# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 22: The Booth — Round 3 (post-repair verification)

id: positive_prose_audit | owner: claude | tier: risk | pass: cold read, current integrated text, round 3
inputs: `output/chapters/chapter_22.md` (current: post Positive Prose round-2 repairs and Comedy Doctor round-3 cut, verified against Dialogue Doctor round 4 and Comedy Doctor round 4, both run on this text); round-1 findings `output/critiques/claude/chapter_22.positive_prose.md` (14 orders); round-2 findings `output/critiques/claude/chapter_22.positive_prose_round2.md` (2 orders); `output/critiques/claude/chapter_22.dialogue_doctor_round4.md` (OVERALL: CLEAN); `output/critiques/claude/chapter_22.comedy_doctor_round4.md` (VERDICT: CLEAR, current-text re-baseline); `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` §2, §5, §6, §8; voice cards (June Park, Theo Brennan); chapter card 22 ("The Booth").

Standard of comparison: §2 register (plain-speech floor, blind-POV differentiation, zero-tolerance on narration about speech), §5 care moves never captioned, §6 tic catalog, §8 smallness / earned-stay / followability tests. The chapter card's dialogue risk — "plainness over eloquence" — is binding.

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## Round-2 order verification and current-repair checks

**R2 order 1 — Dana wall mind-read replaced with observable fact: EXECUTED.** Current L5: "She had taken the L to Ridgewood yesterday and measured Dana's wall twice; Dana had cleared the north wall before she arrived and stood out of the way until June asked about the outlet." The "expression of a woman who had already cleared the room and was letting June arrive at it" scaffold is gone — grep for "expression of a" returns zero hits. Both replacement clauses are observable facts (a wall cleared before arrival; a woman standing back until asked a question); the inference the old clause asserted — Dana had already decided — is now the reader's to draw, on the chapter's own repaired standard (observation first, deduction second, the L73 thumbnail model). The replacement adds no figure, no scaffold, and its nouns are non-portable (the L to Ridgewood, the north wall, the outlet). The sentence's kept first half ("measured Dana's wall twice") stands as ordered.

**R2 order 2 — sugar sentence truncated: EXECUTED.** Current L163: "His coffee order was the same as it had been in week one, black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation, and she had watched him doctor it this morning." The sentence ends at "this morning"; "without admitting she was memorizing it" is gone — grep for "memorizing" returns zero hits. "Watched him doctor it" is plain fact with a literal verb; no epistemic scaffold regrew at the cut site.

**Comedy round-3/4 repair — opening dish tag cut: CONFIRMED on current text.** L3: "It sat on the drainboard, cobalt going almost green where the glaze thinned at the rim." No "cataloguing that like anyone was paying her to" — grep for "cataloguing" returns zero hits. Tested against this audit's four questions, not just the comedy contract: the cut removed a narrator-overlay clause without leaving a summarizing stub; the paragraph now runs owned observation (glaze) → action (wrap, unwrap, table) → practical reason ("because Tuesday was two days away", the round-1 §4-3 repair, still holding). Nothing was grown at the site.

**Single sanctioned known/not-known instance: CONFIRMED.** Full family sweep of every know/knew/knowing construction in the chapter. The chiasmus scaffold occurs exactly once, at the kiss, on the sugar fact: "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (L165) — the round-1 designated keeper, anchored to the literal three-sugars fact planted at L163. Non-members adjudicated: "She still did not know whether that was kindness or Theo giving himself somewhere to stand if she said no" (L13) — genuine single uncertainty that resolves into behavior (the tuck-the-phone impulse), not a paradox; "they both knew it" (L29) — shared knowledge of a physical fact, no epistemic fold; "which meant he'd been in the stockroom... She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for." (L73) — single not-knowing, her card's cataloguing behavior, count still one per the round-2 watch note; "telling herself it was the warm one" (L23) — rationalization ending where round 1 ordered it to end, cashed literally at L177 ("which was, as suspected, not the warm one"); "I started it week three and stopped because I knew what it was" (L113) — dialogue, plain past knowledge, no fold. One instance, as ordered.

**New-prose sweep of every changed site: CLEAN.** The text changes since round 2 are four: the L5 Dana substitution, the L163 truncation, the L3 clause cut, and the Dialogue Doctor housekeeping deletion of "back" at L139 (current: "He moved the sugar caddy beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." — grep for "caddy back" returns zero hits). All four are pure cuts or fact-for-inference substitutions; none introduces a figure, a summary, a therapy register, or a portable frame. All other text was checked against round 2's quotations and is verbatim-stable.

Score: both round-2 orders executed; the comedy cut and the fossil deletion introduced nothing this audit polices. The 14 round-1 orders were re-spot-checked at their sites and hold.

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## 1. Which paragraphs feel portable to another novel?

No findings. What was checked, and the strongest counter-candidates:

- The repaired Dana sentence (L5) — the strongest candidate by construction, since it is new text at a former finding site. Tested for portability: it does not port. "Cleared the north wall before she arrived and stood out of the way until June asked about the outlet" is welded to Ridgewood, the measured wall in June's notebook (`74" clear to radiator, north till 1, plaster soft at baseboard`), and the earned-stay ledger the chapter cashes at L91; a Beth O'Leary apartment chapter could use a considerate landlady, but not this one's outlet question or this notebook's measurements. Passes.
- The booth entrance (L27): "Third booth, the one with the taped seat, facing the door. One cup in front of him, half gone, which meant he'd been early enough that she would not have to walk in and wait alone." — carried counter-candidate, re-verified: the inference rides her earned "which meant" form, sits on counted objects, and is specific to this ask and this man's care register. Passes.
- The sweater beat (L23): "put on the good sweater, telling herself it was the warm one." — a rationalization any romance could stage, but it is now action-only (round-1 repair holding) and it opens a three-beat thread the chapter closes on its own terms ("the cold working through the good sweater, which was, as suspected, not the warm one", L177). The alibi is book-local by the time it is cashed. Passes.
- The kiss paragraph (L165) — re-verified: "getting the angle wrong at first, off-center, his nose cold against her cheek... His hands stayed in his pockets the whole time." Literal, consent-legible, correctly closed-door per §3 of the guide; its tail is the one sanctioned chiasmus. Passes.
- The closing index card (L177): `TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn` — still unreadable outside this book; §8 smallness at full strength.

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## 2. Where does prose summarize pressure rather than make the reader inhabit it?

No findings. What was checked, and the strongest counter-candidates:

- "She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for." (L73) — the section's strongest candidate, one step from §6 self-watching. Passes on the round-2 grounds, re-verified on current text: it is cataloguing, her card's named stress behavior, not feeling-watching, and the filing is cashed twice (the refill beat at L97, the memorized order at L163). The watch note stands: a second filing-note in any future touch tips it.
- "He did not say anything, so she kept the canvas between them instead of softening it." (L107) — near the §2 line. Passes because "kept the canvas between them" reports what she does — holds the topic on the object and issues the Tuesday term — not a grade of her own delivery; no sentence of hers is characterized. Dialogue Doctor round 4 reached the same ruling ("at the line, not over it"); independently re-tested here against the summarized-pressure question specifically: the pressure (his silence after "It's a portrait, Theo") is lived in the next spoken line, not reported from altitude.
- "It cost her a second to answer." (L105) — pressure as a time fact, sitting beside the plain naming of his error ("He had made the blank into a prize."), where naming is the event per §2. Passes.
- "She made herself finish." (L91) — effort of completing the utterance, an act; it inhabits the cost of "It isn't for you" rather than certifying it. Passes.
- "there was nothing to do at the top of that gesture and they both knew it" (L29) — June's read of a physical geometry (the half-stand's dead end), not a managerial gloss on tension; the §6 "unspecified tension" family has no member here because the gesture is fully specified. Passes.
- The draft-composing beat (L15), round 1's finding site, re-verified stable: two drafts on screen verbatim, the third described by content, the deletion lived ("she held her thumb down until it disappeared").

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## 3. Where does dialogue sound polished, therapeutic, or aphoristic?

No findings. No dialogue was touched by any repair since Dialogue Doctor round 4 ran on this exact text (its verification of the payment staging and all seven modes was independently spot-checked, not carried blind). Strongest counter-candidates, re-tested against this audit's question:

- "If you were going, I'd hope it went well. Since you're staying, I'm glad. I'm not making more of it than that." (L93) — still the chapter's most composed speech: symmetric if/since architecture. Survives because the composure is the content — the beat before shows the composing ("He looked at the cup before answering."), the restraint is the chapter card's explicit requirement (no grand-gesture energy at June's stay), and June grades it on the page ("That's the right amount."), converting polish into scored conduct. He gets no second speech this composed; the chapter still doesn't give him one.
- "Like if I finished enough of everyone else's problems, eventually there was a square with my name on it." (L103) — carried at the same narrow margin: the saving restart ("He looked at his cup and started again.") is verbatim-intact, and the square stays literal to the canvas. Passes narrowly; the restart remains non-negotiable in any future touch.
- "It isn't evidence of anything and it doesn't fix anything." (L113) — paired negation, quotable-adjacent; survives as the anti-gesture disclaimer the chapter card demands, embedded in his card's logistics inventory (labeled, name, dates, stockroom, faced to the wall) and followed by plain-fact reasoning ("it has your face in it and you're going to be in that room Tuesday").
- "I want to watch you finish it instead of finding out you did it at two in the morning so nobody would see you try." (L149) — long and insightful for June; survives as her owned §5 care move (precise, unsentimental praise plus honest warning), aimed at documented behavior (the Thursday-night painting alone, "I stocked it in October"), with craft-specific praise around it ("The underpainting's good... the color under it is good").
- "That happened because the terms are set," she said. "Not instead of them." (L167) — quotable, but a fact about her own completed action, structurally required by the §8 earned-stay test; Theo declines to match it ("I learned it this morning, but I know it" admits recency instead of returning a beat).
- Plain-speech floor spot-check (§2): June — "I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you." (L91); Theo — "I was being scared and slow." (L71). Both principals clear the floor unangled. The round-1 fracture repairs hold verbatim: the "No." restart at L57, the stall at L79 ("because then I'd have to..." She stopped.), the confessed-not-performed polish impulse at L67 ("I keep wanting to make it sound cleaner." / "Don't.").

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## 4. Where would literal precision beat figurative language?

No findings. What was checked, and the strongest counter-candidates:

- "how he would restructure the known world so this could never happen again" (L61) — still the section's strongest candidate: an abstraction at scale. Survives as June's dry hyperbole about his character, anchored to his card's nouns in the same sentence ("the list, schedules and keys") and immediately corrected by literal behavior ("He reached for his cup instead."). A joke about him, not mood work.
- "which looked like a dentist's reminder" (L15) — a comparison, but her visual register applied to words she is literally looking at on a screen, and the payload is the quoted draft itself (*We should probably talk, yes*); the literal observation is already present, so there is nothing for precision to replace. Passes.
- "the single inefficient thing in his entire operation" (L163) — "operation" is her dry characterization resting on the held-since-week-one literal order (black with three sugars); with the round-2 truncation the sentence now ends on plain fact ("watched him doctor it this morning"), which strengthens the figure-to-fact ratio at the site. Passes.
- "the exit installed before she'd even reached for the door" (L13) — carried clearance, re-verified: exact about what the second text mechanically does; her register.
- "That was fine. Her life had earned one confusing receipt." (L143) — small lift on a literal object the reader watched her file against Dana's wall page; self-aimed, hers.
- "She sent it before the hour could argue with her." (L21) and "pale against the table, somebody else's morning" (L29) — carried clearances, re-verified; the second still earns its lift by seeding the cup-on-ring object the scene reuses three times (L41, L53 area, L117).
- Round-1 and round-2 §4 sites confirmed clean on current text: the sidewalk stands on a bike with salt-dried tires (L157), the portrait timeline on dates (L117), the dish on a Tuesday fact (L3), and the Dana sentence on a cleared wall and an outlet question (L5).

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## Chapter verdict

`INHABITED` — zero revision orders. Both round-2 orders are executed exactly as written: the Dana sentence now carries observable fact in place of the "expression of a woman who" mind-read, and the sugar sentence ends at "this morning" with the memorizing clause gone. The comedy cut at L3 and the "back" fossil deletion at L139 introduced no new prose defect. The known/not-known construction stands at exactly one instance, the sanctioned kiss-sentence chiasmus, grep-verified. All 14 round-1 orders continue to hold at their sites. The four sections above were each swept cold with the strongest counter-candidates shown; the standing watch items (the L73 filing-note at its count of one, the L103 restart, the deflecting-tag family at its ceiling of five) are conditions on future touches, not current findings. Chapter 22 is clean on this audit's four questions.
