INVENTORY:
1 — "she kept taking the colander back out of… where it was at least honest about being used" (L5) — mechanism: deflation / self-aimed projection onto an object — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the stay/leave decision made visible as an unpacking reflex — workshopped: no
2 — "the gray spines squared up against the wall like a job she hadn't billed for" (L7) — mechanism: fiscal simile — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (any freelancer novel takes this clause unchanged) — dramatic work: unfinished-business pressure, already carried by "eating around them since Tuesday night" — workshopped: no
3 — "*crooked is dynamic* / *it's crooked.*" (L9) — mechanism: register collision (artspeak vs. flat correction) — source: character (Sam's warm reframing against Ruth's exactness, both per card) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the flyer campaign, these two established voices) — dramatic work: cohort life continuing without June; the flyer propagating into the neighborhood — workshopped: no
4 — "Forty of those existed. Some were now in laundromats." (L9) — mechanism: deadpan enumeration / bathos — source: character (June's flat optical accounting) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the kiss photo, the borrowed scarf at her throat) — dramatic work: public exposure of the thing she can't take back — workshopped: no
5 — "*Luis cooked for eleven and we are four.*" (L11) — mechanism: hospitality overscale via specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the invitation June must lie to refuse; plants the foil brick — workshopped: no
6 — "*Can't — working,* June typed, which was going to be true if she started a painting before Friday" (L13) — mechanism: technical-truth rationalization — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the lie that drives the five studies and the soup-night reckoning — workshopped: no
7 — "Refusing an interrogation would have been easy. There was no interrogation to refuse." (L13) — mechanism: chiastic reversal — source: narrator-overlay (rhetorical polish on a beat that "that, somehow, was the part that cost" has already landed) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (any tactful-friend scene) — dramatic work: explains a cost already shown — workshopped: yes (symmetrical antithesis, punchline syntax)
8 — "Thursday was Thanksgiving, which she had forgotten until the street told her — closed grates, a man balancing a foil pan on both palms so it would not crease." (L21) — mechanism: observational specificity — source: character/situation (June's optical noticing; her unmooring from the calendar) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (paid off at L87; see item 28) — dramatic work: grief-calibrated comedy: the holiday arrives as logistics seen from outside it — workshopped: no
9 — "started the kitchen cleanup that painting in a kitchen requires" (L23) — mechanism: rueful understatement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (her kitchen-studio reality) — dramatic work: the material cost of working where you live — workshopped: no
10 — "Dana's room in Ridgewood, $340 and the heat was a rumor" (L29) — mechanism: hyperbolic compression — source: narrator-overlay (notebook-summary wit) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (stock cheap-apartment quip) — dramatic work: NY column unglamorous — but item 12 does this exact job better, in character — workshopped: no
11 — "sending it tonight, this particular night, would have nothing to do with ceiling height… Not a refusal. A held edge." (L31) — mechanism: stated-motive/real-motive gap, then deadpan reframe — source: first half character (funniness 2, passes); second half narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the flight impulse — workshopped: yes ("Not a refusal. A held edge." rebuilds the "Not the wall. The press." fragment stamp Voice Check 15 removed from Ch15)
12 — "*dana says the radiator works if you kick the valve, which is dana for it doesn't work.*" (L35) — mechanism: translation/decoding of an absent third party — source: character (Asha's no-mystique pragmatism; Dana established) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the New York path stays real and unglamorous — workshopped: no (watch: same mechanism family as the retired Mara-cites-Luis translation; one instance, different speaker, allowed)
13 — "*not rushing you. rushing them is my job.*" (L39) — mechanism: antithetical pivot — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (her literal coordinator role with the headcount deadline) — dramatic work: keeps the clock warm instead of menacing — workshopped: no (strongest counter-candidate I weighed for composed symmetry; it survives because the flip is her actual job description and texting-plausible)
14 — "*We saved you a plate, working girl,*" (L43) — mechanism: affectionate needling — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: lands on the lie June told to skip the dinner — workshopped: no
15 — "she'd told a lie to avoid a dinner so she could paint a room she was also avoiding. Then she rinsed the bowl, because the thought didn't need a second lap." (L43) — mechanism: self-aimed irony + refusal-to-conclude closure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: avoidance named once, cleanly — workshopped: no — TRACKER BREACH: "didn't need a second lap" is a new variant of the refusal-to-conclude family capped at Ch05 ("no new `left it alone / let it stand / left that thought` variants in Ch06+"); second instance in-chapter at L99 ("sat in drafts where she'd left it. She left it there.")
16 — "which was the actual price of leaving a room: what the room had handled quietly came home with you as errands" (L49) — mechanism: epigram — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (detachable breakup wisdom) — dramatic work: states the thesis the whole chapter then performs — workshopped: yes (colon-plus-aphorism syntax, composed for quotation)
17 — "*Keep it!! I have two. That was the plan.* / *You told me that so I'd take it.* / *and it worked. ok.*" (L53–57) — mechanism: retrospective reveal of benign manipulation + instant concession — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pays the Ch03 loan and Mara's card line "Take the scarf. I brought two") — dramatic work: a benign echo of the book's managed-for-your-own-good wound — Mara concedes in four words where Theo concealed for six weeks — workshopped: no
18 — "her free hand already out, palm up, resigned to it" (L61) — mechanism: physical comedy of foreknowledge — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Mara knows June will insist on closing the loan — workshopped: no
19 — "'You really washed it… Wool soap?' / 'And dried flat.' / 'Better than I treat it.'… It was padding even in transit." (L63–67) — mechanism: role-reversal understatement + deadpan utility — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's care language is exactness; the scarf never stops being useful — workshopped: no
20 — "You look like you're sleeping in shifts." (L67) — mechanism: hyperbolic concern-quip — source: character-intended, stock idiom in execution — funniness: 1 (smile-shaped, predictable "you look like ___" template) — portable: yes (appears unchanged in any exhausted-character scene in any book) — dramatic work: Mara clocks June's state — workshopped: no. The scene has just built a better, non-portable setup it then ignores: the scarf got cold water and flat drying; its owner's friend can see June got neither.
21 — "Luis made too much. There's pie under the turkey. Don't tilt it." (L71) — mechanism: logistical care comedy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the counter-loan; "Don't tilt it" arms the foil payoff at L87 — workshopped: no
22 — "It's a dish I want back, so it's not even generous. It's a hostage exchange." (L75) — mechanism: generosity reframed as self-interest (deflection of thanks so June can accept) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — shown work: the surface is folk Tupperware wit, but the line is the chapter's loan machinery made audible — it converts June's protest into a tether (dish return → soup → Tuesday) that the plot needs, and deflecting gratitude into logistics is Mara's established move — dramatic work: re-entanglement disguised as a joke — workshopped: no (speakable, asymmetrical, host-fluent)
23 — "Ruth has opinions about wall spacing and I need another painter at the table." (L75) — mechanism: pretext invitation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Ruth's exactness, the showcase walls) — dramatic work: a face-saving road back to Tuesday that routes around Theo — workshopped: no (watch: engineered-pretext family, third instance since Ch06's two; varied in kind, no fourth soon)
24 — "the Corolla's hazards blinked once" (L79) — mechanism: character-logic (Luis speaks in signals) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: time pressure delivered without a line of dialogue — workshopped: no
25 — "June had come to pay off a loan and was leaving with a new one. With this crowd, zero did not last long enough to be useful." (L81) — mechanism: ledger epigram — source: narrator-overlay (captions the joke Mara just made on-stage) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes ("with this crowd, zero did not last" fits any found-family novel) — dramatic work: restates what "hostage exchange," the foil brick, and L101's tally already play — workshopped: yes (aphorism syntax)
26 — "'Thank you for October.' / 'October,' Mara said. 'It's almost December. You can thank me in soup.'" (L83–85) — mechanism: correction + conversion of gratitude into future obligation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June tries to close the account as a goodbye; Mara refuses the closure and books a future — workshopped: no
27 — "Sonia's window had one of the flyers in it, low, by the register, crooked." (L87) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation, single-word callback to item 3 — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the kiss-and-scarf flyer now lives inside June's own tether territory — workshopped: no
28 — "the foil level the whole time like she'd been told" (L87) — mechanism: callback / obedience deadpan paying item 8 — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June joins the population of people carrying care through the street — workshopped: no
29 — "The chair did nothing. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door, and if it was unbearable, that was a problem the viewer had brought with them." (L91) — mechanism: deadpan disavowal in crit-room idiom turned on herself — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (she is the viewer; the idiom is her trade) — dramatic work: grief held at arm's length in professional language; the refusal that makes turning the studies face-down inevitable — workshopped: no
30 — "his omission setting her zip code, his silence signing her W-2" (L97) — mechanism: parallel zeugma (abstractions as paperwork agents) — source: narrator-overlay (rhetorical polish over June's anger) — funniness: 1 (wit-shaped, not funny; this is a rupture-aftermath reasoning beat dressed as a quotable) — portable: no — dramatic work: the logic of not fleeing on his schedule — workshopped: yes (composed symmetrical doublet)
31 — "one return down, one acquired" (L101) — mechanism: ledger tally — source: character (grounded in the literal rinsed dish) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's loan arc closed in an action — workshopped: no (survives only if the ledger family upstream is thinned; see orders)

Distribution checks:
- **Density:** 31 items in a rupture-aftermath chapter — not thin. The thinness question the calibration raised does not arise; what does arise is placement, which is correct: all Theo-adjacent material (the 11:40 "Okay. No chair." text, the acknowledgments-page reasoning, four of the five studies) is joke-free, and the comedy concentrates in the cohort/care channels. The one joke inside the studies sequence (item 29) sharpens grief rather than softening it. Not OVERSWEETENED: June never accepts Tuesday, the warmth arrives as obligation rather than resolution, and the chapter ends on a single filled nail hole, not a laugh.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan dominates (a solo-June chapter pushes wit onto objects: items 1, 2, 4, 10, 19, 29, 31), but callback structure (8/28, 3/27), physical comedy (18, 24), translation (12), reversal (17, 26), and reframing (22) keep it off MONOTONOUS.
- **Register family at cap:** the fiscal-ledger figure runs five narration clusters — unbilled-job simile (L7), price-of-leaving epigram (L49), loan/zero caption (L81), arithmetic/ledger/ratify/W-2 cluster (L97), return tally (L101). The tracker marked this register spent as Ch07's spine, "do not inherit as default narration" at Ch08, and watch at Ch09. Ch18 has re-inherited it as its default summarizing voice. Orders 1, 6, and 8 below reduce the family to two grounded instances (L97's literal job terms, L101's literal dish).
- **Cringe:** none; nothing misjudges the O'Leary/Henry-at-60%/Morisaki reader.
- **Calibration item not found:** "commits to the bridge" does not appear anywhere in the current chapter text (verified by search); no bridge or commit language exists. Recorded as absent, not cleared.

Verdict: **CLEAR** — majority funniness-2, overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced, mechanisms varied, and the grief placement is correct; the narrator-overlay pocket (items 2, 7, 10, 11b, 16, 25, 30) is exactly where the blocking findings live. Strongest surviving item: item 26 — "'October,' Mara said. 'It's almost December. You can thank me in soup.'" (with item 29's "a problem the viewer had brought with them" the close second). Weakest surviving item: item 9 — "the kitchen cleanup that painting in a kitchen requires" — lands only as smallness-register texture; it would not survive in a denser chapter.

REVISION ORDERS:
1. Item 2 — "like a job she hadn't billed for" — portable fiscal simile, first of five ledger-family instances. Cut the simile; "the gray spines squared up against the wall" and "eating around them since Tuesday night" already carry the pressure.
2. Item 7 — "Refusing an interrogation would have been easy. There was no interrogation to refuse." — workshopped chiasmus explaining a beat already landed. Cut both sentences and end the paragraph on "that, somehow, was the part that cost." If a clarifier proves necessary, keep only "There was no interrogation to refuse" — never both halves of the symmetry.
3. Item 10 — "the heat was a rumor" — portable quip duplicating item 12's character-sourced radiator joke. Cut it; let the column read "$340" plain and let Asha's valve text (L35) own the joke.
4. Item 11b — "Not a refusal. A held edge." — rebuilds the two-fragment stamp Voice Check 15 removed from Ch15 ("Not the wall. The press."). Remove the stamp: either end the paragraph at "closed the laptop," or fold the figure into one full sentence in June's voice (her card licenses "edge" as working vocabulary, not as a closing chord).
5. Item 15 — "because the thought didn't need a second lap" — new variant of the refusal-to-conclude family capped at Ch05 (tics.md: no new variants Ch06+). Cut the because-clause; "Then she rinsed the bowl." performs the refusal physically and is funnier. Same family at L99: "sat in drafts where she'd left it. She left it there." is also redundant — cut "She left it there."
6. Item 16 — "which was the actual price of leaving a room: what the room had handled quietly came home with you as errands" — workshopped portable epigram. End the sentence at "on purpose." The chapter then performs the thesis (scarf, dish, pie, catalogs) without the narrator filing it first.
7. Item 20 — "You look like you're sleeping in shifts." — portable stock idiom, funniness 1. Replace with a Mara-specific read built from what is literally in her hands: the scene has just established that the scarf got cold water, wool soap, and flat drying, and Mara can see June gave herself none of the equivalent — or let her concern stay in her established channel and put one plain unguarded sentence here (her card allows ordinary hosting plainness; the foil brick is already the answer to what she sees). Keep it speakable; do not build a symmetrical scarf/June epigram in its place.
8. Item 25 — "June had come to pay off a loan and was leaving with a new one. With this crowd, zero did not last long enough to be useful." — narrator-overlay epigram captioning Mara's on-stage joke (item 22), third ledger instance. Cut both sentences; keep "The dish under the turkey meant another return, another week with Mara's kitchen in her apartment." — that sentence is already the funny-true version, and item 31 books the tally once at the close.
9. Item 30 — "his omission setting her zip code, his silence signing her W-2" — workshopped doublet at the chapter's angriest reasoning beat. Break the symmetry: keep one concrete instrument (the W-2 coheres with "ratify" two sentences later) and recast the other half as plain June reasoning, not a matched clause.
10. Verdict-level — fiscal-ledger narration family at five clusters against a tracker history of spent/do-not-inherit/watch (Ch07/Ch08/Ch09 rows). Orders 1, 6, and 8 reduce it to the L97 job-terms cluster and L101's action-grounded tally; both may stand. Log for Ch19: no new ledger/debt figures in narration; the register is spent again.
11. Tracker bookkeeping for Ch19, no text change: the crooked-flyer callback (items 3/27) and the foil-level pair (items 8/28) are closed — retire both; the Asha/Dana translation joke (item 12) holds the decoder mechanism at one instance — no second decoder character soon; engineered-pretext (item 23) is at three varied instances — no fourth; "padding even in transit" (item 19) skirts the closed scarf-as-agent family — the scarf exits the book's foreground with this chapter, keep it that way.
