# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 18

id: comedy_doctor | owner: claude | tier: risk
chapter: 18 (`output/chapters/chapter_18.md`) | register commitment: warm, precise, lightly comic (READING_GUIDE §2) — rupture-aftermath chapter, grief calibration in force

INVENTORY:

1 — "She took the colander out of the box again and left it in the dish rack, where it was at least honest about being used." (line 5) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (the colander relapse) capped by object-personification punchline — source: character (setup) / narrator-overlay (the "honest" tag) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the tag — any half-packed-apartment novel can rate an object's honesty) — dramatic work: the half-packed apartment as June's exit reflex made visible — workshopped: yes (punchline syntax; same object-as-moral-agent family already ordered out in Ch08/Ch13/Ch15)

2 — "he hadn't been wrong so much as early" (line 5) — mechanism: antithetical reclassification — source: narrator-overlay (free-indirect aphorism; the insight is June's, the phrasing is composed) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (stock "not wrong, just early" pivot; also poaches the syntax of Luis's card-owned sample "Mara is not wrong. She is early," which search confirms is still unused in the text — this spends his line shape for him) — dramatic work: concedes Theo's underpainting saw true — workshopped: yes

3 — "Sam had written *crooked is dynamic* and Ruth had written *it's crooked.*" (line 9) — mechanism: deflation-by-literalism — source: character (Sam's warm reframe, Ruth's copyeditor flatness) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (judged: the couplet shape is generic, but "with a photo proving it" and the kiss-flyer-with-scarf payload weld it; Ruth's cap intact — this is plain-dry, not her one editorial-sharp line) — dramatic work: the cohort continuing without June; forty flyers proliferating her unreturned scarf — workshopped: no (lowercase texting register, no setup symmetry)

4 — "Luis cooked for eleven and we are four." (line 11) — mechanism: deadpan arithmetic — source: character (Mara hosting, Luis's excess; no "Luis says" translation tic — arc-consistent post-Ch13) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the invitation June must lie to refuse — workshopped: no

5 — "*Can't — working,* June typed, which was going to be true if she started a painting before Friday." (line 13) — mechanism: truth-condition deadpan / self-aware rationalization — source: character (June's self-aimed honesty, voice-card exact) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the avoidance and arms the Friday "working girl" sting — workshopped: no — **tracker breach:** the evaluative `, which` caption family was repaired to a hard floor at Ch13 ("Ch14 should add zero"); this reopens it

6 — "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else, and that was the part that cost." (line 13) — mechanism: incongruity (emoji as tact) with hard turn — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: grace rendered as the expensive thing; sharpens rather than soothes — workshopped: no

7 — "a man balancing a foil pan on both palms so it would not crease" (line 21) — mechanism: deadpan observational specificity — source: situation (the holiday June forgot, seen with her handling-and-weight eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (checked against the postcard-NYC ban: one observed handling detail, not montage; it plants the chapter's carrying-care image paid at lines 71 and 85) — dramatic work: isolation made visible; setup for "Don't tilt it"/"foil level the whole time" — workshopped: no

8 — "started the kitchen cleanup that painting in a kitchen requires" (line 23) — mechanism: resigned tautology / deflation — source: situation — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (any apartment-painter book) — dramatic work: nominally the lost studio as material fact, but the composed relative clause adds nothing the objects wouldn't — workshopped: leaning yes (syntax-built wit no character is generating)

9 — "sending it tonight, this particular night, would have nothing to do with ceiling height" (line 31) — mechanism: ironic denial (the negation states the truth) — source: character (June catching her own flare-send impulse; confirmed by "She left it in drafts") — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: the flight reflex caught in the act; keeps the Tasker decision clean of Theo — workshopped: no, but "this particular night," is a narrator nudge underlining the irony for the reader, which drops the item to partial. (Adjacent candidate checked and passed: "a person who rated her work and not her story," line 31 — June's plain, materially true assessment of Nia, not a joke.)

10 — "*We saved you a plate, working girl,* Mara wrote, and June heated soup from a can. ... She'd told a lie to avoid a dinner so she could paint a room she was also avoiding. Then she rinsed the bowl." (line 43) — mechanism: ironic juxtaposition + deadpan deflation — source: situation + character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the avoidance spiral named and its cost shown — workshopped: no (counter-candidate considered: the lie/avoid self-caption is symmetrical, but it's June's licensed perception–judgment–self-rebuke rhythm and "Then she rinsed the bowl." grounds it in action)

11 — "*Keep it!! I have two. That was the plan.*" / "*You told me that so I'd take it.*" / "*and it worked. ok.*" (lines 53–57) — mechanism: stratagem confessed (Mara cheerfully deflating her own cover story) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pays the Ch03 plant "take the scarf, I brought two" with exact variation) — dramatic work: converts the loan into named care and forces the Sunday meeting — workshopped: no

12 — palm "already out, palm up, resigned to it" + "You really washed it. ... Wool soap?" / "Better than I treat it." (lines 61–67) — mechanism: role-reversal deadpan (the borrower out-cares the owner) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's love language (craft-exact care) legible to Mara, who answers with "Are you eating?" — workshopped: no

13 — "Are you eating?" / "I'm painting." (lines 67–69) — mechanism: deflective substitution, visible as deflection — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (June answering a body question with a vocation answer is her wound; Mara hears it and responds with food, keeping the exchange followable as text) — dramatic work: triggers the pie — workshopped: no

14 — "There's pie under the turkey. Don't tilt it." + "It's a dish I want back, so it's not even generous. It's a hostage exchange." (lines 71–75) — mechanism: generosity-denial reframe + care-as-logistics imperative — source: character (Mara denying her own generosity so June can accept food that isn't charity) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (judged: the quip in isolation could port, but it is motivated by the literally rescued pie dishes in the tote, names the chapter's object-as-tether economy, and is cashed at line 99) — dramatic work: re-tethers June to Tuesday via an owed dish — workshopped: no (speakable, scene-generated, first use of "hostage" in the book per search)

15 — "Ruth has opinions about wall spacing and I need another painter at the table." (line 75) — mechanism: specificity understatement + recruitment-by-category — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: hands June a non-pity reason to come Tuesday; keeps Ruth character-true offstage — workshopped: no

16 — "Thank you for October." / "October. It's almost December. I'm glad you came." (lines 81–83) — mechanism: literal-calendar deflation — source: character (Mara refusing June's elegy register) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: rejects the closure June is trying to perform — workshopped: no

17 — flyer in Sonia's window "low, by the register, crooked" + "the foil level the whole time like she'd been told" (line 85) — mechanism: double repetition-payoff — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: "crooked" pays item 3 (the cohort is everywhere June walks); the obeyed instruction is care accepted without saying so — workshopped: no

18 — "The chair did nothing. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door, and if it was unbearable, that was a problem the viewer had brought with them." (line 89) — mechanism: deadpan denial / pre-empted critic — source: narrator-overlay (there is no in-scene audience; the wit performs restraint for the reader instead of enacting it) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (could caption any austere artwork in any art novel) — dramatic work: claims the dry-and-exact stance the preceding literal description already established; pre-spends line 91's real beat (refusing to let the studies become a message) — workshopped: yes (composed-for-quotation; this is the calibration's named hazard, overlay wit around the studies)

19 — "one return down, one acquired" (line 99) — mechanism: bookkeeping deadpan / structural payoff — source: character (June's sorting mind) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: proves Mara's hostage exchange worked — the book refusing June a zero-attachment exit; this is the grounded survivor of the "zero did not last" idea — workshopped: no (counter-candidate considered: it is compressed and pattern-shaped, but it tallies real objects the chapter handled and pays line 75)

**Watched-but-absent items:** "sleeping in shifts," "zero did not last," and "commits to the bridge" do not appear anywhere in the current text (confirmed by search). No inventory entries; nothing to clear.

**Distribution checks.** Density: 19 items, 14 at funniness-2. But distribution is lopsided: the Thanksgiving-Thursday-through-Saturday-morning solo stretch (lines 21–49, roughly a third of the chapter — the studies, the two columns) carries only items 7–9, two of them partial. Mechanism variety: deflation/literal-correction family runs 4 (items 3, 13, 16, plus "and it worked" inside 11) against repetition-payoff ×3 (1, 7→17, 14→17), deadpan arithmetic/bookkeeping ×2 (4, 19), irony ×2 (9, 10), reframe (14), stratagem-confession (11), understatement (15) — varied; not MONOTONOUS. Sweetness: the sharp beats stay sharp — Theo's "Okay. No chair." gets no comic cushioning, the studies sequence is dry, and items 6 and 10 turn their comedy into cost rather than comfort; not OVERSWEETENED. Cringe: none found. Tracker residue checked: "keys" appears only as quoted content of Theo's Ch16 canvas (line 5), no new key beat; no new "the way" connective; legal-clerical residue is limited to "ratify"/"the whole ledger" (line 95), grounded in the literal two-column notebook — single use, watch not block.

VERDICT: **CLEAR BUT THIN**

What's there lands and is overwhelmingly character-sourced (11 of 19 character, 4 situation; only items 2 and 18 plus the tag of item 1 are narrator-overlay — and all three are blocked below). The thinness is grief-calibrated, provably: this book's comedy is people-sourced by commitment (guide §2, "observational and character-true"), the chapter's subject is June severing contact, and the comic register re-enters the prose exactly when Mara forces contact — every funniness-2 item except 7, 17, and 19 has Mara or the cohort on the other end of it, and 17 and 19 are payoffs of Mara's beats. The dry stretch maps to who June is with, not to a register failure. Strongest item: the scarf volley (item 11). Weakest surviving item: the foil-pan man (item 7). Where the chapter has room, if any is wanted: Asha's two texts (lines 35–39) are purely functional where her voice card licenses dry lead-comedy ("Not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive"); one Asha-flavored clause there would add cohort warmth at a distance without breaking the isolation register. Because the thinness is proven calibrated, no add-beats order is mandated.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Item 1 — overlay personification tag, workshopped, portable.** Quote: "where it was at least honest about being used." Cut the tag; end the sentence at the physical action: "...and left it in the dish rack." The colander relapse is the joke and it is June's; rating an object's moral status is the capped personification family (Ch08 secret-object/scarf, Ch13 room, Ch15 receipt) resurfacing as narrator wit. Cutting, not softening.

2. **Item 2 — portable stock antithesis poaching Luis's line shape.** Quote: "he hadn't been wrong so much as early." Replace the wrong/early pivot with June's paint logic already on the page ("a wrong first pass," "underpainting"): render the correction optically — a first pass isn't a verdict, it's the layer the rest goes over; the apartment had been sitting at that layer for two months. Perception, not aphorism, and Luis keeps his own sentence for when he needs it.

3. **Item 8 — funniness-1, portable, syntax-built.** Quote: "started the kitchen cleanup that painting in a kitchen requires." De-workshop into objects: state literally what the lost studio costs her — gouache washed out of the sink she cooks in, brushes drying beside the dish rack. The material fact is the content; the composed relative clause is doing nothing the colander and the soup can aren't already doing.

4. **Item 9 — funniness-1 via narrator nudge.** Quote: "sending it tonight, this particular night, would have nothing to do with ceiling height." Cut "this particular night," — the appositive underlines the irony for the reader and under-commits the item. "Sending it tonight would have nothing to do with ceiling height" lands the self-catch harder, in June's own surveillance of herself. Keep "She left it in drafts."

5. **Item 18 — narrator-overlay, portable, workshopped; the calibration's named hazard.** Quote: "and if it was unbearable, that was a problem the viewer had brought with them." Cut from "and if it was unbearable" through the period. "The chair did nothing. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door." already enacts the dry-and-exact stance; the rebuttal clause performs restraint instead of keeping it, could caption any austere artwork anywhere, and pre-spends the line-91 beat where June refuses to let the studies become a message. If a third beat is needed, make it literal craft (what she did or didn't do to the cast shadow), not a quotation.

6. **Item 5 — tracker cap, syntax only (joke is funniness-2 and stays).** Quote: "*Can't — working,* June typed, which was going to be true if she started a painting before Friday." The evaluative `, which` caption family was closed at Ch13 with an add-zero order; recast without the caption shape: "*Can't — working,* June typed. It would even be true if she started a painting before Friday." Same truth-condition gag, no reopened family.
