# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 20: No Advice / Keys Here

Register audited: warm, precise, lightly comic; never sitcom, never banter-for-banter (READING_GUIDE §2). Target-reader calibration: O'Leary warmth, Henry at ~60% banter density, Morisaki/Coffee quiet — a reader who wants small routines to carry feeling and is bored by workshopped wit. Chapter-card demands: comedy from June's arithmetic self-defense, Sam's practical help, Ruth's dry restraint, Asha's load-in directness, Nia's professional briskness; Ruth one sharp line max; no inspirational refusal; humor must not soften the Tasker loss. This is a re-audit following round 5 (CLEAR with three orders); prior orders are verified against the current text below, and the full inventory is rebuilt from scratch, not inherited.

PRIOR-ROUND ORDER VERIFICATION:
- Round-5 order 1 (false clock precision): line 57 now reads "a quarter before eleven on Thursday." Arrival is 10:40 (line 25); a short visit ending 10:45 computes. Executed.
- Round-5 order 2 (second Nia contest-frame): line 127 now reads "Okay. Tell me the counter." — flattened to plain briskness; it no longer attempts comedy and is not inventoried. "I win the math" (line 111) stands as the single contest-frame. Executed.
- Round-5 order 3 (FEB = coat continuity): line 93 leaves the Thursday notebook at "FEB = ."; June's "February is a blank line in my notebook" (line 129) is now true when spoken; the fill-in happens in the Friday execution sequence, "She filled the blank in the notebook: FEB = coat" (line 159). Executed, and the relocation improved the timing — the coat answer lands after the no is spent, among the boring parts.

INVENTORY:

1 — "Twenty-six hours, give or take the walk from the sink to the table." (line 3) — mechanism: mock-precision (tolerance stated in seconds-of-walk) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets the deadline clock and June's arithmetic-as-coping in one stroke — workshopped: no. (Interrogated for unit mismatch — a walk is distance, the deadline is hours; parses when "the walk" is read as its duration, which is the joke: the tolerance on her 26 hours is about four seconds. Overlay check: this is June's card-licensed exactness, and the chapter's spine is her running this arithmetic.)

2 — "It was the one object in the apartment that didn't require a decision. Restful to look at." (line 5) — mechanism: deflation (aesthetic pleasure priced in decision-load) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: measures decision fatigue without naming a feeling; plants the blue dish for the Tuesday promise — workshopped: no.

3 — "It was still good. That was the entire problem with the left page." (line 11) — mechanism: paradox/reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: states the dilemma without therapy-speak and keeps the offer genuinely good, which the loss later depends on — workshopped: no.

4 — "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing." (line 15) — mechanism: rueful chiasmus, craft-metaphor self-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names her avoidance pattern; sets up deleting the Nia draft as "the decision instead of the arithmetic" (line 97) — workshopped: no. (The chapter's strongest workshopped counter-candidate: setup-turn syntax. Ruled earned — stepping back from paintings is her literal practice and the guide licenses her sparing visual analogy. Cap note: with the ground-inspection figure at line 101 ("places where wanting had been scumbled over need" — non-comic, checked separately), the chapter carries two polished craft figures. That is the ceiling; a third would have flipped this ruling.)

5 — "Mara wants her dish back before Luis refills it." (line 19) — mechanism: implied escalation (the Valdez care-conveyor pre-empted) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: motivates the visit; pays the Ch18 blue-dish tether as a practical object per the tracker's standing order — workshopped: no.

6 — "door sticks, push don't pull." (line 21) — mechanism: understatement (assent rendered as mechanical instruction) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June admits the cohort to her apartment for the first time in the book, in the only register she can afford; the door's flaw is the whole invitation — workshopped: no. (New to inventory this round; prior rounds excluded it as functional text. Ruled an attempted and landing beat.)

7 — "We're double-parked," Ruth said. "Two minutes." / "Two minutes is right," June said. (lines 27–29) — mechanism: mutual-boundary deadpan — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: both parties want the care bounded; the visit's terms are the chapter thesis in miniature — workshopped: no.

8 — "There's coffee. There hasn't been milk since Sunday." (line 29) — mechanism: hospitality with deficit disclosure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the fridge documents the rupture week without a feeling being named — workshopped: no. (Counter-candidate considered: offer-plus-deficit is a stock dry-host shape; survives on the chapter's day-clock — dish since Tuesday, milk since Sunday, decision due Friday noon — which makes the deficit evidence, not garnish.)

9 — "The box is the errand. The dish is separate." → "Actually, no. Tell Mara I'm bringing the dish myself Tuesday. Tell her I'll sit where she tells me." (line 37) — mechanism: over-categorization as self-defense, deflated by live reversal; capped by pre-emptive surrender to Mara's seating authority — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's control taxonomy fails in the right direction on the page; commits her to cohort re-entry before the job decision is made — workshopped: no.

10 — "She'll like that better than the dish," Sam said. (line 39) — mechanism: warm deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names what the visit was actually for without giving advice — workshopped: no.

11 — Sam tests a corner of the box, then "picked the box up properly this time, knees," then moves the blocking chair six inches (lines 31, 39) — mechanism: physical repetition-with-variation, one-word method note — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Sam's owned care move (making physical room) enacted rather than stated; the card's "practical help" delivered as blocking, not lines — workshopped: no. (Checked against the spent Ch16 chair-count family: chair action, not a count-shaped joke.)

12 — "June watched her read it and watched her decline to read it out loud" (line 41) — mechanism: restraint made visible, dry parallel syntax — source: character (Ruth, through June's eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ruth-watch beat 4 of 4 delivered as care-without-advice — workshopped: no. (Checked against the zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis ban: no speech is characterized; Ruth declines to speak at all, and June reports the declining as action.)

13 — "You can leave that part out," Ruth said. "We came for the dish." (line 47) — mechanism: scope-limiting mercy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: releases June from explaining Tuesday; privacy honored as jurisdiction — workshopped: no.

14 — "We have a car," Ruth said. / "And a hand truck if you need it." (lines 51–53) — mechanism: non-answer as answer; escalation-by-logistics — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter card's engine in two lines — June states she is not asking for an opinion and receives transport and labor instead, valid for either city; opinion withheld, help total — workshopped: no. (This is the chapter's closest approach to sitcom two-hander rhythm — straight line plus topper. Passes because neither line is a joke: both are literal offers, and the topper changes the offer's content rather than repeating its shape.)

15 — "Noted," June said. "Both of you--thank you. For the box." (line 55) — mechanism: scope-limited thanks, mirror of item 13 — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June accepts care while refusing to be caught needing it — her voice-card contradiction on the page — workshopped: no. (Cap registered: items 13 and 15 are a matched scope-limiting pair; no third instance in Ch21–22.)

16 — "the box of catalogs left June's apartment a quarter before eleven on Thursday, pointed at the studio by a route that had nothing to do with her" (line 57) — mechanism: mock-precision clock notation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the visit and gets the Theo-adjacent freight out of the apartment without June touching the studio — workshopped: no. (Round-5 blocking item; arithmetic now correct — see verification above.)

17 — "set it on the shelf where she'd see it Tuesday morning and not be able to invent a reason to forget it" (line 59) — mechanism: pre-empted self-sabotage — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the dish into a commitment device; June knows her own exits and blocks one — workshopped: no.

18 — "Talk fast, I'm holding a door with my whole body." (line 65) — mechanism: hyperbole grounded literal — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: prices Asha's attention and sets the call's economy; June's two asks must fit a closing gate — workshopped: no. (Strongest portability counter-candidate in the chapter — the sentence could live in any warehouse novel. Ruled non-portable in situ: Asha's load-in world is established Ch09/Ch15 inventory and the line is doing scene-constraint work, not decoration.)

19 — "Say the studio clause again." … "Who writes that?" Asha said. "Nia Torres, apparently. I've seen her hang at the co-op. She'll eyeball a run and put a level on it anyway." (lines 69–73) — mechanism: priority-reveal + self-answered question + trade specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: of nine terms, Asha asks for the clause June wanted most — an independent working installer certifies exactly what June is refusing, the chapter's best insurance against the loss going soft; plants the level item 32 varies — workshopped: no. (Watched phrase "go get your clause": absent from the chapter; this earned interrogative version is where it would have gone.)

20 — "Wear the coat inside until February." (line 85) — mechanism: cost restated as apparel policy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the New York path priced honestly inside a rent-and-dates list; plants FEB = coat — workshopped: no. (Watched phrase "coat": this instance is information-bearing Asha speech mid-logistics, not a tag.)

21 — "and Asha hung up before the word was finished." (line 91) — mechanism: timing undercut — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the favor is closed as business; Asha's shift does not pause for June's decision — workshopped: no. (Counter-candidate considered: hang-up-mid-word is a stock beat; motivated here by the shouted name off-phone one line prior, and consistent with item 18's held door.)

22 — "Theo's apology, if it came, would not put heat in the room. That was why she'd written it in numbers." (line 103) — mechanism: literalization (apology audited in heat) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enforces the earned-stay test — the decision is materially hers, not romance-shaped — workshopped: no. (Checked for epigram polish; the follow-sentence roots it in notebook procedure rather than leaving it quotable-clean.)

23 — "Walk me through it, because I ran the math with you three weeks ago and I win the math." (line 111) — mechanism: agonistic deadpan (hiring as a contest she is scoring) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: refuses to accept the no on politeness terms; forces June past the arithmetic to the Vandercook and the keys confession — workshopped: no. (Borderline composed — the math/math repetition is punchline-adjacent — but speakable, on Nia's card, structurally necessary, and now the call's single contest-frame after the round-5 repair.)

24 — "That's a worse offer," Nia said. / "It is," June said. (lines 131–133) — mechanism: blunt verdict + refusal to argue — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's sharpest loss-preserving beat — June concedes the math she ran four times and takes the worse thing anyway — workshopped: no. (Watched phrase "worse offer": two flat declaratives, no ornament, no punchline syntax; the words would port but the force is entirely this chapter's itemized counter, which June has just read aloud. Passes.)

25 — "If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast." (line 133) — mechanism: dry professional self-summary — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the professional door open without pleading; sets up item 26 — workshopped: no.

26 — "I know her invoices," Nia said. "She itemizes. That's already more than most references." (line 139) — mechanism: professional metonymy (character vouched by paperwork) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the reference lands in the book's material idiom and rhymes with item 25; Asha becomes plausible on evidence — workshopped: no.

27 — "Good. Have her email before one. I have payroll at eleven." (line 143) — mechanism: bathetic close, scale juxtaposition (June's crossroads vs. the program's Tuesday) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: anti-sentimental close directly after "come see it"; the world does not pause for June's decision, which is why the decision counts — workshopped: no.

28 — "ok now the boring parts." (line 151) — mechanism: deflation pivot — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: swings the chapter from verdict into execution; refuses congratulation; consistent with Asha's established "boring parts" idiom — workshopped: no. (Idiom count: second use across the book counting her Ch15-era card diction; retire or vary after this.)

29 — "The front room was worse than described: bare bulb, paint-scabbed floor, the north window putting flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall. June looked at the light longest." (line 155) — mechanism: listing-convention reversal + priority reveal — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: de-romanticizes the chosen path in the same beat that confirms it, then re-sharpens the want on the one thing a painter needs — workshopped: no. (Watched phrase "listing of my dreams": absent; this beat is where that quip would have gone, and the text inverted it instead.)

30 — "She had no printer. Paragraph 14 allowed email; she checked." (line 157) — mechanism: bureaucratic deadpan compression — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: material precarity and diligence in eight words; the leaving is done properly — workshopped: no. (Watched phrase "printer thing": no portable printer quip exists; this and the office printer catching for half a second at line 111 are both literal, functional beats — the latter is timing texture, not comedy, and does not caption Nia's delivery.)

31 — "She filled the blank in the notebook: FEB = coat." (line 159; setup "FEB = ." at lines 13 and 93) — mechanism: blank-equation payoff, repetition-with-variation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter-long unfilled equation is answered with endurance instead of money; the cost stays visible inside the joke, and after the round-5 relocation it lands only after the no has been spent — workshopped: no. (Designed setup/payoff interrogated: in-world, unspoken, notebook notation; no character performs it and no one quips "coat.")

32 — "one nail, level enough, in the apartment she was leaving for a colder room with better light" (line 165) — mechanism: self-directed deflation; variation off item 19's level (Nia puts a level on everything; June hangs her own work by eye) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: good-enough acceptance on her own wall; the installer permits herself imprecision where the work is hers — workshopped: no.

Considered and excluded (not attempted comedy): "That was a different noon." (line 99) — rueful compression of the Ch17 rupture thread, doing grief work, not a joke; "It came out before she'd decided to say it" (line 49) — self-speech timing, checked against the dialogue-diagnosis ban and ruled a report of her decision process, not a characterization of the sentence; "ask gallery re: December crating" on the back of her hand (line 165) — action texture; "places where wanting had been scumbled over need" (line 101) — earnest craft figure, counted against the two-figure ceiling in item 4's note.

DISTRIBUTION CHECKS:
- Density: 32 attempted items across ~3,000 words of a flag:reflective decision chapter — at the register's commitment. The two comedy-free stretches are the right ones: Ruth's manners confession (lines 43–49) and the keys confession to Nia (lines 117–125) carry no comic item; both are the chapter's non-negotiable sharp beats.
- Source: character 28, situation 4, narrator-overlay 0. Overlay candidates interrogated and ruled character: items 1, 4, 16 (June's focalized arithmetic idiom in all three).
- Mechanism variety: deadpan family 9, repetition-with-variation 3 (11, 31, 32), scope-limiting matched pair 2 (13, 15 — capped), mock-precision 2 (1, 16), reversal 2 (9, 29), literalization 2 (18, 22), plus singletons (paradox, chiasmus, implied escalation, understatement, mutual-boundary, timing undercut, agonistic deadpan, blunt verdict, metonymy, bathos, pre-empted self-sabotage, priority-reveal). Not MONOTONOUS; deadpan dominance is the committed register and is distributed across five mouths.
- Emotion-displaced-into-logistics family: five instances (items 6, 14, 15, 27, 28). This is the card's mandated engine (care without advice), and each instance differs in function — assent, offer, thanks, close, pivot. Watch-level concentration, not verdict-level; Ch21–22 should not default to it.
- Sweetness (special check — the Tasker loss): the loss chain stays sharp and unjoked: "It was still good. That was the entire problem" (line 11) → "That's a worse offer." / "It is." (lines 131–133) → "The clean answer was gone." (line 145) → the receipt folded away as "a record of a thing that was over" (line 159). No comic item sits on any of these beats; item 31 is the nearest risk and its content is a cost, not a comfort. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- Cringe: none. Nothing plays for a generic workshop; nothing misjudges the O'Leary/Henry-at-60%/Morisaki reader.
- Card compliance: all five mandated comic sources present and doing assigned work (June items 1–4, 6–9, 15–17, 22, 25, 30–32; Sam 10–11, 14; Ruth 7, 12–14; Asha 18–21, 28; Nia 23–24, 26–27). No inspirational refusal: June's no is arithmetic plus self-knowledge ("I'd still be the person with keys," line 121), no aphorism.

TRACKER CHECKS (Ch17–19 obligations and caps):
- Ruth sharp-line cap: one — "I kept them to myself and called it manners. … Some of it was. Some of it was easier for me." (line 43), her precise-distinction move. "We came for the dish" and "We have a car" were checked as second candidates and ruled plain-logistics deflection, not editorial-sharp. At cap, not over.
- Ch19 stool/jar obligations: both jars are literal paperweights (lines 3, 7, 159, 161); no jar symbolism, no stool-count joke; Sam's chair move is action. Clean.
- Ch18 ledger/debt figure ban: zero fiscal metaphor in narration; every dollar in the chapter is literal decision material required by the card. Clean.
- Ch17 "the way" connective (cap 1/chapter): one instance, "the way she'd look at a ground" (line 101), craft-specific. At cap.
- Ch17 keys cluster: literal job/room terms plus the banked thematic payoff "I'd still be the person with keys" (line 121), non-comic. Clean.
- Ch15 Nia zinger density: three polished constructions this chapter (items 23, 26, 27) versus twelve pre-repair in Ch15; the regrowth point (second contest-frame) was removed on round-5 order and has not re-entered.
- Refusal-to-conclude family: "She left the word without an underline" (line 13) checked — literal notation behavior (underline = certainty about December crating), not a closure variant; do not let "left the X without Y" become a substitute shape.
- Blue-dish tether (Ch18 standing order): used as practical object and then reversed — June un-delegates the return and carries it herself Tuesday. Compliant and transformed.
- "Noted" mirror: two instances (June line 55, Nia line 135), a functional professional-register echo — care offers acknowledged the way work offers are. Spent; no third "Noted" in Ch21–22.
- New plants to log forward: FEB = coat is paid and spent — any later coat mention must be a literal garment, never a tag; the scope-limiting pair (items 13/15) is capped; Asha's "boring parts" idiom needs variation or retirement; the two-craft-figure ceiling (item 4 note) applies to June narration going forward.

SPECIAL CH20 CHECKS (summary):
- "worse offer" — present (line 131); passes as blunt in-scene verdict, non-portable, loss-sharpening (item 24).
- "coat" — present twice (lines 85, 159); passes as material cost plus earned in-world payoff (items 20, 31); continuity defect from round 5 repaired.
- "printer thing" — absent as a quip; both printer touches literal (item 30 note).
- "go get your clause" — absent; the clause material stays interrogative and earned (item 19 note).
- "listing of my dreams" — absent; the Dana-photo beat inverts the listing convention instead (item 29).
- Loss softening — not found; see sweetness check.

VERDICT: **CLEAR**
All 32 items score funniness-2; sources are character/situation throughout with zero narrator-overlay; nothing portable, nothing workshopped; mechanisms varied across five voices; the comedy consistently does the card's dramatic work — care-without-advice rendered as logistics, and the Tasker loss kept sharp. Strongest item: 14 — "We have a car." / "And a hand truck if you need it." Weakest surviving item: 8 — "There's coffee. There hasn't been milk since Sunday." — the chapter's smallest comic yield, surviving on documentary function rather than wit.

REVISION ORDERS:
None. All three round-5 blocking/continuity orders are verified executed in the current text (see PRIOR-ROUND ORDER VERIFICATION), and this round's inventory contains no funniness-1, portable, or workshopped item. Forward obligations are logged in TRACKER CHECKS and are binding on Ch21–22, not on this chapter. The chapter is committable on comedy.
