INVENTORY:

`1 — "the second rinse gave him a reason to be standing at the sink" (l.3) — mechanism: transparent-pretext deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: establishes the concealment plan and Theo's habit of laundering motive through chores — workshopped: no`

`2 — "Mara's voice doing the work of four people, Ben laughing at his own line before it ended" (l.3) — mechanism: compression characterization — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the cohort alive offstage while Theo hides from them — workshopped: no`

`3 — "Trash kept secrets better than anything labeled." (l.5) — mechanism: epigram inversion — source: character-flavored but overlay-shaped — funniness: 1 — portable: no (the "labeled" half is Theo's filing worldview) — dramatic work: states the concealment logic — workshopped: YES — BLOCKING`

`4 — "the drain up here clogged if you looked at it wrong" (l.7) — mechanism: idiomatic hyperbole — source: situation — funniness: 1 — portable: YES ("X if you looked at it wrong" is stock idiom, any building, any book) — dramatic work: blocks the sink disposal route — workshopped: no — BLOCKING`

`5 — "SOLIDS GO IN THE BIN" card + "he was not going to test her on plumbing" (l.7) — mechanism: offstage-authority deadpan via signage — source: character (Odile, consistent with her hand-amended-signage motif from Ch01) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: real route-blocking plus Odile's authority present without her — workshopped: no`

`6 — wipe test: "the panel underneath looked exactly the same, only insulted" (l.7) — mechanism: personification deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (anchored in acrylic-gouache permanence) — dramatic work: proves destruction is the only erasure, raising the bin's stakes — workshopped: no`

`7 — "By Thursday it would never have existed." (l.7) — mechanism: denial-as-scheduling — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the magical thinking of concealment in Theo's calendar idiom — workshopped: no`

`8 — "Her left arm did a thing arms did not do." (l.9) — mechanism: deadpan craft self-critique — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (it is his actual bad panel) — dramatic work: establishes the painting is genuinely poor so the accurate stance stands alone as the danger — workshopped: no`

`9 — scarf knot "like it had signed a lease" (l.9) — mechanism: incongruity, tenancy metaphor — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — the lease is this book's clock (June's ends mid-December), so the borrowed scarf taking out a lease in their fiction lands twice — dramatic work: the lie acquiring permanence in objects — workshopped: no`

`10 — "had apparently been taking notes without his own permission" (l.11) — mechanism: self-alienation deadpan — source: character (voice card: "delayed recognition of his own desire") — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the notes are the four accurate square inches) — dramatic work: names involuntary attention without naming feeling — workshopped: no`

`11 — "nobody had thought he would require supervision" (l.13) — mechanism: bureaucratic self-indictment — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps culpability sharp; he, not circumstance, breached the terms — workshopped: no`

`12 — "the specific relief of a problem becoming a package" (l.13) — mechanism: logistics-as-psychology — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: concealment rendered as Theo's professional pleasure, which is the chapter's sickness — workshopped: no`

`13 — Odile "as if the building should be grateful" + "arrived at the sink, the table, and him in that order" (l.15) — mechanism: hyperbole + list-position insult — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (she literally runs the building) — dramatic work: the rack-check-first blocking is a reread plant (she is looking for his panel) — workshopped: no`

`14 — "checked it the way a captain checks a manifest" (l.15) — mechanism: elevation simile — source: character (manifest is shipping vocabulary, Theo's trade) — funniness: 1 — partial; mild characterization wearing joke clothes, and the straightened-centimeter detail beside it already does the work — portable: no — dramatic work: covers Odile's real search of the rack — workshopped: no — BLOCKING (funniness 1)`

`15 — "newsprint concealed nothing from a woman who had run a studio for forty years" (l.17) — mechanism: deadpan obviousness — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: deflates the concealment instantly; reread-consistent with Odile knowing — workshopped: no`

`16 — "He had four versions of the sentence ready and none of them survived contact." (l.21) — mechanism: idiom deflation (military "no plan survives contact") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no, narrowly — the borrowed idiom is generic but "four versions ready" is Theo's over-preparation — dramatic work: caught-out beat without dialogue diagnosis — workshopped: no`

`17 — "her errands arrived like posted notices: not negotiable, not personal, occasionally placed with suspicious accuracy" (l.27) — mechanism: institutional simile with buried tell — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: "suspicious accuracy" plants Odile's orchestration without winking; correctly replaced the raw draft's banned weather simile — workshopped: no`

`18 — "like a man delivering it to the police himself" (l.27) — mechanism: self-incrimination absurdity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: culpability stays on Theo even while obeying orders — workshopped: no — but counts against the Ch07 legal-register inheritance (see distribution)`

`19 — alley math + "Tomorrow was the same as tonight, logistically." (l.29) — mechanism: rationalization deadpan, punch-adverb — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the non-decision that is the chapter's hinge, made in his native unit — workshopped: no`

`20 — June "sitting the way people sit when they have announced they are only staying for one coffee and are on their second" (l.31) — mechanism: observational typology — source: character (it is June's announced-exit posture, the very stance he painted) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — the "the way people X" syntax is a portable observational shape, but the content rhymes with the panel's toward-and-away thesis — dramatic work: yes, that rhyme — workshopped: no`

`21 — Mara "waved like he was arriving by sea" (l.33) — mechanism: hyperbolic simile — source: narrator-overlay (sea-arrival is nobody's idiom in this book) — funniness: 1 — portable: YES — this exact ocean-liner-greeting joke exists in dozens of cozy novels unchanged — dramatic work: Mara's hosting scale, already covered by items 22 and 23's material — workshopped: no — BLOCKING (portable + funniness 1); also re-opens the geographic/maritime-scale gag family Ch05 capped`

`22 — booth defense run: "Priya was magnificent." / "It wasn't magnificent, it was a head count." / "The head count worked." (l.33–37) — mechanism: inflation/deflation/reframe — source: character (Mara narrates the room kindly; Priya brisk-precise, both voice-card true) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the booth at Sonia's, defended for six, is the debt accruing) — dramatic work: the cohort holds territory for them — workshopped: no; the triple shape was examined for sitcom rhythm and passes because Priya's line is a correction of fact, not a topper, and the raw draft's actual sitcom button ("It was the way you said it") was cut in integration`

`23 — "lifted a folded jacket from the saved seat with the satisfaction of a maitre d'" (l.37) — mechanism: role-elevation simile — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: YES — a maître d' comparison fits any officious table host in any restaurant in any book — dramatic work: none the saved-seat fact doesn't already do — workshopped: no — BLOCKING (portable + funniness 1)`

`24 — Sonia weighing the envelope: "Tell her the answer is still no but I'm thinking about it" (l.39) — mechanism: contradiction deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: an offstage decades-long Odile–Sonia negotiation; reread bait; world depth in one line — workshopped: no`

`25 — Luis radiator transaction: "Not against the wall. Radiator's behind that panel. Lay it on the seat." + Theo absorbing that it "required nothing further" (l.41–43) — mechanism: hyper-competent minimalism — source: character (Luis material verdict, 1 of his cap of 2) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enormous — the cohort casually co-custodies the secret object, with paint-physics truth — workshopped: no`

`26 — folder "taking up the width of a small guest" / "Somehow it took up more room." (l.43, 49) — mechanism: personification escalation — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the secret occupies a seat at the found-family table, the chapter thesis as an image — workshopped: no; pressed for cuteness and cleared: the figure frames intrusion and cost, not charm (see sweetness check)`

`27 — pickle spear removed, "I remembered." / "You're the only one in this city who has." (l.45–47) — mechanism: care-specificity + self-aimed hyperbole — source: character (Sonia's daughter's table system; June's dryness over loneliness) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: being-known as accruing debt; June's wound flashes under the joke — workshopped: no`

`28 — "I've decided we're keeping Tuesdays." / "The class is on Tuesdays." (l.51–53) — mechanism: literalist deflation — source: character (Ben) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: launches the December plan, the debt's future tense — workshopped: no`

`29 — "I'd have made a slide deck." / "That's why." (l.57–59) — mechanism: self-deprecation + two-word deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the spreadsheet is established Priya/Ben canon) — dramatic work: Ben arc texture; Priya's deflation given action cover (moving fries toward Luis) which keeps it off the sitcom button — workshopped: no`

`30 — "I was thinking paper calendar. Different disease. Same drawer." (l.61) — mechanism: self-taxonomy deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: complies with Ch05's order that Ben self-deprecation find a new shape (artifact taxonomy, not timing apology) — workshopped: no, though the two-fragment zinger syntax was weighed; it is speakable and self-aimed`

`31 — under-table inventory "the way other people checked their phones," incl. "Priya needed the fries close enough to Luis that he could take them without being offered them" (l.63) — mechanism: incongruity catalog — source: character (Theo's catalog tic, varied per voice-card warning) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: every cohort member's need named; care-move comedy doing relationship work — workshopped: no`

`32 — grilled cheese dismantled "inspecting the crust as if it owed her a clean edge" (l.63) — mechanism: personification, debt-register cross-wired into June's craft idiom — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's debt motif surfacing in her register without her knowing his — workshopped: no; correctly replaced the raw draft's banned "with the air of someone" construction`

`33 — "The cherry pie earlier was alleged cherry, but the crust program here is sound." (l.65) — mechanism: register collision (audit-speak on diner food) — source: character ("alleged" and "decent" are June's owned words per voice card) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: precise praise is June's love language, here aimed at Sonia's, i.e., accepting the place — workshopped: no, though "the X program is sound" syntax brushes internet idiom; her ownership of "alleged" carries it`

`34 — "You ranked the pie." / "I rank everything. I just usually don't read out the results." (l.67–69) — mechanism: self-revelation deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June admits the ranking system exists and lets Theo see it — an intimacy increment disguised as a joke — workshopped: no`

`35 — "Junes included. Both of you. That's the whole point of a standing table." (l.71) — mechanism: couple-coinage — source: character (Mara) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the cohort has named the unit, formalizing the debt; the unit is named for June, not Theo, which is quietly right — workshopped: no; minor first-read ambiguity on "Junes" noted, resolved by context`

`36 — "That was when the folder started costing interest." (l.77) — mechanism: extended fiscal metaphor — source: character — funniness: 1 — partial; thesis-gloss in joke clothing, and the chapter card explicitly warns "do not over-explain debt" — portable: no — dramatic work: titles the turn the concrete evidence (Mara planning December for a couple with a written expiration date) already performs — workshopped: no — BLOCKING (funniness 1)`

`37 — "The bin was not honesty. The bin was just a second concealment with better hygiene." (l.77) — mechanism: deflating redescription — source: character (hygiene is the vocabulary of a man who just handled the trash) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the moral turn; the keep-decision's actual logic; sharpens culpability rather than softening it — workshopped: no, examined for epigram syntax: Theo generates it, in scene, from objects present`

`38 — "Mine lives in public with your name on it. Spelled right, which I want noted. So between us we have one painting on display and one in witness protection." (l.89) — mechanism: register collision (legal) + callback (Ch07 surname verification) — source: character (June's care move per voice card: honest warning dressed as joke) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — the display/hidden symmetry is this book's exact configuration — dramatic work: the chapter's best item; a probe that offers him a door — workshopped: no`

`39 — "Huh," June said. She ate a fry. (l.97) — mechanism: anticlimax minimalism — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June banks his partial honesty without pouncing; the raw draft's caption ("That's more than I expected to get") was rightly cut — workshopped: no`

`40 — Luis: "People come back to warm rooms." + "Mara declared the matter settled by the only authority she recognized" (l.99) — mechanism: literal-material wisdom + marital deference comedy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — pressed hard as aphorism risk (Luis's card bans sentimental marriage wisdom): cleared because his own radiator line earlier in the scene keeps "warm" literal HVAC fact, and he is ruling on a practical December-attendance question — dramatic work: settles the plan; carries the book's thesis without winking — workshopped: no`

`41 — Ben at the door: "We can stay later next week. I'm practicing." (l.101) — mechanism: rehearsed spontaneity — source: character (near-verbatim to his voice-card line; in-spec) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ben micro-arc beat — workshopped: no`

`42 — "whether alleged cherry could be litigated" (l.101) — mechanism: running-gag escalation — source: character-group — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's coinage entering the cohort's mouth makes the adoption audible — workshopped: no — counts in the legal-register tally (see distribution)`

`43 — "it was somehow the most expensive part of the night" (l.101) — mechanism: cost inversion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: comic syntax carrying grief content; the ordinary wave priced highest is the debt motif paying, not joking — workshopped: no`

`44 — "checked the lock the second time that the second time always demanded" (l.105) — mechanism: compulsion recursion — source: character (lock-checking is his card's stress tell) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: guilt as elevated baseline — workshopped: no`

`45 — "everything in the building either labeled or about to be" (l.105) — mechanism: totalizing characterization — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: load-in for the blank-label payoff — workshopped: no`

`46 — pencil pulled from the label slot and put back; "drawers were his own system and his own system was searchable"; "one anonymous rectangle in a row of anonymous rectangles" (l.113) — mechanism: situational irony (the archivist must hide a thing from his own competence) + repetition deadpan — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the irreversible change staged in pure procedure; the chapter's best non-verbal beat — workshopped: no`

`47 — closing checklist "which tonight had one extra item on it that would never appear on any list he wrote. Side door locked. Alarm set. One panel, unlabeled, facing the wall, not destroyed." (l.115) — mechanism: list-with-payload — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the keep-decision formalized in his native genre — workshopped: no`

`48 — "He set the alarm and went home owing everyone." (l.117) — mechanism: zeugma-compression of the fiscal motif — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: total; the title cashed in seven words with no gloss — workshopped: no — pressed per chapter risk ("if it reads comic"): it is deadpan-shaped but lands as weight, not laugh; it does not soften — the comedy syntax is what keeps it from being an emotional weather report`

**Raw-vs-final deltas (cut comic material, assessed):** Ben's "I wasn't going to discuss the spreadsheet. I was going to allude to it with dignity" (raw l.65) was replaced in integration by item 30. Correct cut: "allude to it with dignity" was the chapter's most composed-for-quotation line — punchline syntax no nervous planner generates mid-diner — and its replacement is more Ben. Also cut: Mara's "informing you rather than consulting you, because consulting goes badly with this group" (raw l.57, sitcom speech), Mara's "It was the way you said it" topper (raw l.43), Theo's "That's the distribution, yes" (raw l.93), and June's "That's more than I expected to get" (raw l.99). All five cuts moved the chapter away from sitcom buttons and captioning; none over-cut.

**Distribution checks (work shown):**
- **Density:** ~45 comic items in 2,666 words, the densest chapter since 04 — in register for a comic-register chapter; the back third correctly thins as the stockroom sequence turns the same mechanisms grave.
- **Mechanism variety:** deflation ×5, deadpan/understatement ×9, personification ×4, register collision (legal/fiscal/bureaucratic) ×9, simile/hyperbole ×5, callback/running-gag ×4, list/checklist ×2, minimalism/anticlimax ×2, irony ×2. No single mechanism reaches a third of the inventory; not MONOTONOUS by count. **However: Ch07's Comedy Doctor marked the legal-clerical register "spent as chapter spine, not inherited by Ch08," and Ch08 narration re-runs it** — "become evidence" (l.13), "noted, filed, and declined to examine" (l.27, also a gate three-part-cadence hit), "delivering it to the police himself" (l.27), plus dialogue instances "witness protection" (l.89) and "litigated" (l.101) and the figures "signed a lease" (l.9) / "overruled" (l.75). Six-plus instances is inheritance at roughly two-thirds of Ch07's density. The fiscal register (~8 instances: transaction, cost nothing, costing interest, the math ×2, expensive, known quantity, owing everyone) is separately licensed — it is the chapter's titled spine — but stacked on the legal residue it pushes "Theo narrates through institutional metaphor" toward becoming the book's default. Revision order below.
- **Sweetness calibration (chapter-specific press):** the comedy was checked for softening Theo's culpability and cute-ifying the panel. Culpability survives — the jokes indict him at every station ("nobody had thought he would require supervision," "delivering it to the police himself," "a second concealment with better hygiene," "owing everyone"), and the Odile rescue is denied absolution by "noted, filed, and declined to examine" (he chooses not to look at what her errand means). The panel is never cute: items 6, 26 frame insult, intrusion, and cost; the closest approach is "as if it had been invited too" (l.77), which survives because the sentence's freight is indictment ("an expiration date in writing"). Personification of the secret object now stands at four instances (insulted panel, small guest, more room, invited too) — at cap; no fifth. NOT OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe calibration:** nothing misjudges the target reader (O'Leary warmth, Henry-at-60%, Morisaki quiet); "arriving by sea" and "maître d'" are stale, not embarrassing. PASS.
- **Tracker checks:** Luis material verdicts 2/2 — exactly at his per-appearance cap, no headroom. Ben self-deprecation: new shape achieved per Ch05 order, but three instances this chapter (slide deck, disease/drawer, practicing) — log as at-cap. Mara-cites-Luis: no third translation instance; she asks him to rule and he answers himself, which is the arc direction — clear. Straightening/squaring: Odile's centimeter (functional reread plant) and June's napkin pleat (voice-card stress tell carrying the overruled-hesitation beat) — both functional, Ch07's no-decorative-instance order honored. "Oh." reservation untouched ("Huh" is not it). Scarf gag instance varied ("third week of unreturned service"). New tracker entries needed: "alleged cherry" is now a cohort-owned gag (2 instances + adoption; cap at one future callback); the secret-object personification family at 4.

Chapter verdict: **CLEAR** — majority funniness-2 by a wide margin (42 of 48), overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced (only two narrator-overlay items, both blocked), mechanisms varied, and the comedy is doing the chapter's dramatic work: the cohort's table systems price the lie, and Theo's logistics idiom convicts him. Strongest item: #38 — "So between us we have one painting on display and one in witness protection." Weakest surviving item: #16 — "none of them survived contact," which passes only on the strength of "four versions of the sentence ready."

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Item 3 (workshopped):** "Trash kept secrets better than anything labeled." Aphorism syntax no one is generating in-scene. Cut the sentence; "That was the idea." already lands the beat, and the three-week-unclaimed bristle brushes in the same paragraph prove the camouflage logic concretely. If a bridge is needed, state it procedurally in Theo's idiom (nothing in a trash bag gets a label slot), not as an epigram.

2. **Item 4 (portable, funniness 1):** "the drain up here clogged if you looked at it wrong." Stock idiom; any building in any book. Replace with this studio's specific plumbing fact or delete the clause entirely — Odile's SOLIDS GO IN THE BIN card already blocks the sink route and is funnier doing it.

3. **Item 14 (funniness 1):** "checked it the way a captain checks a manifest." Half-joke doing characterization the adjacent detail already does. Cut the simile; keep "straightened one panel a centimeter," which is both the comedy and the reread plant. If shipping vocabulary is wanted, it belongs in Theo's own actions, not draped on Odile.

4. **Item 21 (portable, funniness 1, narrator-overlay):** "waved like he was arriving by sea." Interchangeable cozy-novel wit and a re-opening of the maritime/geographic-scale gag family Ch05 capped. Replace with material from this scene's inventory — Mara has just defended a booth and is holding a folded jacket hostage on a saved seat; let her wave be about territory won (the wave of a woman with a verdict to deliver), or cut the simile and let "We defended the booth" carry the entrance.

5. **Item 23 (portable, funniness 1, narrator-overlay):** "with the satisfaction of a maitre d'." Portable restaurant wit. Cut the prepositional phrase; the saved seat itself, "inside, next to June," is the joke and the debt. If Mara needs a flourish, source it from her card (she brought two of something, she presents the seat as a settled fact).

6. **Item 36 (funniness 1, card-flagged risk):** "That was when the folder started costing interest." Thesis-gloss; the chapter card orders "do not over-explain debt," and the paragraph's concrete evidence (December Tuesdays planned for a couple with an expiration date in writing) plus item 37 already perform the turn. Cut the sentence, or roughen it into plain Theo math without the title-tie-in shape. The fiscal register must be left to pay at l.101 and l.117, where it is earned.

7. **Verdict-level (Ch07 register inheritance):** thin the legal-clerical figures in Theo's narration to at most one. Keep June's two dialogue instances (item 38's "witness protection," which is the chapter's best joke, and item 42's "litigated," which is the cohort adopting her idiom). In narration, keep either "delivering it to the police himself" or "become evidence" (l.13) — not both — and replace "noted, filed, and declined to examine" (l.27) with a non-clerical figure or plain statement; it is simultaneously a register-inheritance hit and the gate's three-part-cadence hit. Log the surviving count in `output/tics.md` so Ch09–10 inherit a closed register, not an open one.

8. **Tracker updates (log with the commit, no prose change):** add rows for "alleged cherry" as cohort gag (cap: one future callback, then retire); secret-object personification family at 4 (capped); Ben self-deprecation new-shape used ×3 (at cap); Luis verdicts 2/2 (no headroom this appearance); fiscal-ledger register spent as Ch08 spine — same rule Ch07's legal register received: not inherited by Ch09.
