# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 06: Sightlines — ROUND 3 (post-repair re-audit of accepted text)

Auditor stance: cold read of the current accepted text, skeptical. Inputs: `output/chapters/chapter_06.md` (current — this text differs materially from the version round 2 verified), round-1 and round-2 audits, the three Codex repair memos (`dialogue_repair_memo`, `comedy_repair_memo`, `characters_wrong_repair_memo`), voice cards, `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` + `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`, dialogue scene manifest (ch 06 = one scene, lines 2–169; current file ends at 169 — segmentation holds, single scene block). No reading-guide exclusions apply: standard quoted dialogue, ordinary-outing scene — the ordinary-talk calibration *raises* the bar against sharpening. Discipline: round 2 ruled CLEAN on a text that has since been rewritten again by the comedy and characters-wrong repairs; round-2 rulings on lines that no longer exist carry no authority here. I audit only what is on the page now.

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## Post-round-2 delta verification

The comedy and characters-wrong repairs altered dialogue and dialogue-adjacent narration after the round-2 CLEAN. Verified against the current text:

1. **Mara wall assignment (comedy memo: tail clause cut).** Round 2 verified "…I can't tell whether I'm having an opinion or enjoying the clip lights, and I become difficult when unsupervised." Current: "You two take this wall for me, please. I keep losing the middle one when I stand over here, and Luis won't let me blame the lights." — a further rewrite beyond what the memo describes ("ends at the clip-lights pretext"). The workshopped tail is gone; the line is over-hosty, runs a clause past necessary, and is not quotable. Register holds. Note: this rewrite adds a second Luis-citation (see VOICE-CARD line below).
2. **"an inspection and a blessing" cut** — confirmed; now "Mara touched the scarf's fringe in passing." Action, no overlay.
3. **"gathering reactions like coats" cut** — confirmed; transition is now "They broke for coffee after that." Functional.
4. **CORTADO sign moved out of Ruth's warning** — confirmed; the espresso machine and "CORTADO YES" now sit in the bodega interior paragraph beside Ben's payoff ("Ben read the sign as if terms might be hidden in it"). Ruth's walk runs uninterrupted from "She let half a block go by first" to "She went inside."
5. **Sam pays a cost (characters-wrong memo)** — confirmed: "Ruth said good night to everyone equally. Sam's cup paused halfway and then finished the salute." Note this also deleted the round-1 near-miss editorial tail "which landed worse than being singled out" — the diagnosis sweep is cleaner for it.
6. **Priya self-implication** — confirmed: "He understands the rule," Priya said. "I just don't trust a cheap room when I'm tired." replaces the Ben-diagnosis ("He just thinks if the numbers get clean enough, the rest becomes automatic.").
7. **Clementine partly fails** — confirmed: "June took the clementine and put it in her coat pocket. Priya saw that and let it stay there."
8. **June's boundary line costs Ben warmth** — confirmed: "'Oh.' Ben blinked. The open table-look left his face before he recovered. 'That's also data.'"
9. **Theo's stranded step at the crooked painting** — confirmed, with the route-card retreat ("Theo stepped back to the door and folded his fingers around the route card.").
10. **Unlogged deltas — flagged.** (a) Two interiority clauses round 2 verified as present are now cut without appearing in any memo: "There it was again, the ease of being consulted as a unit." and "The route card seemed less necessary for a dangerous instant." — the latter was named by round-1 Order 6 as the carrier that "must remain." Ruled on under Mode 3 below. (b) Ruth's lines were rewritten again beyond the round-2 text: "every official form points back to your desk" → "The form I saw had your email on it. The payment line had the gallery. The class contact was you. Maybe there's another page."; "That's the reflex I'm asking about." tail cut; "Make sure it belongs to her." → "It should be one she can use." Ruled on under Modes 1/4 and FAKE-SHARP below. (c) A new route-card handoff beat exists that no prior round saw — it contains a contradiction that blocks. See BOOK-SPECIFIC FAIL and Revision Order 1.

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## Full sweep

SCENE 01 / gallery walk: Orchard basement → Vestibule on Rivington → frame shop → Allen St. walk → bodega → closing walk (entire chapter, manifest single scene):

- **1. Voice convergence — CLEAN** — Covered attributions and re-read for the round-1 house cadence (clipped declarative + corrective restatement). Registers remain separated and the new lines widen the gaps: Mara runs long and cites Luis ("I checked three forecasts, which Luis says is two forecasts past useful, and I have the gray one in my bag."); Ben spirals with numbers ("Fourth floor, no elevator. I know that's bad. The rent is less bad, which is how they get you."); Priya is directive-clinical ("I know. Your left knee keeps looking for a wall. Stool."); Ruth builds evidence inventories ("The form I saw had your email on it. The payment line had the gallery. The class contact was you. Maybe there's another page."); Luis stacks flat placement facts ("It's the wall. The floor slopes. The painting's level."); Sam directs bodies ("Stand here. Not symbolically. You can actually see all three from here."); June compresses ("Coffee. Black. Separate."). Strongest counter-candidate: June's "It's the only data." against Luis's "It's the wall." — both clipped correctives, but dry correction is June's card-owned register and placement diagnosis is Luis's; no third speaker shares the cadence. Two card-sanctioned instances in different domains is differentiation, not convergence.
- **2. Monotone Q/A rhythm — CLEAN** — Checked the Ruth–Theo walk, the rent-math thread, and the coffee counter. Strongest counter-candidate: Ruth's long build ("If the class stops being good for her, week five, say, and she wants out, and she doesn't want to explain herself, who can she tell who isn't you?") against Theo's degrading answers ("Yes." → "I close out the tins. Odile counts them." → "Yes. I hear it." → "It had a shortcut on it." → the aborted "'I can,' he started."). Survives: the weights are asymmetric, Theo audibly loses material as pressure lands, and Ruth's unanswered look ("Ruth looked at him.") breaks any volley pattern. The Ben/Priya thread alternates monologue-and-jab, not matched panels.
- **3. Missing interiority — CLEAN, by a narrower margin than round 2 claimed** — Theo's mind never goes dark: the opening reconnaissance, "Theo did not hate it fast enough," the stranded step at the painting ("In another room, at another hour, that would have been enough… This was not his wall."), the *Boss*-cover paragraph, the pocket check ("Both were his pockets."), the bodega reflex ("His mouth was already open to say it for her, to be useful, to anticipate, to stand in the middle of one more route."), and the closing name-testing paragraph down Allen. Strongest counter-candidate — and the closest call in the chapter: the Ben overlap exchange, where an unlogged repair cut both "There it was again, the ease of being consulted as a unit." and the round-1-mandated carrier "The route card seemed less necessary for a dangerous instant.", leaving only "The route card came back against Theo's shirt." after June's "It's the only data." It survives, barely: the ease is now pre-loaded at the wall beat ("He stood next to her with his hands in his pockets and nothing to fix, and he liked it more than he had planned to."), the cost of June's line is registered through Ben's face ("The open table-look left his face before he recovered."), and the card's return reads as renewed felt weight against line 9's "The route card sat in his chest pocket." The cut-list's loaded-short-line bullet is satisfied — the focalizer registers who watched and what changed. Had the wall beat's "he liked it more than he had planned to" also been cut, this would be a FAIL.
- **4. Questions-as-statements — CLEAN** — Checked every question: Ruth's core question demands and receives an answer-hunt, and she states in plain text that she wants one ("But I'd like there to be an answer.") while withholding her conclusion ("Maybe there's another page."); Ben's "What made it obvious the overlap was worth it?" is genuinely open and gets genuinely punctured; Mara's "Is the middle one crooked, or is it me?" is answered by Luis with a fact; June's "Which way are you walking?" is answered and acted on ("'Delancey,' she said, and set off."). Strongest counter-candidate: Theo's "You think I'd hurt her." — a statement wearing no question mark at all, and Ruth answers it with evidence rather than reassurance; no portent manufactured.
- **5. Fake-McCarthy minimalism — CLEAN** — Checked the bodega counter, "Don't," and the goodbye. Strongest counter-candidate: "'Two,' he said. 'Ask her first.'" — four words, but the entire chapter builds the anticipation reflex this line breaks, the interiority immediately before it prices the temptation in full, attribution is intact, and June converts the starkness into action ("'Coffee,' she told the man. 'Black. Separate.'" plus paying "from her own coat pocket, in singles, before Theo's wallet cleared his jacket"). Earned, as both prior rounds ruled. "Don't," Ben said is comic refusal with full staging (Mara reading the sublet card "in Ben's direction"), not performed starkness.
- **6. Jargon-trading without translation — CLEAN** — Checked "plate tone," "miters," "glassine sleeves," "CORTADO YES," "track work," "the overlap." Strongest counter-candidate: "Is that plate tone, or did they just not wipe it?" — untranslated, but the payload is Theo's "I genuinely don't know," which needs none, and the reading guide's smallness test affirmatively sanctions technical craft truth (named exclusion, declining to flag). "The overlap" is defined by Ben's own previous sentence ("Not the lease.").
- **7. Attribution opacity — CLEAN** — Eight speakers plus the kid and the counterman; checked the Vestibule cluster, the bodega, and the goodbyes. Strongest counter-candidate: the unattributed "I'm fine." — pins to Mara because Priya sets the stool "behind Mara" and the reply ("Your left knee keeps looking for a wall.") re-anchors. The counterman is established before he speaks ("The man at the machine looked past Ben to Theo and June"); Sam's lines are action-tagged ("they moved out of the corner and steered June"). No drift.
- **FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN** — Ran every exchange against the cut-list, with weight on the repaired beats. (a) Mara's wall assignment: "I keep losing the middle one when I stand over here, and Luis won't let me blame the lights." — functional, unquotable, over-hosty; the workshopped "difficult when unsupervised" tail is confirmed gone. (b) Rent-math: strongest counter-candidate in the chapter is Ben's announced verdict "We are considering paying twenty-nine hundred dollars a month to live in this gallery minus the ceiling." — a landed comic image, but it arrives mid-anxiety, attached to the actual stakes, after visible nervous measurement ("paced the length of the room with his heel-to-toe walk, lips moving"), and his card licenses self-mocking logistical jokes tied to stakes while banning only zingers *detached* from them; Priya's reply is flat friction ("Put the phone down for one room."), so no one trades cappers. (c) Ruth's walk: one edged line remains ("Don't solve it on this block." — now without its round-2 tail), and her exit is plain and functional ("It should be one she can use."); "I saw enough to be worried. Not enough to be right." is her card's verbatim sanctioned line. (d) Coffee counter and closing walk: "Ask her first" is an instruction, not an aphorism; the goodbye is three flat speakable lines ("Which way are you walking?" / "I was going to ask you that." / "Delancey."). Also checked: June's "The gold one isn't gold. It's confident, though." (painter reading a frame sample in her visual lane, one of many flat June lines — "Sort of.", "Delancey."), Ben's "Important distinction." (self-aware planner humor inside a defense, not a landed beat), and Priya's "That means no." (still her only capper, and it targets the fact that June hasn't eaten — care, not performance). Loaded-short-line check: "Don't." is followed by June's miter-reading; the silence carries no unregistered weight — the sublet thread is comic and Ben's temptation is priced later ("read the sign as if terms might be hidden in it" is the same reflex, paid off).
- **INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN** — Checked whether the post-round-2 cuts stripped the focalizer anywhere. Strongest counter-candidate: the Ben overlap beat discussed under Mode 3 — two orienting clauses were cut, but the scene retains entry points (the wall beat's "he liked it more than he had planned to," Ben's face, the card's return). The coffee counter retains full interiority ("He knew it from Sonia's, twice over, the way he knew the alarm code."), and the closing walk is the opposite of stripped: the name-testing paragraph ("Mara would ask him first… Odile's name came up and he set it down again.") is the chapter's structural answer-in-progress to Ruth's question. No over-stripped exchange.
- **BOOK-SPECIFIC (zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis, §2) — CLEAN** — Swept the full current text. Nearest misses checked and declined: "and heard himself do it" (Theo registering the *act* of pre-empting June, not rating the sentence); "That means no." (targets the eating fact, not June's phrasing — deflection made visible as deflection, which §2 requires); "*Boss* had passed because every public fact supported it" (mechanics of the lie's cover, aimed at the fact pattern — prior ruling stands); "The listing says *study* about a closet." (rates a document's euphemism, not any speaker's language; the ban governs captioning of conversation and narration about speech, and a listing is neither); "Sam said, not in a whisper" (volume staging — Ruth was meant to hear); "Ruth said good night to everyone equally." (distribution of goodbyes, a behavior — and the formerly watched editorial tail "which landed worse than being singled out" has been cut, strengthening this pass); "Mara narrated the cat-food shelf to Luis" (describes an activity, not an evaluation of anyone's words). `load-bearing` ban: zero hits in the current text, checked against `reading_guide_bans.tsv`. Plain-speech floor: Theo "You think I'd hurt her." / "I'll find one."; June "We don't live together."; Ruth "I'd like there to be an answer."; Ben "I know that's bad."; Priya "I just don't trust a cheap room when I'm tired."; Mara "I keep losing the middle one when I stand over here"; Sam "Say it or let it go."; Luis "It's the wall." Every exchange is followable as text.
- **BOOK-SPECIFIC (followability, §8 / dialogue-fact contradiction) — FAIL** — "He stood at the corner with the route card under his thumb. **The back was blank.**" (narration, end of Ruth's walk) against "Theo took the route card out of his chest pocket and put it in Ben's hand. **'Closing times are on the back.** Everything's closed. The map part still works.'" (Theo, bodega door). No intervening beat shows Theo writing anything; he orders a coffee and drinks it. A cold reader cannot reconcile the two: either the back is blank — the image of Ruth's unanswered question, which the closing beat ("his thumb found the empty place on his shirt where the route card had been") depends on — or it carries closing times, in which case the chapter's central object beat is retroactively false and the handoff line reads as an error, not a gift. This fails the followability gate ("after any exchange, a reader can say what each party asked, learned, or refused" — here the reader cannot even say what is written on the card) and it deflates the blank-back beat that carries Theo's failure to find Ruth an answer. Both lines are post-round-2 additions; no prior round saw them together. (Checked the adjacent apparent contradiction and declined to flag it: "The first version had included… a ranked list of coffee options. He had cut it twice." vs. Ben's "There's a fallback coffee place *ranked*" — survivable as the joke that the ranking outlived two cuts, and the ranked list was front-of-card content, not the back.)
- **VOICE-CARD / RULE 4 — CLEAN, one WATCH** — Contractions: all casual dialogue contracts ("don't," "isn't," "I'd," "Here's," "Ruth's already told me"). The two full-form candidates both resolve as sanctioned: "Rent math is not a proposal." is quoted written text from the shared note, verbatim from Ben's card; "We are considering paying twenty-nine hundred dollars a month…" is Ben's mock-deliberative announced-findings emphasis, the exact register his card's own example lines model ("I am practicing."). Never-says checks: Theo offers no polished aphorisms about care; Ruth holds to one editorial-sharp line and her misread stays professional and forms-bound per her card ("her misread must be professional impropriety, not psychic romance insight" — "Maybe there's another page." is precisely that); June stays in edge/value/exact vocabulary; Sam's near-card-verbatim placement line stands; Priya's lines are body-observation, not a logistics mirror. WATCH, not a finding: Mara now cites Luis three times in one chapter ("which Luis says is two forecasts past useful," "Luis won't let me blame the lights," "Luis checked it from two places before anyone asked, so now we all benefit") — the third instance dramatizes her card's contradiction in real time (Luis has just made himself visible and she translates him anyway), and the tic is her arc's raw material, but a fourth instance in this chapter or a repeat at this density in chapter 07 would tip the tic into hammering. No rewrite ordered.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **BOOK-SPECIFIC followability / route-card contradiction.** Reconcile "The back was blank." (narration, corner of Allen) with Theo's "Closing times are on the back. Everything's closed. The map part still works." (handoff to Ben). Direction: keep "The back was blank." exactly as is — it is the chapter's image of Ruth's unanswered question and the closing "empty place on his shirt" beat depends on the card's blankness reading as absence. Rewrite Theo's handoff line so the closing times live on the map side, in his card's concrete key/label/schedule register — e.g. closing times "under the map" or "down the side" — keeping the rueful shape of "Everything's closed. The map part still works." Do not add a beat of Theo writing on the back in the bodega: filling the blank would answer, on paper, the question the chapter needs him to carry down the subway stairs unanswered. Ben's "There's a fallback coffee place *ranked*" is consistent with front-of-card content and should stand.

Per the audit contract, this finding routes to opposing-model rewrite; self-repair by the drafting lane is not an accepted resolution.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (1 finding)
