# Chapter 22 Comedy Doctor — Round 2 (post-repair verification)

Scope: full current chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_22.md`), all three scenes, re-swept cold — not a diff review. Register calibration unchanged: reading guide §2 — warm, precise, lightly comic; observational and character-true; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; Morisaki/*Before the Coffee Gets Cold* quiet as floor. Target reader: the O'Leary/Henry-calibrated reader who wants comedy generated by these two people's specific damage, not narrator wit. Chapter-card constraints applied: private romantic climax, "release, earned and unspectacular," "no public-grand-gesture energy," plainness over eloquence. Dialogue Doctor round 2 (CLEAN) consulted; its conduct-grade ceiling (three grades: L67, L93, L147) is honored — nothing in this audit adds a fourth. Line numbers cite the current file.

## ROUND-1 REPAIR VERIFICATION

ORDER 1 (L5 "except for all the times it had not" — portable, workshopped): EXECUTED. Current sentence ends "...where it had been since Friday night." The checking confession now happens on camera at L7 ("She turned it over again."), which is what the order predicted. New-defect test on the surviving paragraph: the follow-on "The two bubbles sat there the way they had sat there for a day and a half" (L7) was tested as a possible new smile-shaped tautology and excluded as non-comic — the repetition enacts the standoff's stasis, there is no incongruity engine, and it resolves into the drafting sequence. Tag family reduced by one, as ordered.

ORDER 2 (L13 phone-in-freezer — portable prop): EXECUTED. Current text: "made her want to tuck the phone under the Tasker receipt and close the notebook, which was not a plan." The impulse is re-sourced into the paragraph's own inventory (the Tasker receipt and notebook are already on the table at L5), stays absurd-concrete rather than softened to description, and indicts itself: she wants to file the unanswerable text under the job she is about to decline. The retained "which was not a plan" tag was tested against the order's explicit condition (tag stays only if the new image earns it): earned — the joke now lives in the image and the tag deflates it instead of creating it. Family count verified at 5, at ceiling (see distribution); the repairs added no new tags anywhere. Side-benefit found in the sweep: L119 ("placing things on top of other things all morning") now indexes this beat, upgrading the mid-reveal recognition into a tracked pattern — inventoried below as item 16.

ORDER 3 (L163 "the morning had committed to December" — narrator-overlay, pun on the commitment beat): EXECUTED. Current text: "Outside, the cold came up through the sidewalk". Plain physical fact; the "committed" pun is gone; the item exits the inventory entirely rather than being rewritten into new wit — the correct outcome. One deviation from the order's letter, noted and accepted: the order suggested June's optical register (light, breath); the repair delivered tactile. Accepted because the order's targets — the overlay figure and the pun — are dead, a tactile fact underlines nothing, and the temperature comedy stays banked for the L183 sweater callback exactly as the order directed. Displaced-wit check on the rest of the sentence: "which was its own kind of question standing there with them" pre-existed the repair (DD round 2 quotes it) and is excluded as non-comic below.

ORDER 4 (theater laugh-caption — narrator-overlay, funniness 0): EXECUTED. Current text: "He winced. June laughed, first time all morning." (L179–181). Nothing replaced the cut, as ordered; the wince carries the timing. New-defect test: "first time all morning" is a frequency fact, not a caption — it counts the laugh, it does not describe its quality or meaning. The narrator stands clear of the chapter's best-calibrated beat.

Also swept: material introduced by the Dialogue Doctor round-1 repairs (L69, L105–109, L153–155). L69 ("I was being scared and slow") and L105 ("It's a portrait, Theo.") attempt no comedy. The jar exchange at L153–155 does, and is inventoried as item 21.

## Items considered and excluded as non-comic (tension or texture, not attempted comedy)

- "The two bubbles sat there the way they had sat there for a day and a half." (L7) — tautology-as-stasis; the repetition performs the standoff, no comic turn; the joke that used to sit on this beat was Order 1's cut, correctly not relocated here.
- "Week what?" / "Three." / "Three." (L51–55) — arithmetic dread.
- "the circles matched badly enough to bother her" (L41) — fussiness as dread displacement; arms item 16, not a joke itself.
- "Not the part I didn't see." (L123) — consent precision under pressure.
- "a square with my name on it" (L101) — pathos.
- "Oh," (L117) — the §6-sanctioned once-at-the-confession instance, licensed by the chapter card, spent correctly.
- "neither of them had anywhere to be, which was its own kind of question standing there with them" (L163) — tested twice, as a comic candidate and as a tag-family member: excluded on both. No incongruity engine — it states the scene's open tension; and it is the nearest surviving thing to a narrator figure post-repair, standing because it renders June's read of unstructured time (DD concurs) rather than underlining an emotion. Any Ch22 revision touch should not build on it.

INVENTORY:
1 — "washed it at seven for no defensible reason ... she had already made one practical object do too much work this week" (L3) — mechanism: deadpan self-audit, legalistic register on a domestic object — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the blue dish is the Ch18-planted Mara tether; the tote/Tuesday system is this book's) — dramatic work: nerves through object; arms the closing dish-by-door image — workshopped: no
2 — "made her want to tuck the phone under the Tasker receipt and close the notebook, which was not a plan" (L13) — mechanism: literalized avoidance impulse (filing the problem as paperwork) + deflecting tag — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Tasker receipt, notebook, her filing system; replaced the portable freezer per Order 2) — dramatic work: pressure spike before drafting; plants the L119 placing-things payoff — workshopped: no
3 — "Her first answer sounded like a dentist's office. The second sounded meaner than she felt. A paragraph ... turned, halfway through, into her managing his feelings about her feelings" (L15) — mechanism: register collision (clinical politeness vs. stakes) escalating through three failed drafts — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the triage — too cold, too mean, too managing — maps her exact wound and derives "Sunday. 9. Just coffee.") — dramatic work: produces the chapter's terms; resolves into action ("held her thumb down until it disappeared") — workshopped: no
4 — "She sent it before the hour could argue with her" (L21) — mechanism: personified second-guessing, compressed — source: character (her exit-before-retreat pattern turned on her own hesitation) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (borderline; the argument she is outrunning is the specific 8:04-proposing-9 awkwardness on the page) — dramatic work: decision under self-suspicion in one clause — workshopped: no
5 — "put on the good sweater, telling herself it was the warm one. Both things could be true. She let them be." (L23) — mechanism: self-aware rationalization, deadpan self-permission — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no as a pair with item 28's callback — dramatic work: desire through object without confession — workshopped: no
6 — "considering the usefulness of walking to the corner and back once" (L27) — mechanism: deadpan audit register on a stalling impulse, quantified ("once") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("usefulness" is this book's loaded term — she will order "Don't be useful right now" at L83; the word is doing ironic advance work) — dramatic work: entry pressure; primes the usefulness theme the booth scene detonates — workshopped: no (round-1 omission, swept in this round)
7 — "Theo stood halfway when he saw her and sat back down, which she appreciated, because there was nothing to do at the top of that gesture and they both knew it" (L29) — mechanism: observational deflation of a social gesture — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the gesture is empty precisely because their category is suspended mid-negotiation) — dramatic work: states the relationship's undefined status physically — workshopped: no
8 — ""They do the cinnamon thing on Sundays," Theo said, and stopped. "You didn't come for that." / "I did not."" (L37–39) — mechanism: host-reflex misfire caught mid-line + full-form deadpan — source: character (his card: practical offer before emotional statement; her card: full forms only for emphasis) — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the cinnamon thing" is Sonia's-Sundays texture; still the book's single instance, grep-verified this round) — dramatic work: shows the usefulness reflex he is about to renounce; entry-pressure release without softening — workshopped: no
9 — "She waited for the list, schedules and keys and how he would restructure the known world so this could never happen again. He reached for his cup instead." (L63) — mechanism: hyperbolic anticipation + misdirect — source: character (schedules/keys are his card's diction) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's best structural joke — sets up the refused list and lets his restraint land as change — workshopped: no
10 — "I wrote six things. I'm not going to read them." (L65) — mechanism: specificity + refused performance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the renounced list is his tic renounced) — dramatic work: repair dramatized as not managing her — workshopped: no
11 — "slept in ninety-minute installments, and he had not shaved with total success" (L71) — mechanism: deadpan specificity + litotes — source: character (June's optical catalog) — funniness: 2 — portable: no as a unit (the catalog ends on the white paint at his thumbnail, which becomes the portrait plot) — dramatic work: her attention is the heat channel; plants the stockroom reveal — workshopped: no
12 — ""Don't be useful right now," June said. "You were about to offer me crates." / "Freight elevator," he admitted." (L83–85) — mechanism: anticipatory unmasking + escalation-by-confession (she guesses crates; the truth is bigger) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (crates and the freight elevator are his art-logistics identity — the exact instrument of the harm — almost recurring at the worst moment) — dramatic work: the wound performed live and declined; "admitted" costs him — workshopped: no
13 — "That's the right amount." (L93) — mechanism: deadpan quantification of feeling — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (grades his claim-size against the staying-isn't-for-you term she just set) — dramatic work: enforces the earned-stay terms; second conduct-grade, within DD ceiling — workshopped: no
14 — "The waitress refilled them both without asking, which was the correct level of involvement." (L95) — mechanism: deadpan grading — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("involvement" is the scene's negotiated subject; the waitress accidentally models the terms June wants from Theo) — dramatic work: thematic echo disguised as service note — workshopped: no (tag-family member; counted below)
15 — "I'd been walking past it for a month like it was going to file a complaint." (L97) — mechanism: personification in bureaucratic register + self-deprecation — source: character (complaint-filing is the admin world he lives in) — funniness: 2 — portable: no in his mouth about that canvas — dramatic work: confesses avoidance and proceeds straight to "I read it wrong" without deflecting (DD concurs) — workshopped: no
16 — "she'd been placing things on top of other things all morning and that it hadn't helped once" (L119) — mechanism: pattern-recognition deflation, self-aimed — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (indexes the cup on the coffee ring at L41, the phone under the receipt at L13, the dish in the tote at L3 — all on the page) — dramatic work: converts her object-filing tic into named self-knowledge at the reveal, right before she sets the portrait terms; strengthened by Order 2's repair, which made the phone-tuck one of the placings — workshopped: no (new inventory this round)
17 — "Theo's arm made it about two inches before June put the sugar caddy on the slip." (L137) — mechanism: physical preemption, timing; repetition-with-variation (the placing tic continued knowingly after L119 named it — she does it anyway, now as enforcement) — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (check standoffs travel; this one pays into the three-sugars plant and her terms enforcement) — dramatic work: "just coffee" enforced bodily — workshopped: no
18 — ""Just coffee means I buy the coffee." / "I can accept that."" (L139–141) — mechanism: term-literalism — her own text enforced as payment law — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (callback to the L19 text) — dramatic work: keeps the repair asymmetry legible; he practices receiving — workshopped: no
19 — ""Look at you." / "I'm trying not to ruin it." / "Good. Keep doing the quiet version."" (L143–147) — mechanism: tease + deadpan imperative grading conduct — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the quiet version" has the concrete crates/six-things referent, not the book's own register) — dramatic work: sets the terms of how he gets to love her; third and final conduct-grade at the DD ceiling — workshopped: no
20 — "put it in her notebook against the page with Dana's wall on it, where later it would confuse her. That was fine. Her life had earned one confusing receipt." (L149) — mechanism: anticipated-future deadpan + self-permission — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the receipt filed against Dana's wall is the two lives entering one notebook — the earned-stay thesis as object) — dramatic work: integration without a speech — workshopped: no ("earned one confusing receipt" is composed but stays object-bound and self-directed; re-checked, holds)
21 — ""Old habit. I can take it away." / "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays."" (L153–155) — mechanism: pragmatic alibi for accepting care (repetition-with-variation of the sweater move, item 5) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (jar, stain, umber are the class-world inventory; the alibi shape is hers) — dramatic work: she accepts his care move without granting absolution; enacts the deciding-part terms — workshopped: no (introduced by the DD round-1 repair; swept here for comedy defects, none found)
22 — ""It'll be terrible." / "It won't, though," she said, aggrieved. "That's the other annoying thing about you."" (L157–159) — mechanism: compliment-as-grievance — source: character (her card's honest-warning-dressed-as-joke, inverted into praise) — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the other" indexes the unnamed first annoying thing — the wanting she confessed at L77) — dramatic work: delivers her rare devastating praise while keeping her dignity; closes the booth warm without going soft — workshopped: no
23 — "my plan was nothing. My whole plan was to do nothing and let it be your call." (L165) — mechanism: repetition, escalating commitment to passivity — source: character (his recursive over-explaining under shame) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: consent posture stated as logistics — workshopped: no
24 — ""I know," June said. "You put it in the second text."" (L167) — mechanism: deflation-by-citation — his confession graded against his own paperwork — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the second bubble is the chapter's opening wound, L11–13) — dramatic work: closes the loop on the exit-installed text without absolving it; keeps the Ch21 hedge named, not cured; warmth floor holds — the deflation is followed by her memorizing catalog and the kiss — workshopped: no (new inventory this round; DD cleared it for diagnosis — factual citation, not rating his phrasing)
25 — "black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation" (L169) — mechanism: incongruity via audit register (efficiency review of a man) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("his entire operation" is the usefulness identity the book built; the order memorized since week one is her secret care move) — dramatic work: desire through specificity (§3 heat channel); loads the kiss — workshopped: no (the polish is the joke's point: June audits; re-checked, holds)
26 — "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (L171) — mechanism: epistemic chiasmus — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pays off items 17 and 25 inside the kiss) — dramatic work: renders the kiss as accumulated attention, closed-door heat done right — workshopped: no
27 — ""It does," he said. "I stocked it in October." He winced." (L179–181) — mechanism: self-incriminating reassurance — his truthful answer accidentally re-confesses the courtship-by-provisioning; the wince is him hearing it — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's thesis in six words — the asymmetry wound still live inside the warm close, made survivable instead of erased; now triggers the un-captioned laugh (Order 4), and the timing is entirely the wince's — workshopped: no
28 — "the cold working through the good sweater, which was, as suspected, not the warm one" (L183) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation callback ("as suspected") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pair with item 5) — dramatic work: retro-confirms she dressed for him while letting her keep the alibi — workshopped: no
29 — "`TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn`" (L183) — mechanism: deadpan legalism — the morning's terms compressed to index-card grammar — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the pinboard system and the `FEB = coat` lineage are this book's; the jar and turning terms exist only in this chapter) — dramatic work: renders the terms as object, not summary; ends the chapter on her governance of the portrait — workshopped: no (new inventory this round; round 1 tracked it under the FEB=coat motif but never scored it)

CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR

29 items: 29 at funniness 2, 0 at 1, 0 at 0. Sources: character 25, situation-shared 4 (items 7, 12, 17, 27 lean on scene pressure), narrator-overlay 0 — the overlay hunt that found two instances in round 1 (the December figure, the theater caption) found none this round; both were cut per orders and nothing replaced them with new narration wit. The five items new to the inventory this round are round-1 omissions or repair-introduced material, not new writing defects; each was tested against the blocking criteria and none is partial, portable, or workshopped. Mechanism variety holds: misfire-and-catch, anticipatory unmasking, term-literalism, refused performance, physical preemption, compliment-as-grievance, self-incrimination, deflation-by-citation, epistemic chiasmus, pattern-recognition deflation — no dialogue mechanism repeats untransformed. Strongest item: 12 — ""You were about to offer me crates." / "Freight elevator," he admitted." — the book's central wound almost recurring in real time, caught by her, escalated by his honesty. Weakest surviving item: 4 — "She sent it before the hour could argue with her" — still the closest survivor to overlay; it holds because the personified hour is her own hesitation with a deadline, compressed to one clause, and cutting it would cost the decision beat its self-suspicion.

Distribution findings. Density: right for the card's "release, earned and unspectacular," and correctly shaped — the confession stretch (L45–61) still carries zero jokes; item 9 remains the lone comic beat inside the accounting and exists to be refused. Sweetness: NOT OVERSWEETENED — the round-1 sweetener (the theater caption) is cut; "I stocked it in October" re-opens the wound inside the warmest beat; item 24 keeps the hedge unabsolved after the kiss. Cringe: none for this reader. The round-1 near-monotony warning on June's deflecting-tag family, re-counted in the current text: "for no defensible reason" (L3), "which was not a plan" (L13), "which was the correct level of involvement" (L95), "where later it would confuse her" (L149), "as suspected" (L183) — 5 comic instances, exactly the post-orders ceiling round 1 projected. The repairs added no new tags (verified: the Order 2 image reuses the pre-existing tag; Orders 1, 3, 4 are pure cuts; items 6, 16, 24, 29 are not tag-family constructions). At ceiling means at ceiling: any further Ch22 revision touch must not add a member, and Ch24 June narration should vary mechanism per the round-1 tracker row.

Tracker checks. "just coffee" gag: still exactly 4 instances (L19, L35, L139, L165), grep-verified; escalated each use; SPENT — round-1 row stands. "Cinnamon thing": still the book's single instance, grep-verified; do not let it become Sonia's-charm. Conduct-grades: exactly 3 (L67, L93, L147), unchanged; DD round 2 confirms; no fourth introduced. `FEB = coat`: L5 and L185 pinboard anchors only; the comedy lives in the new card's terms (item 29), which is the required variation. "Noted" (spent Ch20): absent. Ch21 armed row (tics.md: "Ch22 must deliver `Sunday. 9. Just coffee.` without making the hedge look cured"): satisfied — the reply lands at L19 and the hedge stays named and unresolved (L13, L167). Housekeeping: the round-1 Ch22 tracker rows have not yet been appended to `output/tics.md` (its last rows are Ch21); they still describe the current text and should be appended as written, with one confirmation — the deflecting-tag count of 5 is now verified in final text, not projected.

REVISION ORDERS:

None. All four round-1 orders are executed and verified against the current text, and the full-chapter re-sweep — including the repair-introduced material at L13, L153–155, and L163, and five items round 1 never inventoried — produced no blocking findings: no funniness-0 or funniness-1 items, no portable items, no workshopped items. The chapter is committable on comedy.
