# Audit: Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 04 (post-repair verification, round 3 / final exit-line repair)

id: dialogue_doctor | owner: claude | chapter: 04 ("The Edited Version") | POV: Theo
Manifest entry: `chapter_04.md`, scene 01, lines 2–169, 59 dialogue lines, 82 quoted utterances — Doctor required.
Inputs read: current chapter text; round-1 findings; round-2 verification; repair memo (`codex/chapter_04.dialogue_repair_memo.md`); synthesis memo; voice cards (`style_and_voice.md`); `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` + `premise/premise.md` + `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`; dialogue scene manifest; Chapter 04 card; mechanical gate report (PASS, open=0, WATCH=68 — none of the WATCH hits are dialogue-register patterns).

Stance: skeptical re-verification. Three repairs have landed since round 1; the reading guide's 2026-06-10 amendments (plain-speech floor, zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule, "load-bearing" ban) are now binding and postdate rounds 1–2 — round 2 passed the old exit line that the Comedy Doctor subsequently caught under the new rule, so this rerun re-sweeps the entire chapter against the amended guide rather than trusting prior CLEAN verdicts.

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## Repair verification

**Repair 1 — dry-correction monoculture (Mara's scarf enforcement; Sam's quip). HOLDS.**
Round 1 found all nine speakers resolving beats with the same flat deadpan correction. Re-checked against current text: Mara's enforcement remains `"Keep it through Tuesday," Mara said. "I lent it in the studio. I want the studio version back."` and `"Then give me the version with bad fluorescent light."` (143–147) — reason-plus-conceit in her card's parenthetical-warmth register, decoded on-page by June rewinding the scarf; not deadpan veto, and not quotable-without-the-scene (the conceit needs the studio fluorescents the table just left). Sam's `"Pie first, Ruthie."` with the sugar-caddy move (133) is a concrete care move in their room-and-food language, not a correction. Post-repair census of flat-correction resolvers: Dee (`"You'd better"`), Priya (`"Twice"`), Theo (`"Forty-three."`), Luis (`"It isn't"`), Ruth (`"I didn't ask what she owed"`), June's set — six speakers, six card-licensed flavors, while Mara, Sam, and Ben resolve via warmth, care, and nervous expansion. The monoculture stays broken; no collateral flattening of the protected corrections.

**Repair 2 — June's openings epigram. HOLDS.**
The quotable abstraction is gone. The replacement — `"I came the Thursday after. At openings there are shoulders in front of everything. Wine in the corners. People reading labels with one eye on the door. Thursdays it's empty. You can stand where you want."` (65) — makes no general claim about what openings *are*; it lists what she saw (shoulders, wine, labels, the door), which is her card verbatim (visual/craft nouns; more visual specificity under pressure). The fragments are compression-under-exposure, not composed parallelism. The Thursdays fact and the correction-of-Theo structure survive as ordered.

**Repair 3 — final exit line. VERIFIED FIXED.**
Old line: `"That's the gallery voice," she said.` — a character characterizing another's register/delivery, a direct hit on the reading guide's zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule (§2: "Characters never comment on, characterize, or rate one another's language, phrasing, rhythm, or delivery"). New line: `"You're still at work," she said. "We're not at the gallery."` (163). Tested on all three required axes:
- *Dialogue-diagnosis:* CLEAN. "You're still at work" names Theo's behavior mode — the working he has visibly done all chapter (mug handles turned out, the check intercepted, the Tuesday logistics he just substituted for the Odile sentence) — not his speech. Priya planted the category at the table (`"You can stop working," she said. "It's after nine."` / `"Habit," Theo said.`), so June's line re-applies an established behavioral observation rather than captioning a sentence. The follow-up narration (`He didn't argue with the label. It was accurate, and she had a record of catching the wrong ones.`) evaluates the accuracy of her read of *him*, and shows perceptiveness through what he does with what he heard (doesn't argue; writes the receipt list) — exactly the channel the guide prescribes.
- *June's voice:* CLEAN. Two contracted, plain, speakable sentences; a dry correction of a mislabel — the chapter's own established mechanism — delivered exact-then-exit (`Then she shouldered the door open and angled out`), which is her card's stress sequence verbatim ("gets quieter, funnier, more exact, then exits"). No abstraction, no never-says vocabulary.
- *Label callback and delay cost:* CLEAN. The label thread (43 labels, one flipped, "she had a record of catching the wrong ones") is explicitly cashed, and the line prices the scene's reactive decision ("Dilemma: tell her more? / Decision: delay" per the chapter card): Theo had the Odile sentence ready, swapped in tin logistics, and June's exit line names the swap. The loaded short line is not followed by unmarked silence — the focalizer registers what it cost (`He didn't argue…`) and what it changed (the receipt list, the lie hardening into canon), satisfying the cut-list's final bullet.

**Post-round-2 count fix re-checked:** Mara's `"That's three words"` now counts June's `"At the gallery."` correctly — the round-2 arithmetic note is resolved. However, the line fails the amended guide on different grounds; see FAKE-SHARP below.

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## SCENE 01 — Sonia's diner, corner booth (lines 2–169)

Calibration applied before flagging: ordinary-talk meal/aftermath scene, licensed to circle, stall, and produce flat functional lines (`"Not since one."`, `"I'm having pie."`, the order traffic) — not flagged. No chat-format or non-standard dialogue forms, so no guide exclusions for those are in play. Banter density sits under the Emily-Henry-at-60% ceiling; the label story is answered sincerely. Plain-speech floor spot-check: both principals land direct, unguarded sentences (`"She doesn't owe the gallery anything."`; `"You can stand where you want."`), and every exchange is followable as text without decoding. Dialogue-diagnosis full sweep run line-by-line under the amended §2/§6; borderline cases adjudicated: Ruth's question `conversationally, at a volume built for two` is acoustic staging, not interpretive captioning; Theo's `It came out flat and then it came out as inventory` and `which defended nothing and wasn't asked to` are the focalizer deflating his own utterances, not a character rating another's speech — the rule's lead clause targets "one another's" language, and banning self-rendered delivery would ban "he said quietly"; Mara's `"don't give me the edited version"` / `"that's a real first version"` and Theo's `figuring her version would be shorter` comment on the *story* — what was included or omitted — which is the chapter's licensed subject matter and Mara's card example line nearly verbatim, not on phrasing. One line failed the sweep; see FAKE-SHARP.

**1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN** — covered attributions and read all 59 lines for rhythmic/lexical interchangeability; ran the post-repair correction census above. Each speaker's resolving move differs: Mara explains and meddles, Sam moves objects, Priya checks bodies and facts, Ben expands nervously (`"…this place is dangerously convenient, and I've done the math on it becoming a habit."`), Luis states one material fact, Ruth asks the stripped question, June corrects with visual nouns, Theo inventories. Strongest counter-candidate: the paired echoes `"It isn't," Luis said. / "It isn't," Mara agreed. "But it's close."` (113–115) and `"Front left." / "Front left," Theo agreed.` (23–25) — identical words in two mouths. Both survive: the first is married shorthand differentiated by the resolving move (Luis stops at the fact; Mara concedes and lands soft, her card's soft landing), the second is the useful-men handshake both cards predict, grounded in the table-wobble fix Theo just performed.

**2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN** — checked both interrogation stretches (Mara's meet-story; Ruth's probe) for equal-weight volleys. The meet-story is structurally anti-volley: simultaneous starts (`"There was a label," Theo began, at the same time June said, "He had a label wrong," and they both stopped.`), a hedged count corrected (`"Out of, what, forty?" / "Forty-three."`), answers ranging from one word to June's six-sentence Thursday speech. Strongest counter-candidate: `"Which wall?" / "Back room. North." / "Eye height?" / "Fifty-seven, center. Like everything in the building."` (91–97) — a genuine clipped volley. Survives: two beats only, the appositive breaks weight symmetry, and the exchange exits into the napkin drawing rather than a third question; spec-trading is both speakers' card-licensed care language.

**3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN** — Theo's mind stays on: the three-versions paragraph (57), the arithmetic paragraph (119), the Ruth-file paragraph (131), the un-argued label and receipt list at close (163–169). Strongest counter-candidate: the improv relay (59–115), the longest line-traffic stretch. Survives because the focalizer interjects at the moments of cost: `heard it as it left him: a pattern, confirmed, by the man with no cover for knowing it` (67); `which defended nothing and wasn't asked to` (85); `You couldn't. That was the whole trouble with it.` (89). The reader is never reduced to the lines' informational content.

**4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN** — checked every question (Mara's interrogation, Priya's `"Did you eat?"`, Luis's specs, Ben's `"How'd you even get in?"`, Mara's `"He still carries the pencil?"`). All seek information and get answered. Strongest counter-candidate: `"The slot," she said. "Is it comped?"` (125) — noun-fronted and probe-shaped. Survives: a real question with a factual answer Ruth doesn't have; her card is exactly this ("asks clean questions, withholds her own conclusion"), and the portent lives in Theo's flustered inventory of an answer, not manufactured phrasing.

**5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN** — checked clipped exchanges for stripped-attribution starkness performance. Attribution and action beats persist through every clipped passage; surrounding narration is full-bodied. Strongest counter-candidate: `"The 11:42. Once." / "Twice," Priya said.` (31–33) — bare fragments opening an exchange. Survives: Ben's fragment is embarrassment-compression (card: self-mocking logistical jokes), Priya's one-word receipt is her card's called-out planning, both are anchored, and Ben immediately expands for three clauses — the opposite of performed starkness.

**6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN** — checked "the fall hang," "4B," "fifty-seven, center," "charcoal cracks," "looser roll." Each is translated in-line: the fall hang by apposition to the September opening; the 4B by `"It was a soft pencil"` plus "tooth marks at the end from a decade of him"; `"Looser roll. Charcoal cracks."` translates itself by consequence and is enacted (June gives the rubber band a turn of slack). Strongest counter-candidate: `"Fifty-seven, center. Like everything in the building."` (97) — a hanging-standard number the reader can't price. Survives: the appositive converts the spec into its meaning (everything in Theo's life at regulation height), and the napkin drawing grounds it in the literal scene.

**7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN** — eight speakers plus a waitress is the maximum-risk configuration; traced every unattributed line to its speaker. The side-conversation break (117) is narrated, not quoted, keeping channel count down. Strongest counter-candidate: the unattributed `"Line eight. The last blank line, somehow."` (107) in the class-entry relay. Survives: strict two-speaker alternation is established by the two prior attributed lines (`"It reopened," Theo said. / "Briefly," June said.`), content locks it (roster admin is Theo's domain), and the next line re-anchors with "June said."

**FAKE-SHARP: FAIL — reading-guide dialogue-diagnosis (§2 zero tolerance / §6 "in any form") — `"That's three words," Mara said. "I have fries coming. Expand."` (Mara to June, opening of the meet-story interrogation, line 61).** The line comments on and rates the form of June's utterance — its word count — which is the guide's banned move applied to "phrasing": Mara is being metalinguistic about the answer as an answer, captioning it as withheld ("People always edit the first one" is the frame she set two lines earlier) instead of showing the perceptiveness through the demand alone. The post-repair record makes the shape unmistakable: chapter 02's ordered-out `"That's load-bearing language for an evening class"` and this chapter's own repaired `"That's the gallery voice"` are the same construction — *"That's + meta-description of the other speaker's utterance"* — and the rule is explicit that any instance is a defect, not once per chapter, in any speaker's mouth. The arithmetic repair (four→three) fixed the count and preserved the violation. Everything else in the scene passed all seven cut-list bullets: no aphorism-delivery exchanges, no "in [abstraction]" lines, no noun-question/portentous-answer pairs (Ruth's probe adjudicated under mode 4), the one loaded-silence beat (Ruth's `"I didn't ask what she owed."` and the quarter-turned cup) fully marked by the focalizer pricing what the silence assembles (131). Strongest surviving candidate: the repaired exit line `"You're still at work," she said. "We're not at the gallery."` (163) — the chapter's sharpest remaining exchange, in the cut-list's danger slot (character tired, exiting). It survives: behavior-naming rather than speech-naming (adjudicated in Repair 3 above), contracted and speakable, aimed at one person at door-distance, her card's exact-then-exit sequence, with the silence after it marked and paid for. Second candidate examined: `"He knows the gallery's schedule," June said. "I was a recurring item on it."` (71) — survives as self-aimed deflection (she makes herself the inventory item), card-licensed compression-when-exposed, not a zinger at Theo's expense.

**INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN** — tested rule 9 both directions. Mind-dark: never (mode 3). Explaining-twice: two hard cases. Strongest counter-candidate: the arithmetic paragraph (119) — `Nothing they had said was false. The opening, corrected to a Thursday. The label, with a count attached… She had lied the way a good hang lies` — which re-lists beats the reader just watched. Survives because the enumeration reclassifies rather than recaps: each item returns with new valence (curation-as-lying), and the paragraph delivers the chapter card's named revelation ("they can improvise together, which is dangerous because it works") plus the asymmetry beat (`There was no procedure for it being easy.`), none of which the dialogue stated. The Ruth-file paragraph (131) is reactive, not duplicative, and is required by Ruth's card's narration-transparency rule — without it her misread defaults to romance-clocking, which the card forbids.

Voice-card spot checks (step 4): no card-forbidden lines. Ruth's one-sharp-editorial-line cap respected (`"I didn't ask what she owed"` is the one; `"Is it comped?"` and `"I'm having pie"` are functional). Theo's ledger over-offer (127) is his card's over-explaining-when-ashamed. Rule 4: every dialogue line scans default-contract; no stiff full forms (narration's `It was not shorter` is not dialogue). Rule 6: contemporary register throughout, no anachronism.

**REVISION ORDERS:**
1. Rewrite `"That's three words," Mara said. "I have fries coming. Expand."` (61) to remove the utterance-form rating, which violates the reading guide's zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule (§2, §6). Keep the beat's function intact: Mara's interrogation pressure on June's three-word stonewall, the fries-deadline comedy, and the hand-off into June's Thursday speech. Direction per her card: warmth-plus-demand, gently meddling, soft landing — either a pure content demand (`"I have fries coming. Expand."` carries the beat alone) or a story-version demand inside her already-licensed edited-version frame (her card line: "No, the real version. People always edit the first one."), which targets what June left out, never how June phrased it. Two constraints: the rewrite must not produce a flat deadpan correction (that re-opens the round-1 monoculture finding Mara was specifically re-voiced out of), and it must break the *"That's + meta-description of the utterance"* construction entirely — no substituting "That's an edited answer" or kin.

Non-blocking cross-notes (carried forward):
1. The cover-story list still appears four times across fifty lines (dialogue relay, arithmetic paragraph 119, Ruth-file paragraph in part, receipt note 167). Acceptable; the arithmetic paragraph remains the named cuttable instance if the editor stage wants compression.
2. The round-2 verdict file's own prose used the now-banned phrase "load-bearing"; audit files are outside the gate's scan scope and this file supersedes it, but downstream tooling quoting old audits into chapter-adjacent text should be aware of the regex ban in `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`.

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OVERALL: BLOCKING (1 finding)
