The greps confirm the contraction sweep is clean (the only full form left in dialogue is Ben's "Rent math is not a proposal," which is quoted written text and his card's verbatim example line) and the hallway/road figures are gone from the closing paragraph. All evidence is in hand; here is the completed audit.

---

# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 06 ("Sightlines") — Round 3

Target: `output/chapters/chapter_06.md` | Prior audits: `output/critiques/claude/chapter_06.positive_prose_round2.md`, `output/critiques/claude/chapter_06.positive_prose.md` | Comparison base: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_06.round_01.md` | Standard: `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` §2/§6/§8, `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`, `output/style_and_voice.md` global rules + voice cards | Mechanical reference: `output/critiques/codex/mechanical/quality_gate_report.md` (chapter 06: 0 open findings, WATCH only).

**Scope note.** This is a verification pass against the six consolidated orders of round 2, followed by a full re-run of the four sections on the current integrated text. Per process, issues repaired and verified in rounds 1–2 are not re-litigated unless the repaired text still fails; where a repaired passage was re-pressed below, that is stated. One mechanical observation: the gate report lists `legacy-uncontracted-casual-dialogue` at chapter 06 line 43 with 2 occurrences; the current text contains exactly one full form in dialogue ("Rent math is not a proposal," line 43 — quoted written text from the SUFFOLK note, and verbatim from Ben's voice-card example lines, so licensed either way). The report appears to predate the order-5 sweep and should be regenerated.

---

## Round-2 order verification

1. **(Blocking) Overlap beat: cut the narrated stop, give Theo's half-built answer its first words, let June interrupt visible behavior; retain the route-card sentence.** — **Executed.** Theo now speaks the cover story aloud: `"The opening," Theo said. "We met at the opening, and then the class made it easy to--"` and June's `"I can answer that," June said. "We don't live together."` cuts him off mid-clause. "He stopped because the question had not been addressed to him alone." is gone; no narrated reason replaces it. The "no lease, no details, no performance" triple is gone — the cover-story content is quotable speech, in Theo's practical register, and the lie is performed rather than summarized. "The route card came back against Theo's shirt." survives (line 59). June's border-patrol now costs her an actual interruption of a man audibly mid-alibi; this is the beat the last two rounds were ordering. Pressed further in Section 2 below.
2. **(Blocking) Ruth's forms line: assembly, not finished epigram; name the actual paper; keep "I saw enough to be worried. Not enough to be right." as the one sharp line.** — **Executed in effect; letter partially.** New line: `"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."` The order's literal mechanism (a sentence that breaks off or restarts) was not used — all four sentences are complete. But the failure being repaired was architecture: a delivered verdict ("point back to your desk") wearing a balanced two-beat concession in the same music as her sanctioned sharp line. That architecture is gone. She now itemizes the documents field by field and never states the conclusion — "back to your desk" is genuinely unspoken, which works because Theo's "Yes. I hear it." forty lines earlier already established that he completes her enumerations himself. "Maybe there's another page." is a single flat hedge, not a two-beat cadence, and does not rhyme with "I saw enough to be worried. Not enough to be right.", which remains the scene's only editorial-sharp line (within her card's cap of one). Composure itself is card-default for Ruth ("calm, exact"; full forms "for careful distinction" — the uncontracted rhythm here is licensed). Pressed again in Section 3; it survives.
3. **Cut "Sam did the thing Theo understood only after it was already in motion."; open on Sam's line.** — **Executed.** The coffee break now opens: `They broke for coffee after that. "June," Sam said. "Walk with me."` The comprehension-delay tease is gone and no replacement belatedness gloss was added.
4. **Cut the "same flat kindness" caption; the paused cup carries it.** — **Executed.** The sentence is gone. The dispersal now reads: `Ruth said good night to everyone equally. Sam's cup paused halfway and then finished the salute.` — the physical beat ordered as the carrier is present and carries it. "Equally" is an observable property of the good-nights, not an explanation of them.
5. **Contract Mara's "will not" to "won't"; sweep her lines.** — **Executed.** Line 25: "and Luis won't let me blame the lights." Sweep verified by pattern search: Mara's remaining lines (13, 75, 81, 89) contain no full forms in casual register; the chapter's sole remaining uncontracted dialogue is Ben's quoted written rule, noted in the scope note.
6. **Replace the route/hallway/road stack with one literal disqualifier per tested name.** — **Executed.** Line 165 now disqualifies each name on facts: Mara "would ask him first"; Sam "had reached June through the class and would have to come back through the same door" (the door is literal — the class meets in the building Theo unlocks, established at line 105); "The class email was his address."; "Sonia's was a diner, not a channel" ("channel" is the literal currency minted at line 119); Odile — "Any message to Odile would pass through Theo before it became official." The hallway figure is gone entirely; even the permitted single middle-of-the-road figure for Odile was replaced with the literal routing fact. Pressed in Section 4; it survives.

Six of six executed. The continuity flag from round 2 (Ruth's sourceless coffee cup on the two-block walk) was also resolved in passing: the cup is gone, replaced by `Ruth kept both hands around the strap of her tote. She had pulled the buckle to the center and kept it there.` — a stilling behavior her card owns (squares edges under stress).

---

## 1. Paragraphs portable to another novel

No findings. Checked every paragraph against the smallness test, with particular pressure on gallery-walk connective tissue, since transitions are where round 1's portability lived. The remaining transitional sentences — "Mara made the rounds." (line 25), "They broke for coffee after that." (line 95), "The group bunched up at the glass." (line 87) — are short functional moves, each spent within a sentence on owned material (the wall-assignment pretext, Sam's not-whispered "Two blocks. Say it or let it go.", the bulletin-board sublet that fires at Ben). None heads a paragraph that could travel.

Strongest counter-candidate: `The cohort dissolved at the corner as Mara issued reminders about the weekend cold and Priya steered Ben toward the better entrance over his objections.` — "the cohort dissolved" is still group-scene stock at the phrase level, and this was the round-2 runner-up. It passes for the same reason it passed then, now strengthened: the sentence immediately spends three owned specifics, and the paragraph it opens now ends on the repaired cup-pause beat (order 4), so the paragraph as a unit is welded to this book's Ruth-Sam-Theo triangle and could not be lifted. The opening paragraph (nine steps, handrail left side only, the radiator scheduling which corner overheats first) was re-checked and remains the chapter's anti-portability anchor; every datum is cashed later (the slope at Vestibule, the corner inventory at line 135).

## 2. Pressure summarized rather than inhabited

No findings. The two passages this round was directed to press hardest:

The repaired overlap beat (lines 51–59): the pressure is now inside the exchange. Theo's alibi is underway in his own mouth — "We met at the opening, and then the class made it easy to--" — when June takes it from him, and the only narration spent on the aftermath is physical ("Ben blinked. The open table-look left his face before he recovered." / "The route card came back against Theo's shirt."). No sentence files the feeling, names the ease, or rates the danger; the cost lands as an interrupted sentence and a card against a shirt. I weighed "The open table-look left his face before he recovered." as a possible narrator-certification: it passes because the "open table-look" was established as a visible face two sentences earlier ("the open face of a man asking the experienced table") and its departure and return are things Theo can watch — observation, not gloss.

Strongest counter-candidate overall: `*Boss* had passed because every public fact supported it. Nobody checked what was not listed.` (line 119) — the closest the chapter comes to a gnomic summary sentence. It survives because both sentences are factual claims inside Theo's documented-channels inventory (contact sheet, packet, names on it), the register the prior rounds certified as this chapter's standard for inhabited pressure, and the paragraph immediately lands on objects ("He checked the pocket with the route card. The gallery keys were in the other one. Both were his pockets."). The corner inventory (line 135) and the bodega infinitive run (line 141) were re-checked and stand as previously ruled.

## 3. Polished, therapeutic, or aphoristic dialogue

No findings. The scene under the most pressure — Ruth's two-block walk — now holds its budget: one sharp line ("I saw enough to be worried. Not enough to be right."), one kept imperative ("Don't solve it on this block."), a functional exit ("It should be one she can use." / "She went inside."), and the rebuilt forms line.

Strongest counter-candidate: the rebuilt forms line itself — `"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."` Pressed hard, because three parallel declaratives risk trading epigram polish for list polish. It survives on three grounds: (a) the enumeration is evidence, not music — each clause names a document field she actually read, which is how a copyeditor accuses without accusing; (b) the conclusion is withheld, which is her card's stress response verbatim ("asks clean questions, withholds her own conclusion"); (c) it shares no cadence with her sharp line — "Maybe there's another page." is one flat hedge, not a balanced concession pair. Also weighed: Mara's "I checked three forecasts, which Luis says is two forecasts past useful" — comic, but it is over-hosting plus her card's Luis-translation tic, not a workshop line, and her other chapter lines are practical; the card's anti-punchline guidance holds at this density. June's "Coffee. Black. Separate." and Theo's "Two. Ask her first." keep the plain-speech floor at the chapter's hinge. Carried forward for the tics tracker, unchanged from round 2: Ben's "Oh." (line 57) is inside a speech paragraph and legal, but the guide reserves the earned standalone "Oh." for the confession — the tracker should hold the reservation.

## 4. Figurative language where literal precision would win

No findings. The rebuilt closing names paragraph (line 165) was pressed name by name: every disqualifier is now a checkable fact, and the one residual figure-adjacent phrase — Sam "would have to come back through the same door" — resolves to a literal door (the gallery building Theo unlocks, line 105). "Sonia's was a diner, not a channel" passes because "channel" was defined literally at line 119 before being spent here.

Strongest counter-candidate: `Halfway down, his thumb found the empty place on his shirt where the route card had been.` — the ending beat, re-pressed because closing images are where this chapter twice installed theme-as-figure. It survives because every term is literal: the card is in Ben's pocket (witnessed handoff, line 151), the pocket is empty, the thumb gesture repeats the corner beat at line 135 ("the route card under his thumb. The back was blank.") with the object now absent. Also re-weighed and standing as previously ruled: "Her pace was quicker than the route card would have budgeted for" (factual, planning register), "Theo's evening no longer had a card in it" (states a just-witnessed fact), "The gold one isn't gold. It's confident, though" (June's licensed painter-speak, technically true about gilt), and "the F train's evening service rearranged itself in real time" (literal — the service changes are happening on the phone in his hand).

---

## Chapter verdict: INHABITED

No findings; no orders. All six round-2 orders are verified executed — order 2 in effect rather than letter, with the judgment recorded above. The round-2 continuity flag (Ruth's sourceless cup) is confirmed resolved. Two non-prose notes travel with this verdict: regenerate the mechanical gate report (its line-43 uncontracted-dialogue count predates the order-5 sweep), and keep the "Oh." reservation on the tics tracker so chapter 06 does not silently spend the confession's word. This chapter is closed for Positive Prose purposes; the next sampled audit under this template's every-3rd-chapter trigger falls on chapter 09.
