# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 12: The Memory He Chooses

Cold read against the reading guide register rules (§2: plain-speech floor, no dialogue diagnosis, interiority through object/action, quotable-line density restricted to Odile), the Theo/June voice cards, the chapter packet's specific prohibitions (no new confessional-cap template; June may make one plain joke; do not let banter eat the scene; one deliberate light image max), and the running tic tally (Ch11 retired echo-cap shapes; `Oh.` reservation intact — confirmed no instance). Mechanical gate shows 0 open findings; everything below is the judgment layer the gate cannot see.

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## 1. Which paragraphs feel portable to another novel?

**Finding:**

`PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH` — "He locked the gate behind her and stood a minute in the lamplight with both halves of the evening on the desk: his memory gone, riding to Greenpoint under a rubber band, and hers in front of him in his own block capitals." — This is the genre's stock after-she-leaves tableau: man alone in lamplight, contemplating the evening as a composed abstraction ("both halves of the evening"). It could close a chapter of Beth O'Leary's *The Flatshare* unchanged with two nouns swapped. The metonymies half-rescue it, but "stood a minute in the lamplight" is also this chapter's second lamp image (after "everything dark except the desk lamp" in the opening), pressing the one-deliberate-light-image cap. — ORDER: Cut the "both halves of the evening" abstraction and the lamplight posing. Render the desk literally — her memory in his block capitals next to the two glasses, one still full, is already on the desk and does the work; the scene's own prop ("Thanks for the water I didn't drink") is sitting there unused.

**Checked and passed (work shown):**

- "He had been nine in it, in the fourth-floor kitchen, and if he gave it to June she would have it." — Shaped exactly like portable quiet-lit tautology-as-profundity. It passes because the tautology is the chapter's precise engine: the memory becoming transferable property is the fear, and "the fourth-floor kitchen" pins it to material established in this chapter only. The generic version would be "she would *see* him"; "she would *have* it" is custody, not intimacy-prose.
- The PARTNER paragraph ("only the word PARTNER, sitting there in pencil...") — label-fixation is the fake-dating genre's stock beat, but "pencil capitals slightly too large," the - O. crowded into the corner, and "a specific person with a tote bag and opinions about edges" are non-transferable. Passes the smallness test.

## 2. Where does the prose summarize pressure rather than make the reader inhabit it?

**No findings.** What I checked, and the strongest counter-candidates:

- "He had, in the intervening twenty-two hours, made it a thing." — Pressure summarized in a managerial clause — but the next four sentences itemize it (two chairs at a "non-interview angle," the second glass poured after he drank the first without noticing, the dead pen exiled to the drawer) and the two chair relocations are timestamped (ten past six, quarter past) with reasons that are themselves anxiety made spatial ("the staff side"; "four feet of bare plywood with nowhere for either of them to look"). The summary is a comic topic sentence, immediately paid for. Passes.
- "For two days he had taken out a third card and put it back blank." — Two days of avoidance compressed, but redeemed by the uncapped/capped pen and the displacement tasks (price hardware, answer email, move a frame), which match Theo's voice-card stress tells exactly. Passes.
- The suppression paragraph ("He had four questions and three of them were repairs.") — This classifies Theo's impulses from above rather than dramatizing one reaching his mouth — but classification *is* Theo's documented interiority rhythm (inventory, risk calculation), the three unasked questions are quoted verbatim in italics, and the beat resolves into action ("He picked up the middle pen instead"). This is the packet's custody-not-solution order executed inside the POV, not over it. Passes.

## 3. Where does dialogue sound polished, therapeutic, or aphoristic?

**Findings:**

`POLISHED-DIALOGUE` — ""Don't get there early and arrange the easels. Or do. I can't legislate your whole life." ... "Thanks for the water I didn't drink."" — June exits on two consecutive curtain lines, both quotable, after a scene in which she has already landed "You set a table for two index cards," "you'll lose consciousness otherwise," "I'm not going to put laundry on the line to make it friendlier," and "Paint the wall. The wall's the thing." The style guide licenses this density for Odile only, and the packet sanctioned June *one* plain joke. She is too articulate about Theo's whole character at the exact moment she has just handed him real material; the under-pressure version would spend one of these exits on something functional or get out the door without a button. — ORDER: Keep one of the two exit lines (the water line is the better one — it's anchored to a prop). Replace the other with unquotable logistics (tomorrow's time, the gate bar, nothing) so her exit reads as exit, not as a comic taking her bows.

`POLISHED-DIALOGUE` — ""The wall and the salmon." She sat back. ... "There. Now you have it." / "Now I have it," he said.' — A mirrored refrain caps June's confession: she compresses to a formula, Theo trims it, she announces the handoff, he echoes the announcement. Both parties speak in finished liturgy; the custody theme is performed as a duet instead of carried by objects. The packet explicitly barred building a new confessional-cap template after Ch11 retired "That's the whole ___," and this echo-pair is that template's replacement being born. — ORDER: Break the symmetry. Cut or wrong-foot Theo's "Now I have it" — let his answer be the pen still moving, or a functional question ("What time tomorrow?"), so the custody lands in the card in his handwriting rather than in a matched refrain. June's "Now you have it" can survive alone.

**Checked and passed (work shown):**

- "Don't find out before tomorrow. ... I don't want to know either. It's better as the envelope." — Aphorism-shaped and arrives fast, but it passes: "I don't want to know either" is June exposing her own stake (she is now invested in his memory's survival), the envelope is a concrete object from two lines earlier, and the compression matches her card (exact image instead of named wound). This is her devastating-precision care move, not therapy-speak. It does, however, count toward the density problem flagged above — it survives only if the exit pair is thinned.
- June's process account ("Because orange ghosts. Cadmium-anything ghosts...") — Long for her modal mass, but built of short clauses and verifiable procedure; it is a technician's hiding place, which is the wound rendered as register rather than stated. The packet's "do not make June say 'I erased myself'" is honored — "And she was right," after the manager's "you'd never know," is the closest approach and it withholds correctly.

## 4. Where would literal precision beat figurative language?

**Finding:**

`FIGURATIVE-WHERE-LITERAL` — "She straightened up inside the door and read the room from the walls inward: the gate, the desk lamp, the stock shelf along the east wall..." — "Read the room from the walls inward" is the narrator performing June's voice-card note ("notices edges before faces") as an installed image — a caption on a perception that the colon-list then renders literally anyway. The literal sequence is already present and stronger alone. — ORDER: Cut the caption or literalize it as order-of-looking: she looked at the gate first, the shelf second, him last. The list carries the characterization; the figure only announces it.

**Checked and passed (work shown):**

- "Each arrived, immediate as a frame wanting a shim." — Figurative, but drawn from Theo's trade and it clarifies the custody/risk mechanics (the repair reflex as involuntary, physical, professional) per the chapter card's figuration rule. The literal alternative ("each arrived immediately") loses the diagnosis. Keep.
- "A waste pipe with the paint coming off it in a long curl, like a fern" / "the doubled lines made the wall vibrate slightly" — Both figures live inside the nine-year-old's own observational logic and are doing optical measurement, not decoration. These are what makes the memory paintable for Chapter 13. Keep.
- "It never fully runs clear." — Gnomic present doing quiet thematic double duty, but literally true of roller wash water and unannotated by the narration. Passes; watch that no later chapter underlines it.

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## Focused extra checks (requested)

- **Inhabitation vs. "intimacy through art" prose:** The exchange is conducted through interrogation (June's "How many clothespins?", "What was it on the back of?") and procedure, not through abstractions about seeing/being seen — no line in the chapter generalizes about art or memory. The two flagged moments (lamplight close, "Now you/I have it" refrain) are the only places the prose rises to genre altitude.
- **Memory concreteness:** Both memories resist generic romance. Theo's: six or seven clothespins drawn where they actually were, the skipping ballpoint gone over twice, the chicken-thigh ghost at 89¢/lb, *Theo, 9* in his mother's ballpoint. June's: outlet plate off with its two screws, stain-blocking primer, Decorator's White formula taped inside the supply closet door, twenty minutes of dead salmon. These pass the smallness test decisively.
- **Empty intensifiers / polished generalizations / transferable lines:** No empty intensifiers found ("slightly too large," "vibrate slightly" are both doing measurement). "Everyone pretends not to see it" is grounded by "a peach shadow at four in the afternoon"; "You always budget for three" is pro idiom in voice. The transferable lines are the dialogue buttons flagged in §3 and the "both halves of the evening" close flagged in §1.

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## Chapter verdict: `LLM-CLEAN-FOUND`

Four revision orders:

1. **(§1)** Rewrite the post-exit lamplight paragraph: cut "both halves of the evening" and the lamplight posing; render the desk literally, using the untouched second water glass and her memory in his block capitals.
2. **(§3)** Thin June's exit to one curtain line (keep "Thanks for the water I didn't drink"); replace the other with functional, unquotable speech or silent action.
3. **(§3)** Break the "Now you have it" / "Now I have it" refrain: remove or wrong-foot Theo's echo so custody lands in the written card, not a matched line. Do not let this become the book's new confessional-cap shape.
4. **(§4)** Cut or literalize "read the room from the walls inward"; let the gate/lamp/shelf sequence carry June's perceptual signature without the caption.
