (:11); "a practical objection already assembled" (:13); "hated that she knew the pause was orange" (:17); "the color of a day after it had bounced down four stories and lost the argument" (:31); "in a long curl like a fern" (:33); "Paint did not permit six or seven" (:45); "A boy using the surface the world had left under his pen." (:55); "the pleased cleverness of a restored sign" (:57); "nothing in that kitchen had the courtesy to stay out of anything else" (:57); "a lie told with good manners" / "easier to admire" (:61); "leave one unrescued and still worth looking at" (:61); "not bright enough to defend itself" (:65); "stepped out for more paint and left the job to continue without her" (:65); "the minute when knowing still mattered and no one in the room had decided what that knowledge was worth" (:67); "everyone's wet mistakes down Broadway" (:81); "Empty rooms flatter badly." (:107); "the room became more dangerous without anyone moving faster" (:109); "as if the paper had taken a position" (:109); "nearly reached the door in her head" (:111); "the exact caution of a borrowed frame" (:121); "Fine was going onto a flyer..." (:127 — re-checked against the word-as-object ban: "Fine" remains metonymy for the rated photograph, every clause landing on a concrete venue; clear); "The room did not disappear... the same world as everything else" (:133); "an audience they owed a shape to" (:135); "did not make it larger for her" (:135); "The kiss entered the evening the way the wet panels had entered it" (:139); "more care than paper should have required" (:151); "the strange part at the bottom of the night" (:163); "Nothing in the room was waiting politely for June's answer." (:167); "It made it printed: board, yes, formal, call tomorrow." (:185); "true in the same limited way *boss* had once been true" (:191). Literal-craft items from round 1 ("killed the panel's white," "watched the brick start to buzz," "exactly where a store clerk would have put it," "jar clicked softly," etc.) re-verified as non-figuration; the only chapter-wide `clicked` is Theo's jar against the shelf (:53), a physical sound.

## Seam and cadence findings (sub-threshold, no orders)

- **"tonight" triple** — "stays here tonight" (:81), "Decide your subject tonight." (:83), "Until tonight," (:85). The stitch deliberately picks up Odile's imperative and converts it; read in sequence it functions as a hinge rather than an echo, but it is three uses in five lines. Non-blocking; feed the tics tracker so the editor pass can weigh thinning Odile's first "tonight" (:81).
- **"room" doubled inside the stitch sentence** — "instead of in the room. Now it had a door, a room of other people's coats" (:85). The second "room" is part of the literal coat-room inventory and the first is the stitch's own pivot; tolerable, but the chapter is `room`-dense and the repetition sits inside one breath. Non-blocking watch.
- **Round-1 residual watch carried forward unchanged:** the negated-figure frame still appears three times (:133, :167, :185) and "make it larger" still rhymes verbatim across kiss (:135) and offer (:185). At capacity; Ch14 must not inherit either frame.

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## Chapter verdict

`FIGURATION-EARNED`

Three closest calls, defended:

1. **"June looked at the room because the room had been looking back all evening" (:89)** — nearly failed Q5 (the chiasmus shape is portable). Survives because it is now the chapter's only room-personification (Order 1 verified), because the surveillance is this chapter's literal condition rather than mood, and because the colon-list of fixtures cashes the figure within the same sentence.
2. **"The message did not make Philadelphia larger. It made it printed" (:185)** — nearly failed Q5 (half-transplantable to any text-message scene) and carries the verbatim "make it larger" rhyme with :135. Survives because "printed" names both the employer (Tasker printshop) and June's trade in one vehicle, and the rhyme reads as the night's deliberate structure — kiss and offer both refusing enlargement and becoming concrete. The frame is spent; any Ch14 recurrence should be refused on sight.
3. **"Until tonight, the eighth Tuesday had been a date at the far edge of a packet, easy to leave stapled there" (:85)** — nearly failed Q4 in its new deployment: promoted to paragraph lead, it must carry the clock alone, and "Until tonight" is the one stitch-phrase with no object behind it. Survives because everything after the comma is packet, staple, door, coats, cups, and label — the impact the cut caption asserted is now demonstrated in materials, which is exactly what the order demanded.

Both blocking orders from round 1 are verified executed with no seam damage, no new unearned image was introduced by the repairs, and the standing constraints (word-as-object captions, wall-aphorism inheritance, sentence-as-object phrasing, deletable decoration) all check clean against the revised text.

**UNEARNED-CLEAR**
