# Chapter 21 Narrator-Publicist Audit — Round 3 (current-text verification)

id: narrator_publicist | owner: claude | tier: risk
chapter: output/chapters/chapter_21.md ("Prying Loose / Faced to the Wall", POV Theo)
round: 3 — full re-collection on the current text after the Characters-Wrong round-1 repairs, the §8 followability tag tidy, and Dialogue Doctor / Comedy Doctor / Plain Translation / Thought Development / Positive Prose round 3. Inputs: chapter text; round-2 narrator_publicist (`chapter_21.narrator_publicist.md`, CRITICAL-DISTANCE-HELD — stale, see below); the six current sibling audits; READING_GUIDE §§2, 5, 6, 8; voice cards (Theo Brennan, Odile Marchetti, June Park); CHAPTER CARD - 21.

## Text-state and staleness notes

- **Text verified, not assumed:** the current chapter is byte-identical to snapshot `chapter_21.0032.20260704T151912Z.after_followability_tidy` (diff run by this audit: empty). This is the same text state the round-3 siblings verified (dialogue_doctor CLEAN, comedy_doctor CLEAR, plain_translation REGISTER-HOLDS, thought_development DEVELOPED, positive_prose INHABITED) and that characters_wrong round 2 verified modulo the one ordered tag at ln 45. Line numbers below are current and match the siblings' citations.
- **The round-2 narrator_publicist verdict no longer covers this text.** Its anchor citations are stale: the fear-canvas thesis it conditioned on ("She had painted a man maintaining the perimeter of a room so that he would never be required to stand in the middle of it.") was deleted whole by Characters-Wrong Order 1; its first EARNED entry ("That was the order his hands did things in: count first, feel later.") no longer exists anywhere in the chapter (sweep zero); "I'm keeping the keys" is now "The keys stay with me" (59); "stood as a finished thing" is now "it was finished" (93); "He kept it." is now "He left it that way." (89); "*O.M.* square and small" is now bare "*O.M.*" (111); June's reply, "Sunday was two days away...", and "*Okay,* he typed" are deleted — the chapter now ends on a dark phone. This round is therefore a full step-1-through-5 re-run, not a diff check against round 2.
- **Residue sweep (run mechanically):** zero narration hits for perimeter, lender, load-bearing (all forms), "finished thing", "count first", "order his hands", honest/honesty, recognized, forgiv- — the single "forgiving" hit is Theo's dialogue at 47 ("That isn't the same as forgiving us."), which is contradiction, not narration. Nothing round 1 or round 2 cut has regrown in costume.

## Narrator-attitude check (step 4)

READING_GUIDE §2 declares close third with feelings "rendered through action, object, and dialogue first"; §5 bans announcing care moves ("never caption them"); §6 bans dialogue diagnosis and epiphany-via-mirror. No publicist-by-design narrator license exists for Theo's chapters. Theo's voice card bans "polished aphorisms about care" even as free indirect and requires his self-image to run through inventory and delayed recognition; Odile's card requires her, when focalized from outside, to be rendered "through action and timing." Any surviving publicity would stand as a finding. The card's current-text design pressure cuts the other way: the chapter deliberately leaves Theo wrong about the fear canvas and Odile wrong about forgiveness speed, so the specific publicist failure to hunt this round is narration campaigning to *rehabilitate* them — Theo certified healed, Odile certified wise, the faced-to-wall disposition certified honorable.

## Disposition of round-2 standing conditions

1. *"Line 71 remains the chapter's only thesis sentence."* — Superseded by ordered deletion (Characters-Wrong Order 1). The chapter now contains zero thesis sentences about the canvas; the replacement misread at 75 is adjudicated fresh below. Sweep confirms no descendant.
2. *"Line 117 stays uncaptioned."* — HELD at its new location. Current 113: "He turned off the last light, locked the freight door behind him, and walked home through the cold with his keys in his pocket and both hands empty." Nothing follows it. Verified below as EARNED.
3. *"The shutdown litany takes no additions."* — Superseded in letter (the ending was rebuilt by Characters-Wrong Order 5), honored in spirit: the litany lost "square and small" and gained one look-back sentence, both re-tested from scratch below.
4. *"No volition-gloss enters the loan-sheet passage (lines 9–13)."* — HELD verbatim. The passage carries exactly one volition sentence, unchanged: "That was accurate. It was accurate on purpose, from her end, and he made himself write it accurately from his." (11), and the flanking text is behavior throughout (the unlogged shelving at 9; "He hung the clipboard back on its nail and left the phone in the coat.", 13). No second gloss entered during any repair.

## Focus-site adjudication (the four sites the round order stresses)

**Focus 1 — the fear-canvas misread: is Theo campaigned for as healed or insightful? (73–77)**

The load-bearing sentences: "Now the blank twelve-by-sixteen looked like the part she had left him: a clean square waiting until he finished the jars and keys and came to it. It was a kinder reading than he trusted, which did not stop him from wanting it to be true." (75)

- Marker 5 for Theo (insight asserted): FAILS TO FIRE. The reading is wrong by design (card: comprehension is June's to deliver in Ch 22), and the narration never ratifies it — no clause upgrades the guess to knowledge, and the paragraph closes on self-indictment: "He had hung it above the flat files and walked under it forty times." (75).
- Marker 1 for June (the seer who left him a kindness): FAILS TO FIRE on attribution. "looked like" plus "a kinder reading than he trusted" pins the claim to a named perceiver — Theo — whose fallibility is stated *inside the same sentence* ("which did not stop him from wanting it to be true" is wishfulness confessed, not perception endorsed).
- Strip test on the underlying ekphrasis (73): everything is object — "one holding the studio keyring with the keys fanned so you could nearly count them, the other flat on a table edge, mid-press, steadying a table that did not appear to need steadying"; "a filled nail hole a shade off from the wall around it"; the white "loaded ... with enough yellow that it read as lit from somewhere." Residue: the entire painting. NONE of it is publicity; the composition's actual indictment survives only as uncaptioned paint — "a small clean rectangle of nothing that the hands in the foreground were too busy to walk toward" (73) — which the narrator declines to decode over Theo's head. Holding the true reading in the object where the protagonist cannot read it is the exact opposite of campaigning.
- Healed-check: after the viewing, "He put the canvas back on its hooks. He left the wire a half-inch low on the left." (77) — the drill he carried up "to prove it" (71) goes unused; the narration leaves his avoidance standing on the page. No cure is asserted or implied.

**Focus 2 — the delivery-box temptation: is the refusal certified as virtue? (95–97)**

"He could wrap the panel flat, slide it into that box, carry it to Sonia's, and not have to start with his own sentence. He put the glassine down." (95) — Marker 5 test: no clause names the stop as strength, growth, or honesty; the refusal is two object actions ("He put the glassine down." / "He cleaned his palette knife instead.", 97) with the interpretation left entirely to the reader. The one interpretive clause in the passage — "not have to start with his own sentence" — is the *temptation's* content, and it indicts (gift as substitute for speech, his card's core failure); a publicist would not write it. Strip test: wrap / slide / carry / put down remain. Attributable perceiver: Theo, close-third, unflattered. Ruled pass.

**Focus 3 — the faced-to-wall portrait: is the disposition morally certified? (97, and the look-back at 111)**

"...carried it to the wall beside the storage rack, and stood it on the floor, painted side faced to the wall, the labeled bar outward where anyone walking through the stockroom could read exactly what was there and no one could see it. He did not put it in a crate." (97)

- Marker 2 test on "anyone walking through the stockroom": a generalized hypothetical — but it grades the legibility of a quoted pencil label ("*Study - J. Park - begun wk 3, finished 12/4 - T. Brennan.*"), not the character's presence, and no hypothetical *reaction* is asserted: nobody imagined is impressed, moved, or instructed what to feel. It is a sightline fact.
- Marker 5 test: no honorific anywhere in the paragraph — no "honest," no "right," no consent language. "He did not put it in a crate" is a negative action in freight vocabulary. Nothing tells the reader the disposition is decent rather than, say, a half-measure; the chapter's own hedge two paragraphs later keeps that genuinely open.
- The look-back (111): "The study stood against the wall where he'd left it, stretcher bar out, pencil label legible from the doorway, painted side against the brick." — re-tested as a curtain-call for his own honorableness. It is three physical facts and zero evaluation; the closest the chapter comes to lingering on the disposition, and it stays inventory. Ruled pass, with a standing condition: this sentence takes no gloss in any future touch.

**Focus 4 — the sent hedge and the dark-phone ending: is Theo campaigned for as cured of managing? (101–113)**

- The hedge (107): "Then his thumbs started the next part on their own, *If you'd rather not, I understand.* He sent it too. The second bubble appeared under the first before he could take it back." — anti-publicity throughout: agency placed below the level of decision, the cost stated as a screen fact, and no rescue clause follows the send. Nothing grades the hedge as forgivable, endearing, or growth.
- The wait (109): "His head kept reaching for preparation: the study against the brick, what he'd say first, contingencies for each of her possible openings. Each time he set it down like the drill." — marker 5 candidate (restraint certified as practiced discipline). Ruled pass, work shown: "kept reaching" reports recurrence, not conquest; the simile is bound to a chapter object physically set down on the page (71, 77); and the sentence sits one paragraph after the reflex *won* at 107, so the chapter's own scoreboard forbids reading it as a cure claim. "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way" (109) is the anti-mystique adjective — deflation where a publicist would inflate.
- The litany (111): "every column full for the first time in two weeks" attaches to a ledger column whose two-week blank is established as bookkeeping fact at 11, and the sentence is a shutdown-routine inventory item between the humidity log and the thermostat; the reprised "*O.M.* beside his own writing" is an observed object in Theo's last pass, perceiver on the page. "He left it along the sink edge" (the phone) carries no renunciation caption — the deleted cure sentence ("he was not going to spend them building anything") has no descendant (sweep zero), and characters_wrong round 2 adjudicated the uncaptioned leaving as equally readable as avoidance. Clean.
- The ending (113) is uncaptioned; see EARNED below.

## General sweep — remaining counter-candidates, tested and ruled

- "She had packed these to survive a route she had also arranged, and none of the route was him." (3) — marker 4 for June (packing credited with a message). Pass: the inference is Theo's, sourced to a watched memory in the same lines ("He had watched June wrap a borrowed scarf with that same overcaution, tissue folded under at the corners") and corroborated by document fact at 11 ("*via R. Kim / S. Rivera.* Not via J. Park"). Strip: tissue, interleaving, folded corners, the routed couriers remain. Note the diction: "overcaution" — a deflating noun where a publicist would write reverence.
- "It was a book his own carefulness had carried into June's apartment" (5) — marker 5 for Theo (carefulness asserted). Pass: the carefulness is named as the harm's instrument, and the sentence ends in deflation ("his thumbs kept checking the headcap anyway because there was nothing else for them to do").
- "she looked back at him with no more preparation than she gave a wall." (21) — marker 1 for Odile (imperturbability-mystique). Pass as attributed and earned: perceiver Theo; backed in-scene by her actual flat behavior ("I opened the door. There was nothing to sign.", 19); and the chapter stages her fallibility on the page at 49, so the book treats the imperturbability as hers, not as wisdom. Wise-check for the whole scene: the narration never ratifies Odile — her mispricing ("No," Odile said. "It is faster than nothing.", 49) is contradicted by Theo (47), held by her, and corrected by no one; her exit lines are logistics and an instruction ("There is soup upstairs. Barley. Eat before you decide anything else about yourself.", 57), rendered per her card through action and timing; the initials beat (65) is pure action with the interpretation left to the reader.
- "He knew what he was about to ask for, and he asked for it anyway." (51) — tested as inverted marker 5 (honesty-about-weakness as flattery). Pass: it pre-marks the ask as shameful, and the ask is refused and billed on the page ("It was partly your fault.", 53). Carried consistent with characters_wrong (weakener, not finding).
- "She hung the clipboard back on its nail one degree straighter than he'd left it and went upstairs." (65) — marker 4 (gesture inflation). Pass: no meaning-clause is attached to the gesture; the precision is observed and left mute. Round 2's cut of "the lender owning the loan" has not regrown (sweep zero).
- "he had known both of them all along in the part of his head where he kept hinge specs and hanging heights." (85) — marker 5 (infallible craft-mind). Pass: the strip test leaves the two errors enumerated in full (door angle, hair edge), and the knowing indicts rather than flatters — its payoff is "He had flattered the moment into an invitation. It had been a maybe." (85), a confession of cowardice, seconded at 87 by a narrator adjective aimed *against* the protagonist: "a cowardly inch of nothing."
- "he was not going to invent a cheekbone he'd never witnessed just to close a shape" (91) — marker 5 (integrity volition). Pass on round 1's standing logic, re-verified: the reader needs the reason the cheek stays bare, and the volition lands in enacted paint ("So he painted the light doing that.", 91; "The cheek stayed bare ground.", 93). "He kept it because he had it." (91) is epistemic bookkeeping that cuts against him — an inventory of how much he memorized without consent — not a virtue claim.
- "When he stepped back it was finished." (93) — marker 5 (achievement certification). Pass: "finished" is a catalog fact corroborated by the pencil label he writes at 97 ("*finished 12/4*"), plainer than round 2's cleared "stood as a finished thing," and the paragraph spends its remaining words on the two withholdings — the opposite of campaign material.

## EARNED (per required format)

- `EARNED — "she looked back at him with no more preparation than she gave a wall." (21) — the on-page action that backs it: "I opened the door. There was nothing to sign." (19)` — perceiver Theo; her fallibility staged at 49.
- `EARNED — "she had actually found the filled nail hole and given it four square inches." (73) — the on-page action that backs it: "a filled nail hole a shade off from the wall around it" (73)` — perceiver Theo; countable fact of the described canvas.
- `EARNED — "It made the picture harder to look at. He left it that way." (89) — the on-page action that backs it: the specified geometry change, "a generous welcoming angle" (85) narrowed to "a door that could complete its swing in either direction." (85)`
- `EARNED — "walked home through the cold with his keys in his pocket and both hands empty." (113) — the on-page actions that back it: "The keys stay with me. The freight, the condition reports, the loan sheet." (59); "He did not put it in a crate." (97); "He left it along the sink edge" (111).` Uncaptioned; nothing follows the image.

## PUBLICITY findings

None. Every marker-1-through-5 candidate on the current text converts to residue under the strip test or attributes to a named, on-page-fallible perceiver, as shown above.

## Chapter verdict

`CRITICAL-DISTANCE-HELD`

Most admiring surviving line: "she had found that, she had actually found the filled nail hole and given it four square inches." (73) — the chapter's one open flush of admiration, aimed at June's eye. It is earned because the perceiver is named and present (Theo, the canvas flat on the flat files in front of him) and the content is a countable fact of the described object (the nail hole is on the page at 73, "a shade off from the wall around it"); strip the doubled cadence and the painted detail remains. It is also admiration the chapter immediately charges for: two sentences later the same eye produces the wrong reading, so the book frames Theo's perception as fallible in the very passage where it admires.

The round's three rehabilitation risks all verify clean: Theo ends the chapter wrong about the canvas, avoidant about the wire, hedged on the record, and uncured by any narration; Odile exits mispricing forgiveness speed with no narrator ratification and no wisdom gloss; the faced-to-wall study is described in sightlines and freight vocabulary with its moral status left entirely to the reader.

Standing conditions for any future touch (not orders; the text as-is is clean): the ending (113) stays uncaptioned; the look-back sentence (111) and the shutdown litany take no additions and no gloss; the misread at 75 stays unratified — no narration in Ch 21 or Ch 22 may confirm the "kinder reading" or decode the canvas outside June's mouth (the Ch 22 card's "object memory, not lecture" rule binds this); no volition-gloss enters the loan-sheet passage (9–13) beyond the one standing sentence at 11; no second freestanding feeling-report joins "The wait was terrible in an ordinary way" (109), per the Positive Prose ceiling.

`REVISION ORDERS:` none.
