# Audit: Comedy Doctor — Chapter 08, Round 2 (repair verification)

Stance: skeptical re-run of the full inventory on the revised text, not a spot-check of the seven repairs. Every round-1 order is verified against quoted current text; every surviving and newly introduced item is re-scored.

## Round-1 order verification

1. **Order 1 (item 3, workshopped epigram) — EXECUTED.** "Trash kept secrets better than anything labeled." is gone. The beat now lands on "the row of bristle brushes nobody had claimed in three weeks. That was the idea." (l.5) — the camouflage logic proven concretely, no aphorism inserted in its place.
2. **Order 2 (item 4, portable drain idiom) — EXECUTED.** "clogged if you looked at it wrong" replaced with "The sink was out. Acrylic-gouache went down in skins and chunks." (l.7) — this studio's specific paint-physics fact, exactly what the order asked for; the SOLIDS card still does the funny route-blocking.
3. **Order 3 (item 14, manifest simile) — EXECUTED.** "She checked it, straightened one panel a centimeter, and arrived at the sink, the table, and him in that order." (l.15) — simile cut, the centimeter (comedy + reread plant) retained, no replacement figure draped on Odile.
4. **Order 4 (item 21, arriving by sea) — EXECUTED.** "Mara saw him through the glass and waved him in. 'We defended the booth,'" (l.33) — simile cut; the booth defense carries the entrance, per the order's fallback. Maritime gag family stays closed.
5. **Order 5 (item 23, maître d') — EXECUTED.** "Mara lifted a folded jacket from the saved seat." (l.37) — phrase cut clean; "There was a saved seat, not a gap that happened to exist: a saved seat, inside, next to June." (l.39) now carries the beat from Theo's side, which is sourcing the order requested.
6. **Order 6 (item 36, costing interest) — EXECUTED.** Sentence cut. The turn at l.77 now runs: concrete evidence ("Mara was planning Tuesdays into December for a couple that had an expiration date in writing"), plain Theo math ("Sitting here, the math stopped helping."), then the kept item 37 ("The bin was just a second concealment with better hygiene."). No gloss, no title-tie-in.
7. **Order 7 (legal-clerical inheritance) — EXECUTED, count verified below.** "signed a lease" → "like it had moved in" (l.9); "noted, filed, and declined to examine" → "he refused to follow the omission" (l.27, which also cleared the gate's three-part-cadence hit at that line); "delivering it to the police himself" → cut entirely, with "become evidence" (l.13) kept as the single surviving narration instance (order allowed either/or; this is compliant); "overruled" → "June had chosen past it" (l.75). June's dialogue instances "witness protection" (l.89) and "litigated" (l.101) retained as ordered.

Mechanical gate: 0 open findings; the new three-part-cadence WATCH at l.91 ("ribbon, stopped, and put") is a physical action sequence, benign.

## INVENTORY

`1 — "the second rinse gave him a reason to be standing at the sink" (l.3) — mechanism: transparent-pretext deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: launches the concealment plan in chore-laundered motive — workshopped: no`
`2 — "Mara's voice doing the work of four people, Ben laughing at his own line before it ended" (l.3) — mechanism: compression characterization — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort alive offstage while Theo hides — workshopped: no`
`3 — cleanup camouflage + "That was the idea." (l.5) — mechanism: deadpan reveal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: replaces the cut epigram with proof — workshopped: no`
`4 — "The sink was out. Acrylic-gouache went down in skins and chunks." (l.7) — mechanism: blunt material veto — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (medium-specific) — dramatic work: route-blocking with craft truth; smallness-test material — workshopped: no`
`5 — SOLIDS GO IN THE BIN + "not going to test her on plumbing" (l.7) — mechanism: offstage-authority deadpan via signage — source: character (Odile signage motif, Ch01) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile's authority present without her — workshopped: no`
`6 — "the panel underneath looked exactly the same, only insulted" (l.7) — mechanism: personification deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: destruction is the only erasure — workshopped: no`
`7 — "By Thursday it would never have existed." (l.7) — mechanism: denial-as-scheduling — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: magical thinking in calendar idiom — workshopped: no`
`8 — "Her left arm did a thing arms did not do." (l.9) — mechanism: deadpan craft self-critique — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the painting is bad so the accurate stance stands alone — workshopped: no`
`9 — scarf knot "sitting at the base of June's chin like it had moved in" (l.9) — mechanism: understated personification-encroachment — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Mara's loaned scarf inside their fiction) — dramatic work: the lie acquiring permanence; "moved in" carries a quiet cohabitation double-register that suits the book better than the cut lease figure — workshopped: no`
`10 — "taking notes without his own permission" (l.11) — mechanism: self-alienation deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: involuntary attention named without feeling-words — workshopped: no`
`11 — "nobody had thought he would require supervision" (l.13) — mechanism: bureaucratic self-indictment — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: culpability stays on Theo — workshopped: no`
`12 — "the specific relief of a problem becoming a package" (l.13) — mechanism: logistics-as-psychology — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: concealment as professional pleasure, the chapter's sickness — workshopped: no`
`13 — Odile "as if the building should be grateful" + "arrived at the sink, the table, and him in that order" + the straightened centimeter (l.15) — mechanism: hyperbole + list-position insult — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: rack-check-first is the reread plant, now uncluttered by the cut simile — workshopped: no`
`14 — "newsprint concealed nothing from a woman who had run a studio for forty years" (l.17) — mechanism: deadpan obviousness — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: deflates the concealment; Odile-knows consistent — workshopped: no`
`15 — "four versions of the sentence ready and none of them survived contact" (l.21) — mechanism: idiom deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no, narrowly, on "four versions ready" — dramatic work: caught-out beat without dialogue diagnosis — workshopped: no`
`16 — "Sonia is expecting her envelope. You're going anyway." […] "Lights." (l.25) — mechanism: imperative minimalism — source: character (Odile economy, voice-card true) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the errand-trap sprung in four sentences — workshopped: no` (round 1 under-inventoried this; logged now)
`17 — "errands arrived like posted notices: not negotiable, not personal, occasionally placed with suspicious accuracy" (l.27) — mechanism: institutional simile with buried tell — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: plants Odile's orchestration — workshopped: no`
`18 — "he refused to follow the omission […] thinking about what Odile did and did not ask, and that road had no end" (l.27) — mechanism: avoidance-as-policy deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — the refusal framing and "studio at nine at night" anchor it; the closing clause "that road had no end" is the chapter's most generic phrase and the item passes despite it, not because of it — dramatic work: replaces the clerical figure while keeping the rescue unabsolved (he chooses not to look at what her errand means) — workshopped: no`
`19 — alley math + "Tomorrow was the same as tonight, logistically." (l.29) — mechanism: rationalization deadpan, punch-adverb — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's hinge non-decision — workshopped: no`
`20 — "sitting the way people sit when they have announced they are only staying for one coffee and are on their second" (l.31) — mechanism: observational typology — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (rhymes with the panel's toward-and-away thesis) — dramatic work: that rhyme — workshopped: no`
`21 — "We defended the booth." / "Priya was magnificent." / "It wasn't magnificent, it was a head count." / "The head count worked." (l.33–37) — mechanism: inflation/deflation/reframe — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort holds territory for them; entrance now carried entirely by this, post-repair — workshopped: no`
`22 — "There was a saved seat, not a gap that happened to exist: a saved seat, inside, next to June." (l.39) — mechanism: repetition-insistence deadpan — source: character (Theo reading social facts as logistics) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the debt itemized; does the cut maître-d' flourish's job from inside Theo's head — workshopped: no`
`23 — Sonia weighing the envelope: "Tell her the answer is still no but I'm thinking about it" (l.39) — mechanism: contradiction deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: offstage Odile–Sonia decades; reread bait — workshopped: no`
`24 — Luis: "Not against the wall. Radiator's behind that panel. Lay it on the seat." + "required nothing further" (l.41–43) — mechanism: hyper-competent minimalism — source: character (verdict 1 of 2) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort co-custodies the secret with paint-physics truth — workshopped: no`
`25 — folder "taking up the width of a small guest" / "Somehow it took up more room." (l.43, 49) — mechanism: personification escalation — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the secret occupies a seat at the table — workshopped: no`
`26 — pickle spear removed, "I remembered." / "You're the only one in this city who has." (l.45–47) — mechanism: care-specificity + self-aimed hyperbole — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: being-known as accruing debt — workshopped: no`
`27 — "I've decided we're keeping Tuesdays." / "The class is on Tuesdays." (l.51–53) — mechanism: literalist deflation — source: character (Ben) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: launches the December plan — workshopped: no`
`28 — "I'd have made a slide deck." / "That's why." (l.57–59) — mechanism: self-deprecation + two-word deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ben arc texture with action cover — workshopped: no`
`29 — "I was thinking paper calendar. Different disease. Same drawer." (l.61) — mechanism: self-taxonomy deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ch05 new-shape order still honored — workshopped: no`
`30 — under-table inventory "the way other people checked their phones," incl. fries within Luis's reach (l.63) — mechanism: incongruity catalog — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: every cohort member's need named — workshopped: no`
`31 — crust inspection "as if it owed her a clean edge" (l.63) — mechanism: personification in June's craft idiom — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: debt motif in her register without her knowing his — workshopped: no`
`32 — "The cherry pie earlier was alleged cherry, but the crust program here is sound." (l.65) — mechanism: register collision — source: character ("alleged," "decent" owned) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: precise praise aimed at Sonia's = accepting the place — workshopped: no`
`33 — "I rank everything. I just usually don't read out the results." (l.67–69) — mechanism: self-revelation deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: intimacy increment disguised as joke — workshopped: no`
`34 — "Junes included. Both of you. That's the whole point of a standing table." (l.71) — mechanism: couple-coinage — source: character (Mara) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the cohort names the unit — workshopped: no`
`35 — "the red folder sat beside him as if it had been invited too" + "Sitting here, the math stopped helping." (l.77) — mechanism: personification + plain-arithmetic deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the turn now performed, not glossed, post-repair — workshopped: no`
`36 — "The bin was not honesty. The bin was just a second concealment with better hygiene." (l.77) — mechanism: deflating redescription — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the keep-decision's moral logic; sharpens culpability — workshopped: no`
`37 — "She said it at conversational volume, between fries" + "So it lives with you now." / "It lives in a folder." (l.79–87) — mechanism: anticlimactic staging + evasion-by-literalism — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June refuses to make his secret a conspiracy; Theo's literalism is visible-as-deflection, plain-speech compliant — workshopped: no` (round 1 under-inventoried this exchange; logged now)
`38 — "So between us we have one painting on display and one in witness protection." (l.89) — mechanism: register collision (legal, dialogue-owned) + Ch07 surname callback — source: character (June's honest-warning-as-joke care move) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's best item; a door offered — workshopped: no`
`39 — "He had an answer drafted […] He heard himself not use it." (l.95) — mechanism: self-observation deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the partial-honesty hinge — workshopped: no`
`40 — "Huh," June said. She ate a fry. (l.97) — mechanism: anticlimax minimalism — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June banks it without pouncing — workshopped: no`
`41 — Luis: "People come back to warm rooms." + "settled by the only authority she recognized" (l.99) — mechanism: literal-material wisdom + marital deference — source: character (verdict 2 of 2, at cap) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — radiator line keeps "warm" literal HVAC — dramatic work: settles December — workshopped: no`
`42 — "We can stay later next week. I'm practicing." (l.101) — mechanism: rehearsed spontaneity — source: character (voice-card in-spec) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ben micro-arc — workshopped: no`
`43 — "whether alleged cherry could be litigated" (l.101) — mechanism: running-gag escalation — source: character-group — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's idiom adopted audibly; second sanctioned dialogue legal instance — workshopped: no`
`44 — "it was somehow the most expensive part of the night" (l.101) — mechanism: cost inversion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the fiscal register paying, not joking — workshopped: no`
`45 — "checked the lock the second time that the second time always demanded" (l.105) — mechanism: compulsion recursion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: guilt as elevated baseline — workshopped: no`
`46 — "everything in the building either labeled or about to be" (l.105) — mechanism: totalizing characterization — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: load-in for the blank-slot payoff — workshopped: no`
`47 — "Still not good. The arm was still wrong. The brown door was still a door." + scarf knot "like it had been hired to" (l.109) — mechanism: anaphora deadpan + personification variation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: second look confirms the panel is kept for the right wrong reason; "hired to" varies item 9's tenancy figure inside the licensed fiscal register — workshopped: no` (round 1 missed "hired to"; logged for tracker below)
`48 — "The trash was eight steps away. Wednesday pickup. The math still worked." (l.111) — mechanism: temptation-as-arithmetic relapse — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the keep-decision contested to the last beat; completes the math triplet (works l.29 → stops helping l.77 → still works l.111) — workshopped: no`
`49 — pencil pulled and put back; "his own system was searchable"; "one anonymous rectangle in a row of anonymous rectangles" (l.113) — mechanism: situational irony + repetition deadpan — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the archivist hides a thing from his own competence — workshopped: no`
`50 — closing checklist "one extra item on it that would never appear on any list he wrote […] One panel, unlabeled, facing the wall, not destroyed." (l.115) — mechanism: list-with-payload — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the keep-decision formalized in his native genre — workshopped: no`
`51 — "He set the alarm and went home owing everyone." (l.117) — mechanism: zeugma-compression of the fiscal motif — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the title cashed in seven words; lands as weight, not laugh — workshopped: no`

**New-material check (repairs only):** every sentence introduced or altered by the seven repairs was scored above (items 4, 9, 13, 18, 21–22, 35). None is portable, none workshopped, none partial. Strongest counter-candidate considered for a new blocking finding: the "that road had no end" tail in item 18 — weighed as portable idiom, cleared on the anchoring specifics, flagged as the weakest surviving phrase in the chapter.

## Distribution checks (work shown)

- **Density:** ~51 comic items in ~2,650 words — unchanged in register; the back third still correctly thins as the stockroom turns the same mechanisms grave.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan/understatement ×10, register collision (fiscal + June's dialogue-legal) ×8, personification ×6, deflation ×5, callback/running-gag ×4, list/checklist ×3, minimalism/anticlimax ×3, hyperbole/simile ×3, irony ×2, repetition-insistence ×2, misc ×5. The two narrator-overlay items from round 1 are both cut; **narrator-overlay count is now zero.** Not MONOTONOUS.
- **Legal-clerical containment (order 7 audit):** narration = exactly 1 ("become evidence," l.13). Dialogue = 2, both June-owned per her voice card ("witness protection" l.89, "litigated" l.101). Residue weighed and cleared: "terms of the arrangement" (l.13) / "agreed terms" (l.77) are the fake-dating deal's standing vocabulary, not comic figures; "drafted" (l.95) is common speech. The register Ch07 spent is now **closed**, and Ch09 inherits it closed.
- **Fiscal/debt register:** ~9 instances (known quantity, transaction, cost nothing, the math ×3, expensive, "true in the aggregate," owing everyone) plus the employment-adjacent "hired to." With "costing interest" cut, the register argues instead of glossing — the math triplet is its structure. This is the chapter's titled spine and it stays a chapter spine: same retirement rule Ch07's legal register received. It is not becoming the book's default — Ch03's repair zeroed bureaucratic narration, Ch05–07 carry different spines, and the next chapter is June POV, where institutional metaphor is off-voice anyway.
- **Sweetness calibration (re-pressed post-repair):** the worry was that cutting "delivering it to the police himself" and "noted, filed, and declined to examine" would soften Theo's culpability. It survives: "nobody had thought he would require supervision," "he refused to follow the omission," "a second concealment with better hygiene," "owing everyone." The Odile rescue is still denied absolution — item 18 is him choosing not to look. The panel is never cute. NOT OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe calibration:** the two stale similes (sea-arrival, maître d') were the only round-1 staleness and are gone. Nothing misjudges the O'Leary-warmth / Henry-at-60% / Morisaki-quiet reader. PASS.
- **Tracker checks:** secret-object personification family holds at 4/4 (insulted, small guest, more room, invited too); "primed and patient" (l.109) was examined and left outside the family — "primed" is literal gesso and the figure attaches to his ignorance, not the object-as-guest — but it is the reason the cap is now a hard stop. Scarf personification stands at 2 ("moved in," "hired to"), functional variation, retire after this chapter. Luis verdicts 2/2 (at cap). Ben self-deprecation ×3 (at cap). "Oh." reservation untouched. Scarf gag instance varied ("third week of unreturned service"). "Alleged cherry" cohort gag: 2 instances + adoption.

## Chapter verdict

**CLEAR** — all 51 inventoried items score funniness-2; zero narrator-overlay, zero portable, zero workshopped; mechanisms varied; the comedy still does the chapter's dramatic work (the cohort's table systems price the lie, Theo's logistics idiom convicts him). All seven round-1 revision orders are verified executed, with no new weak material introduced by the repairs. Strongest item: #38 — "So between us we have one painting on display and one in witness protection." Weakest surviving item: #18 — "that road had no end," which passes on the strength of "standing alone in a studio at nine at night thinking about what Odile did and did not ask," not on the closing clause.

## REVISION ORDERS

No blocking revision orders. The chapter is committable from the Comedy Doctor's side. Tracker/log orders only (with the commit, no prose changes):

1. **Log in `output/tics.md` (per round-1 order 7):** legal-clerical register, Ch08 final state — narration 1 ("become evidence"), June dialogue 2 ("witness protection," "litigated"); register closed, not inherited by Ch09.
2. **Log:** fiscal-ledger register spent as Ch08 spine (~9 narration instances + math triplet); same rule as Ch07's legal register — not inherited by Ch09 as a narration default.
3. **Log:** "alleged cherry" cohort gag at 2 instances + adoption; cap at one future callback, then retire.
4. **Log:** secret-object personification family 4/4, hard cap — no panel/folder personification in Ch09+; scarf personification pair ("moved in," "hired to") spent, retire.
5. **Log:** Ben self-deprecation new-shape ×3 (at cap); Luis material verdicts 2/2 this appearance (no headroom).
