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

Scope per manifest: scene 02 (lines 26-159, Sonia's booth), scene 03 (lines 162-185, sidewalk). Scene 01 (lines 2-23) has zero quoted dialogue lines (the texts are italic message-content, not utterances) — not required, but swept anyway for the §2 zero-tolerance rule since the round-2 remit is the whole current chapter; see the scene 01 note. Reading-guide exclusions applied: the single "Oh," (line 117) remains the §6-sanctioned once-at-the-confession use, explicitly licensed by the chapter card ("one possible 'Oh.' only if earned"); the ordinary-talk allowance is not needed — both required scenes are peak-pressure.

## ROUND-1 REPAIR VERIFICATION

ORDER 1 (line 153 caption — dialogue diagnosis, zero tolerance): EXECUTED. Current text: "The umber one," he said. "There's a jar under it. I put it there Thursday. Old habit. I can take it away." The banned caption ("He said it like a man who had been thinking about it") is cut and the attribution is plain. The insight the caption was faking is now demonstrated by the guide's required mechanism: the jar Theo placed under her stain on Thursday proves he has been carrying it in his head, and June does something with what she heard — "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays." (line 155). The replacement lines were tested for new defects: they are card-true Theo (logistics first, then an offer to undo them) and June's decline enacts the deciding-part terms she set at line 133. No new caption, no new zinger.

ORDER 2 (line 69 antithesis — fake-sharp / voice-card violation): EXECUTED. Current text: "I called it taking care of you because that sounded better. I was being scared and slow." The polished two-beat aphorism ("It felt like taking care of you. It was me buying time.") is broken. Tested against Theo's never-says list ("polished aphorisms about care"): "I called it X because Y" is particular, first-person, and self-indicting — the same sanctioned confession shape as his card's example line "I said boss because it was true. It just wasn't the whole truth." — not a generalizable truth about care. "I was being scared and slow" carries the ordered friction: the ungainly progressive and the flat pairing read as a man finding the sentence, not reciting item three of the six things he said he would not read. One pedantic check, resolved: the rewrite is five words longer than the cut text; the order's "must not become longer or more eloquent" targeted eloquence-by-elaboration, and the added length here is the causal admission that breaks the antithesis, not polish. Accepted.

ORDER 3 (lines 105-109 lecture stack — fake-sharp density at the fear canvas): EXECUTED. Current text: "The assignment was fear," she said. "It's a portrait, Theo. That blank is your station, empty. I painted it because I know that move. Mine looks different, but not enough." Then, after the held beat: "Tuesday at four," June said. "You paint before the room fills up." The stack is down to the single ordered landing line ("That blank is your station, empty."); "That blank isn't a place you earn" and the aphorism capper "Only paint fixes that." are gone; the close is the functional self-implication the order named ("Mine looks different, but not enough"), and the correction now routes through the object and the Tuesday work, satisfying the chapter card ("Week 6 fear canvas returns as object memory, not lecture"). Side-effect checked: "You paint" now hinges directly into Theo's "I painted," (line 111) — an earned pivot into the portrait reveal, and his reply is a confession that costs him, not a returned beat.

## SCENE 01 / apartment (lines 2-23) — note, not a required block

Zero quoted utterances; failure modes 1-7 do not attach. Two §2 zero-tolerance candidates tested because the rule reaches "narration about speech": (a) "Her first answer sounded like a dentist's office. The second sounded meaner than she felt." (line 15) — cleared. These are June's own unsent drafts, deleted before any exchange exists: there is no conversation being captioned and no other party's language being rated, which is what the rule bans ("comment on, characterize, or rate one another's language"); and the perceptiveness resolves into the rule's required channel, action — "she held her thumb down until it disappeared" / "Then she wrote what she meant." The characterization is the drafting event itself, not a caption pasted onto delivered speech. (b) "the exit installed before she'd even reached for the door" (line 13) — cleared: it reads the second text's function and Theo's motive ("kindness or Theo giving himself somewhere to stand"), not its phrasing, rhythm, or delivery.

## SCENE 02 / Sonia's booth (lines 26-159)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — reread the full scene with attributions covered, including the repaired stretches. June compresses and sets terms ("Week what?", "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays."); Theo runs practical-to-emotional at greater length and offers logistics before feeling ("There's a jar under it. I put it there Thursday. Old habit. I can take it away."). Strongest counter-candidate: the paired "Okay." lines — June's "Okay," she said. "You asked." (line 43) vs. Theo's "Okay." (line 75) — survive because position disambiguates: hers opens proceedings and takes a turn; his accepts an instruction he was just given. Contraction policy holds per Rule 4: June's "I did not." (line 39) and "you do not touch my stain" (line 151) are deliberate emphasis, licensed by her card ("full forms only for emphasis"); Theo contracts throughout including at peak ("It isn't evidence of anything and it doesn't fix anything," line 115).

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — long confession blocks against one-word replies, then inverted (June's seven-week accounting at line 59 against Theo's "Yes," he said). Also tested the new repetition surface the repair created: June sets Tuesday-at-four twice in this scene (lines 109 and 151). Not a volley defect and not rhythm monotony: each recurrence adds terms (109: paint before the room fills up; 151: sides, the joint piece, the stain), and restating the time while converting a prescription into a shared plan is overheard-speech behavior, not composed repetition (Rule 7 cuts the other way here). Strongest counter-candidate remains "Week what?" / "Three." / "Three." (lines 51-55) — survives because June repeats the number as arithmetic and immediately expands into the scene's longest speech.

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — the repairs did not dim June's mind at any hinge: "She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for" (line 71); "June had known his reading would be too kind. She had not known it would be too kind in that particular direction, and it cost her a second to answer" (line 103); the week-three arithmetic after "Oh" (line 119). Strongest dark-stretch candidate: the check volley (lines 137-147) runs five lines without interiority but is bracketed by the sugar-caddy action and the receipt-in-notebook paragraph, which carry her read of the moment.

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "Can I ask what happens now?" (line 81) — survives because Theo audits the question mid-line and strips it to a real one ("Not as a pitch... No. I'm asking. Are you going?") and June answers with facts. "Did you paint my face?" (line 121) and "What?" (line 113) are genuine information-seeking and get factual answers.

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — clipped stretches ride on physical beats that earn them (cup on the old coffee ring, palms flat on the Formica "nowhere near her," sugar caddy on the slip). Strongest counter-candidate: the four-line unattributed portrait volley "Did you paint my face?" / "Not the part I didn't see." / "Tell me nothing else." / "Okay." (lines 121-127) — survives because the starkness is the content: June is demanding less information, and the compression enacts the consent term she sets two lines later.

6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN, at capacity — the dense cluster at line 89 ("I called Nia from the sidewalk... I gave her Asha's name after asking Asha first. I'm taking Dana's room, and I sent Kessler the W-9.") is verbatim unchanged from round 1, honoring that audit's "do not add nouns" ceiling. It still survives on the same three grounds: scene 01 pre-weights Tasker and Dana; each noun arrives attached to a completed concrete action; and the sentence the list serves is stated plainly and immediately ("I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you."). Followability holds: a cold reader can state what June refused, what she chose, and why the order matters ("Before your texts... That's the part you need in the right order."). The new jar/umber exchange (lines 153-155) trades only objects already on the page.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — the repaired line 153 now carries plain "he said"; the longest unattributed run remains the check volley (lines 139-147), locked by strict alternation and content (only June sets payment terms, only Theo self-monitors). The portrait-terms run (lines 129-135) re-anchors with "she said" and "he said" at both ends.

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — both round-1 FAILs are repaired (verification above). Fresh cut-list sweep of the whole scene, strongest remaining candidates, work shown: "I'd been walking past it for a month like it was going to file a complaint." (line 97) — comic and self-aimed, and immediately un-deflected: he proceeds straight to "I read it wrong," so the joke does not displace the shame it names (warmth floor intact). "Like if I finished enough of everyone else's problems, eventually there was a square with my name on it." (line 101) — concrete, domestic, his register; speakable ("Like if..."), and it is a wrong reading he is confessing, not a coined truth. "It isn't evidence of anything and it doesn't fix anything." (line 115) — parallel negation, but it is his card's strips-down-to-plain register doing the anti-grand-gesture work the chapter card demands ("no public-grand-gesture energy"); functional, not quotable. "I let all of it be weather instead of asking who was making it." (line 77) — one coined figure inside an otherwise plain self-accounting that ends in the direct register the guide protects ("That part's mine. You don't get to apologize for my part."); diegetically composed since Friday, same clearance as her "map" line (89). The closing volley ("I'll try in front of you. It'll be terrible." / "It won't, though," she said, aggrieved) — the compliment arrives disguised as a grievance, which is her card's honest-warning-dressed-as-joke care move, and the sharpness lands on her, not him.

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2, zero tolerance): CLEAN — the round-1 violation at line 153 is cut (verification above). Fresh sweep, candidates cleared with work shown: "He did not say anything, so she kept the canvas between them instead of softening it." (line 107, introduced by the repair) — the closest thing to a caption in the current chapter; cleared because it narrates a choice of object and stance (what she keeps the conversation about), not any delivered sentence's language, phrasing, rhythm, or delivery — nothing spoken is being rated, and the follow-through is enacted in dialogue ("Tuesday at four."). It sits at the line, not over it; any future touch to this paragraph must not add a delivery clause ("she didn't soften her voice") on top of it. "I called it taking care of you because that sounded better." (line 69) — Theo names his own past euphemism; cleared because the mislabeling IS the wrong being confessed (§2: direct naming allowed when the naming is the event), it rates no one else's language, and the shape is card-sanctioned. "Look at you." (line 143) — teases his conduct (performed restraint), not his sentence. "That's the right amount." (line 93) and "Good. Keep doing the quiet version." (line 147) — unchanged from round 1; both grade behavior and claim-size, not language. Cumulative-grading ceiling from round 1 holds: still exactly three conduct-grades (lines 67, 93, 147); the repairs added instructions and terms, not a fourth grade.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — interiority reacts rather than re-explains, and the repairs stripped none of it: line 103 adds the direction of his misreading, line 119 adds the week-three arithmetic the dialogue did not state, and the new line 107 holds a stance rather than paraphrasing line 105. Tested the highest-risk spot post-repair: after "You paint before the room fills up." the narration gives Theo nothing to cushion "I painted," — correct; the cost stays in the dialogue.

## SCENE 03 / sidewalk (lines 162-185)

Unchanged by the round-1 repairs; re-verified cold rather than carried over.

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — Theo over-explains recursively ("my plan was nothing. My whole plan was to do nothing and let it be your call," line 165), his shame register; June answers in compressed imperatives ("Tuesday. Four. Bring nothing.", line 177). Strongest counter-candidate: "I know the difference now," Theo said (line 175) — short and June-adjacent, but the qualifying second half ("I learned it this morning, but I know it") is his careful-apology cadence, not hers.

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — no interrogatives; the kiss-interiority block breaks any volley pattern. The closing pair ("Bring nothing. The room has everything we need." / "It does... I stocked it in October.") carries asymmetric weights and the second line detonates its own comedy. The third Tuesday-setting (line 177) survives the same test as the scene-02 pair: it adds a new term ("Bring nothing") and compresses to her exit register.

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — the kiss carries the densest interiority in the chapter: the memorized coffee order ("black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation," line 169) and "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (line 171).

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — no spoken questions; nearest candidate is narration ("neither of them had anywhere to be, which was its own kind of question standing on the sidewalk with them," line 163), June's perception of unstructured time, not a character delivering a position disguised as a question.

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — attribution present on four of six lines; the one weighted silence (the kiss, hands in pockets) is marked with its meaning ("His hands stayed in his pockets the whole time" — consent information, satisfying the cut-list's requirement that silence register what it carries).

6. JARGON-TRADING: CLEAN — nothing traded; "Tuesday. Four." is a scheduled fact the reader holds from lines 109 and 151.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — six dialogue lines, four attributed, two locked by adjacency.

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "That happened because the terms are set," she said. "Not instead of them." (line 173) — quotable, but it is the protected direct register: a fact about her own action, structurally required by the earned-stay test (the kiss sequenced after the terms, out loud), and Theo's reply refuses to match its sharpness ("I learned it this morning, but I know it" admits recency instead of returning a beat). Second candidate: "It does. I stocked it in October." plus the wince (lines 179-181) — self-incrimination repaired in-scene by June's laugh; the warmth floor holds.

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2, zero tolerance): CLEAN — checked "Thank you for the nine o'clock... And the just coffee." (line 165): he thanks her for the terms she set, quoting their content, not rating her phrasing — same clearance as "I know. You put it in the second text." (line 167), a factual citation of what he sent. Checked "I know the difference now" (line 175): about the kiss/terms distinction, not about her sentence. No narration about speech in the scene.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — interiority reacts (the sugar she "had not known she knew") rather than explaining the kiss twice; the closing index card ("TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn," line 183) renders the terms as object, not summary, and now carries the jar term from the repaired exchange without re-explaining it.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. All three round-1 orders are executed and verified against the current text, and the full-chapter re-sweep — including scene 01 and the material the repairs introduced (lines 69, 105-109, 111, 153-155) — produced no new findings.

OVERALL: CLEAN
