FRESH-READER CLARITY PASS — CHAPTER 20 ("No Advice / Keys Here")

Stance: skeptical professional editor; first-time reader knowing only chapters 1–19 (rolling summaries 15/18/19, canon facts 62–90) and the reading guide's declared difficulty. Mechanical gate reports 0 open findings; nothing imported from it.

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`PLAIN-EVENT SUMMARY:`

Thursday morning, December 3. June lays the decision out as objects on her kitchen table: the Marchetti receipt marked FRI DEC 4 / NOON (the Tasker answer deadline, ~26 hours out), her notebook, her phone, the box of eight Odile catalogs, with Mara's blue dish in the drying rack and the five leaving-side studies still face down under the water jar. The notebook's left page holds the Tasker terms (W-2 $49,500, ~$3,150 take-home, $1,180 rent, benefits at ninety days, keys day one, written after-hours studio access, VANDERCOOK crossed out, the word GOOD); the right page holds New York (Kessler load-in Jan 4 at $32/hr, three weeks, $3,840 invoiced the 25th net-45, money in March; Dana's Ridgewood back room $340 plus $150 wall share = $490/month against her current $1,475; lease ends Jan 31; checking $2,643; a possible December of paid crating shifts "if the gallery office sent them" [UNCLEAR: which gallery this is — June's freelance employer or Marchetti Rooms, which she is actively avoiding; ch18's narration used "the gallery" to mean Marchetti]; FEB = left blank). She has run the arithmetic four times; Tasker wins every line.

At 9:52 Sam texts that Mara wants her dish back and that they are running errands nearby. At 10:40 Sam and Ruth come up, double-parked. June gives them the catalog box to return to the studio — if Theo is there, leave it at Sonia's with a note for Mara; if not, inside the door — and keeps the blue dish to bring to Mara herself Tuesday. Ruth admits that some of her fall silence was manners and some was easier for her. June says her Tuesday absence is a thing she won't explain yet, states she has a job answer due at noon tomorrow, and states she is not asking for an opinion. Ruth and Sam answer with logistics only ("We have a car," "And a hand truck"). They leave with the box at 10:45; delivery outcome stays offscreen (conditional instruction given, not resolved — consistent with next-chapter business).

At 4:05 Asha returns June's call from a freight dock. June asks consent to send Asha's name for the Tasker job, gives the full terms, and names Nia Torres as program director. Asha says yes, on the condition the referral is because she's qualified, not to ease June's guilt; June admits it was both that morning and says she's fixing it. June then commits to the New York path and Asha gives the final terms: $980 to Dana by December 10, key handoff January 2, W-9 to Kessler by December 15, on site January 4 at 8 a.m., three weeks minimum, invoice the 25th, money in March. June fills the right page with the dates.

Friday. At 8:00 June deletes her nine-day unsent email to Nia (a question about painting on Tasker's north wall), scrolls past — without opening — the thread ending in Theo's "Okay. No chair.", and re-runs the test: if Theo never speaks to her again, the Ridgewood room still holds. At 10:40 she calls Nia and declines before the deadline, naming the mechanism plainly: she keeps wanting the Vandercook (the proof press — the caretaking task), and she would again become the person with keys whom everyone waits on. Nia notes the counter-offer is worse, accepts the no, and takes June's referral of Asha Ibrahim, asking for an email today, subject "Tasker," before one.

June executes immediately: texts Asha ("Said no at 10:52"; Nia wants her email today), emails Kessler the W-9 at 11:14 confirming January 4, texts Dana yes ($980 by the 10th, Zelle, key Jan 2 — Dana replies with a photo of the front room's ten feet of wall under north light), emails her landlord notice for January 31 under lease Paragraph 14, writes FEB = coat, pins an index card of the dates under the mineral spirits jar where the receipt lived, folds the receipt into the notebook, and hangs the top leaving-side study — the studio from the door's edge — on her own wall with one nail. She writes "ask gallery re: December crating" on her hand [UNCLEAR: same referent question as above].

One inline hedge total, appearing twice (same referent). Everything else — order of events, who is present, who knows what, timing arithmetic (26 hours; 31 days to Jan 4; $340+$150=$490; $490×2=$980; $49,500/12=$4,125) — reconstructs without guessing.

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`INVENTORY:`

- "TASKER (terms recap)" — introduced: notebook left page (line 9) — first plot weight: the Nia refusal call (lines 105–133) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("TASKER. $49,500. Divided by twelve, $4,125... Rent, $1,180... Benefits at ninety days. Keys day one" — all terms are re-laid on the page a full day before the call asks them to hurt; ch15 established them).
- "VANDERCOOK" — introduced: crossed-out notebook line (line 9) — first plot weight: "The part I keep wanting is the Vandercook" (line 117) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("The proof press in the back room. Trueing the bed, keeping it usable. That part." — the appositive gives the reader what kind of thing it is and what June would do with it at the exact moment it must carry the refusal; ch15 planted the trueing-the-press pull). The crossed-out-word withholding at line 9 is deliberate setup, paid inside the same chapter.
- "wall share (+$150, ten feet, north window)" — introduced: right-page addition from Asha's text (line 13) — first plot weight: "I'm in. Dana's room, the wall share, Kessler" (line 83) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("+$150, ten feet of clear wall in the front room, north window" — dimension, location, light; later confirmed by Dana's photo, line 155).
- "Dana's terms ($980 / Dec 10 / key Jan 2)" — introduced: Asha's phone rundown (line 85) — first plot weight: the Dana yes-text (line 155) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("first month plus one month deposit, $980 all in with the wall, by December 10. Key handoff January 2" — and the $490/$1,475 comparison at line 13 already told the reader this replaces her rent, which covers the later landlord-notice beat).
- "net-45" — introduced: line 13 — first plot weight: "can you get from here to March?" (line 85) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("Invoice the 25th, net-45, money lands in March" — self-glossing in the sentence).
- "W-9" — introduced: Asha's rundown (line 85) — first plot weight: the Kessler email (line 153) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("W-9 attached, confirmed for January 4, 8 a.m." — the reader sees it as start-paperwork by task performed; no tax knowledge required).
- "Paragraph 14" — introduced and spent in one beat (line 157) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("Paragraph 14 allowed email; she checked" — the clause names its own function).
- "FEB = " (notebook equation pattern) — introduced: line 13 — first plot weight: "FEB = coat" (line 159) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("She had not filled in the right side of that equation because there was nothing to put there" establishes it as the money gap; Asha's "Wear the coat inside until February" and "can you get from here to March?" supply the two readings the final entry fuses). See Confusion Map for the assigned classification.
- "the gallery office / December crating" — introduced: line 13 ("A possible December of crating shifts if the gallery office sent them") — first plot weight: it is June's only named income bridge to March (lines 87, 129) and the chapter's closing action (line 165, "ask gallery re: December crating") — orientation: INSUFFICIENT (the reader cannot determine which gallery this is. Canon marks June's work world as outside Marchetti Rooms, but the recent manuscript's definite-article usage points the other way — ch18 ends with June "avoiding the gallery," meaning Marchetti. A first-time reader who makes that same identification concludes June is soliciting December work from the building she has spent two chapters routing catalogs around, which contradicts the chapter's own avoidance logic. One identifying noun would close it.)

Strongest counter-candidates checked and passed: "load-in" (glossed by "a body on January 4, eight a.m."), "the wire" (idiom, line 109), "armory" (line 165; established ch15), "after-hours studio sheet" vs. "offer letter" clause (lines 9/71 — the sheet is what the clause puts her name on; consistent).

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`CONFUSION MAP:`

- "Scrolling for Dana's thread she went past the one that still ended *Okay. No chair.* She kept scrolling. That was a different noon." (line 99) — reader loses: what "noon" attaches to Theo's thread (his text carried no deadline) — opacity: ASSIGNED (voice + later payoff — the beat's action is unambiguous: she passes the Theo thread unopened; "a different noon" marks Theo as a reckoning deliberately not due today, and the repair is scheduled narrative business per the chapter card's "no Theo repair" protection. The reading guide licenses June's compression and self-interruption under pressure, §2).
- "She filled the blank in the notebook: FEB = coat." (line 159) — reader loses: momentarily, whether "coat" answers the heat problem or the money blank — opacity: ASSIGNED (voice — the entry is June's established notebook idiom of one-word verdicts, following GOOD and the crossed-out VANDERCOOK; Asha's "Wear the coat inside until February" (line 85) plants the object eleven lines of scene earlier, and the fusion — the coat is what she has instead of money or heat — is the entry's point). Note for the record, no order issued: Asha's "until February" and June's "FEB = coat" point in opposite temporal directions; a cold reader absorbs "cold room, endure it" either way.
- "I want to say one thing... This fall I noticed things. I kept them to myself and called it manners." (line 43) — reader loses: exactly what Ruth noticed and how much she knows — opacity: ASSIGNED (later payoff / suspense — Ruth's partial knowledge is a protected arc; canon 19/25 fix her suspicion as access-imbalance, not the fake-couple or nephew truths, and the scene itself marks the withholding as its subject: June answers with "a thing I'm not going to explain yet" and Ruth closes the door herself with "You can leave that part out... We came for the dish"). Verified against the focused check: nothing Ruth or Sam says references Theo's family, the offer, or the couple pretense; the only thing they observably learn is that June avoids Theo — already public since the Week 7 empty stool.
- "A possible December of crating shifts if the gallery office sent them" (line 13) / "ask gallery re: December crating" (line 165) — reader loses: which institution June's one income bridge runs through, and whether it violates her own Theo-avoidance — opacity: ACCIDENTAL (nothing in the chapter or the recent reader knowledge disambiguates; ch18's "avoiding the gallery" primed the wrong referent). Same finding as the INSUFFICIENT inventory item; counted once.

Checked and cleared: the catalog-box routing (the conditional "If Theo is there... Sonia's with a note for Mara. If he isn't, inside the door" (line 33) is fully specified and its unresolved outcome is next-chapter freight, not hidden logistics); the back-room/front-room split at Dana's (lines 13, 85, 155, 161 keep the geography consistent — her room in back, shared wall and window in front — and "the apartment she was leaving for a colder room with better light" (line 165) settles that she will live there); the receipt turned print-side up during the Nia call (line 133 — physical action, legible as June facing the Marchetti fact while saying no).

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`CHARACTER CLARITY:`

- Ruth Kim (reappearing) — PLACEABLE ("Ruth behind with her coat still buttoned... 'We're double-parked. Two minutes.'" — arrives as half of the errand-running couple on Mara's dish business; her fall-long watching, "This fall I noticed things," attaches her to the established watcher role without requiring the reader to recall chapter numbers).
- Sam Rivera (reappearing) — PLACEABLE ("Sam first, in the orange scarf"; tests the box, lifts "properly this time, knees," moves the chair blocking the door's swing — the furniture-and-room care move carried straight over from Week 7).
- Asha Ibrahim (reappearing) — PLACEABLE ("freight noise behind her, the specific boom of a gate coming down. 'Talk fast, I'm holding a door with my whole body.'" — installer peer at work; June's pitch to Nia re-places her for any reader who needs it: "I watched her keep six installers moving while the freight elevator was stuck").
- Nia Torres (reappearing) — PLACEABLE (pre-placed the previous afternoon inside the chapter — "Program director is Nia Torres" (line 67) — before she answers "Torres." with printer and payroll behind her).
- Dana (functional, text-only) — PLACEABLE ("Dana's back room in Ridgewood, $340" — the person whose room June is renting; never speaks, replies in thumbs-ups and one photo, which is all the function requires).
- Kessler (functional, offstage) — PLACEABLE ("Kessler, load-in January 4, $32 an hour"; "Kessler: he needs your W-9... and a body on January 4" — the January employer, gendered "he," never confusable with a location or a landlord).
- Mara / Luis (referenced only) — PLACEABLE ("Mara wants her dish back before Luis refills it" — dish owner and leftovers source, exactly as ch18 left them).

Shared-marker pairs:
- Nia / Asha / Dana (three women in June's work network, all introduced through money terms) — UN-CONFUSABLE (distinct channels and idioms: Nia is office landline, payroll-at-eleven, Pittsburgh travel; Asha is freight-dock cell, rate-and-invoice shorthand, "ok now the boring parts"; Dana is a text thread and a photo. No two share a scene or a register).
- Dana / Kessler (recited in the same term-lists, lines 13, 85, 93) — UN-CONFUSABLE (Asha's rundown formats them as labeled, opposite-direction ledger entries: "Dana: first month plus one month deposit, $980... Kessler: he needs your W-9" — money June pays versus money June earns, room versus job).
- Ruth / Sam (arrive as a unit) — UN-CONFUSABLE (Ruth holds the kitchen edge and speaks the cost line; Sam handles the box, the chair, and the hand-truck offer; the chapter never needs a pronoun for Sam and never gives Ruth an object to carry).

Focused check (Nia/Asha/Dana/Kessler by function): passes as above — offer-giver, consenting referee/lead-supplier, room, job. No function overlaps on the page.

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`COMPLEXITY CHECKS:`

1. Scene action / orientation / focalizer / consequence on first read — HOLDS. Every scene is anchored to clock and furniture (9:52 text, 10:40 arrival, 4:05 call, 10:40 Friday call, 11:14 email), June's perception never blurs with another's, and each scene ends in a stated consequence (box gone, name sent, no delivered, W-9 sent, study on the wall). Strongest counter-candidate: the four-way phone/text montage at lines 151–157 — it survives because each item is timestamped and addressed.
2. New terms plain before plot weight — HOLDS for every priced term (see Inventory: Tasker recap, Vandercook, wall share, $980/Dec 10, net-45, W-9, Paragraph 14 all get scene-native orientation at or before their weight point). The focused Tasker-vs-New-York check passes structurally: both pages of terms are laid out in the opening scene (lines 9–13), a full chapter-day before any term is asked to carry the refusal or the acceptance.
3. Mysteries deliberate — HOLDS. The three withholdings (what Ruth knows, the unopened Theo thread, the thing June "won't explain yet") are all marked as withholdings inside the scene and all serve protected later payoffs per the chapter card's outcome rules. The focused sequence check passes on the page: the decline (10:52 Friday) precedes any Theo contact, which is zero; "Theo's apology, if it came, would not put heat in the room" (line 103) states the independence outright, and nothing in the chapter transmits any offer fact toward Theo — the box he might find contains only catalogs and a note addressed to Mara.
4. Plain footholds at high load — HOLDS. The two densest blocks each end in a plain-language stake: the notebook scene lands on "It was still good. That was the entire problem with the left page" (line 11), and Asha's six-figure, four-date rundown lands on "So the real question: can you get from here to March?" (line 85). The money stays June's arithmetic ritual — squared receipt, dented page, index card — not brochure or glossary.
5. Aliases / near-synonyms — FAILS — "A possible December of crating shifts if the gallery office sent them" (line 13) and "ask gallery re: December crating" (line 165). "The gallery," definite article, was last used by this manuscript (ch18 close) to mean Marchetti Rooms — the building this chapter spends its first scene routing eight catalogs around. One phrase, two candidate institutions, and the wrong candidate contradicts the chapter's own logic.

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`REVISION ORDERS:`

1. "A possible December of crating shifts if the gallery office sent them" (line 13) — alias failure: the reader cannot tell whether June's only bridge income comes from her freelance employer or from Marchetti Rooms, which she is avoiding. Fix inside scene texture, not exposition: give the office one non-Marchetti identifying mark at first mention — a neighborhood, a registrar's first name, or a job-specific noun June would naturally write (e.g., the notebook entry reads "crating — [name/Chelsea office] if they call," or June's closing hand-note becomes "ask [name] re: December crating" at line 165). One proper noun in June's own shorthand closes both occurrences; no explanation sentence needed. (If a specific employer gallery is already named in chapters 1–14, use that exact name here — the fix is still required, because two chapters of "the gallery" = Marchetti have overwritten the referent for a linear reader.)

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`OVERALL: CONFUSING (1 finding)`

For the record, the heaviest-load passage is Asha's terms rundown (line 85 — six dollar figures, four dates, two institutions in one speech); the footholds that carry it are the freight-dock staging (gate boom, pallet jack, shouted name) keeping it talk under time pressure, and the closing stake question "can you get from here to March?", which converts every number into one legible risk. The single finding is small and cheap to fix, but it sits on the chapter's only income bridge and collides with its central avoidance logic, so it blocks a clean pass.
