# Plain-Translation Audit — Chapter 20, "No Advice / Keys Here"

id: plain_translation | tier: risk | trigger: every-revised-chapter + flag:register-drift
Inputs verified: chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_20.md`), reading guide §§1, 2, 5, 6, 8 (`premise/READING_GUIDE.md`), voice cards (`output/style_and_voice.md`), calibration (`output/tics.md`, `output/model_prompts/claude/chapter_draft/chapter_20.md`), adjacent summaries (`output/rolling_summaries/chapter_18.md`, `output/rolling_summaries/chapter_19.md`). Verdicts are on the chapter text as it stands.

Stance: skeptical. No praise. Every verdict names the sample compared and shows the rewrite attempted or the strongest counter-candidate cleared.

**Form identification.** Close-third June narration throughout (compare: June voice card, NOT generic clarity). No assignment-card epigraph — correct: off-Tuesday decision chapter per the chapter card. Documentary inserts, checked only against their own forms and never plain-translated toward literary clarity: the receipt (`FRI DEC 4 / NOON`), the notebook left/right pages and their later fills, the fresh index card, the text threads (Sam 9:52, Asha post-call, Dana 11:20), the Kessler email summary, the landlord notice. Dialogue exchanges: Ruth/Sam visit, Asha call, Nia call (compare: each speaker's card samples). Locked text: chapter heading only. No amplification direction declared; no chaos_up handoff.

**Blind-POV check (§8):** passes — money arithmetic fused to optical nouns (cobalt pooling near the foot, value structure into the corner, flat gray light), self-aimed dryness ("give or take the walk from the sink to the table"), self-interruption ("The class is--"), exits and object-sorting under stress. No Theo-syntax bleed.

**Standing-order compliance sweep (mechanical):** "load-bearing" 0; "crooked" 0; ledger/debt/fiscal *narration* 0 (all money is diegetic figures in notebook, dialogue, or documentary text); clementines 0; stool-count jokes 0; extra jar symbolism 0 (the water jar and mineral spirits jar are literal paperweights planted Ch15/Ch18; the final receipt-for-index-card swap under the jar is object action, not added symbolism); dialogue diagnosis 0 after interrogating the two strongest counter-candidates — "Asha hung up before the word was finished" (a timing fact, not a rating of delivery) and Nia's "That's already more than most references" (rates invoices, a work product, not speech); "the way" connective 1/1 at the post-Ch11 cap (line 99, cleared below); Ch19 room/side/reach vocabulary pivoted (see echo gate); "Noted" ×2 concurring with the Comedy Doctor's spent-at-2 ruling; `FEB = coat` paid once, not repeated as charm; Theo absent except as object consequence — no apology, no offer leak, `Okay. No chair.` quoted once as an unopened record; care-without-advice never named or certified on the page (nearest candidate: Ruth's "We came for the dish," which is a refusal, not a virtue-caption). "against" ×3 (money/path comparisons) — already logged mechanically; rests in Ch21.

**Light-image ledger (watch, flagged to the mechanical gate, no order from this audit):** three light touches — the dish glaze "gray-green at the rim if the light came from the left" (object description in June's optic), the painted "floor going warm where the afternoon came in" (depicted content of the study), and the photo's "flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall" with "June looked at the light longest" (the chapter's one deliberate light image, uncaptioned). Defensible as one deliberate image plus two literal color facts, but Ch21 should carry exactly one.

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## Per-paragraph verdicts

LOCKED — "# Chapter Twenty: No Advice / Keys Here" — skipped, listed under calibration's inviolable text (heading may remain).

HOLDS — "On Thursday morning June took the receipt out from under the mineral spirits jar..." — sample compared: June card ("under stress: packs, sorts, cleans... folds paper corners"; time must stay visible per chapter card) — rewrite attempted ("On Thursday morning June put the deadline receipt on the kitchen table. She had about a day to decide.") is worse because: it deletes printed-side-down with "her own capitals faced the ceiling" (the deadline in her handwriting turned up, the vendor's name turned down — the decision's ownership performed as object placement), the pencil "gone shiny where she'd folded and unfolded the corner" (worry as material wear, her card's exact fold tell), and "give or take the walk from the sink to the table" (self-aimed dry joke, June register). Density, drama, and fidelity all lose.

HOLDS — "She brought everything else to it." — sample compared: June card (sorts objects by edge/weight; painter's eye) — rewrite attempted ("She gathered the notebook, her phone, and the box of catalogs, and left Mara's dish in the rack.") is worse because: it strips "that milky cobalt that went gray-green at the rim if the light came from the left" — optical noticing that IS the card, aimed at the care-tether object — and flattens "She left it there." (a decision withheld, rendered as a non-move) into inventory.

HOLDS — "The five studies stayed face down under the water jar." — sample compared: June card (compresses when exposed) — rewrite attempted ("She wasn't ready to look at the studies yet.") is worse because: it converts "Not yet." into stated feeling, and loses "She could see the staple lines through the back of the top one" — exact seeing while refusing to see, the contradiction line of her card (wants to be seen exactly / wants not to be caught needing it) done in one object.

HOLDS — "Left page of the notebook, in pen: TASKER..." — documentary form (notebook), checked against its own form, not plain-translated — the figures are the offer's load-bearing terms (chapter card: money math must carry stakes, not brochure prose); VANDERCOOK "crossed out hard enough to dent the page" renders the suppressed want as pencil physics; "GOOD" is Monday's one-word verdict, planted for its line-77 reprise. Interrogated "a clause Nia had put there, not because June had asked" as a caption: cleared — provenance fact the Nia call depends on ("I didn't put the studio clause in to sweeten it"), not commentary.

HOLDS — "Right page: NEW YORK. Kessler, load-in January 4..." — documentary form — rewrite into prose summary attempted ("The New York option paid less and later.") is worse because: net-45/invoice-the-25th/money-lands-in-March is the cash-flow mechanics the whole Nia call and the "here to March" question price; "FEB = . There was nothing to put there." is the blank as notation-object (paid at line 155); "whether she decided anything or not" keeps the lease clock adversarial; "she left the word without an underline" is hedged hope as pen behavior.

DRIFTED — original: "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing." — binding-register version: "She had kept stepping back from paintings all fall as if the problem were viewing distance." — what the rewrite preserves: the self-diagnosis in June's optical diction, and the stepping-back plant that the close pays literally (she steps back "into the kitchen doorway, the distance she'd have at Dana's," then steps in and the corner stays); what drift it removes: the balanced chiasmus ("a drawing problem / the problem was in the drawing"), which detaches cleanly as an epigram about avoidance — tattoo-able, epigraph-shaped, and precisely the summary-maxim the chapter card banned ("a decision chapter with scene pressure, not a reflective essay"; "no summary maxim"). Placed one sentence before "the left page won," it also pre-explains the no that the Nia call will earn materially. The rest of the paragraph ("She squared the receipt against the notebook's edge. She'd done it four times and it came out the same every time: the left page won.") HOLDS — the arithmetic verdict against her own choice is the cost stated as fact. ORDER: REPLACE. (Cross-listed under APHORISM-GATE.)

HOLDS — "The phone buzzed against the table at 9:52." + Sam's text + "door sticks, push don't pull." — documentary text-message form, checked against itself — Sam's text is errand-and-timestamp, card-true; June's reply is hospitality as literal instruction, in her compression. No rewrite attempted toward literary clarity; the form forbids it.

HOLDS — "They came up at 10:40, Sam first..." — samples compared: Sam card (makes physical room) and Ruth card ("coat still buttoned" — not staying, limits kept) — rewrite attempted ("Sam and Ruth arrived and immediately noticed the box of catalogs.") is worse because: "Sam saw the box by the table before they saw anything else in the apartment" is the mover's eye finding the errand first — care located in what a person scans for, uncaptioned.

HOLDS — "'We're double-parked,' Ruth said. 'Two minutes.'" + "'Two minutes is right,' June said. 'There's coffee. There hasn't been milk since Sunday.'" — samples compared: Ruth card (exact limits, no warmth performance) and June card (self-aimed honesty) — rewrite attempted (June simply offering coffee) is worse because: "Two minutes is right" accepts the limit as correct — care taken on the giver's terms — and the milk-less week confesses the state of the apartment sideways without one sentence of interiority. Echo "Two minutes"/"Two minutes is right" cleared: cross-speaker, transformed (limit → endorsement of the limit).

HOLDS — "Sam crossed to the box and tested a corner of it..." through "'We know how to deliver a box,' Ruth said." — samples compared: Sam card ("What's the freight?" — mover's diction), June card, Ruth card (dry refusal of ceremony) — June's line-31 instruction block was interrogated as over-management and holds: the routing (Sonia's if Theo is there; inside the door if not; "You don't have to say anything except that they're from me") is the no-contact rule enacted as pure logistics, her longest turn spent on the one thing she cannot do herself — and the plain-speech floor is met by a stated refusal, not an angled one. "until the cardboard edge pressed a line into her thumb" is the chapter's one foregrounded hand beat: cost registered through an object edge. Ruth's reply deflates any ceremony June might build. Followable cold.

HOLDS — "'The box is the errand. The dish is separate.'... 'Tell her I'll sit where she tells me.'" — sample compared: June card + Ch18 obligation (Mara: bring the dish Tuesday, sit by her) — rewrite attempted ("June decided to return the dish herself and accept Mara's invitation.") is worse because: the reversal happens on the page mid-object (picks the dish up, stands holding it, puts it back) and "I'll sit where she tells me" is acceptance of care on the giver's terms — the chapter's engine in nine words of dialogue. Interrogated "it was the best part of the dish" (the pooled-black flaw) at the aphorism gate: cleared — optical fact in her precise-praise register, pinned to Mara's known refusal to let Luis replace the set; a flaw-is-best sentiment-shape defused by referent.

HOLDS — "'She'll like that better than the dish,' Sam said..." — sample compared: Sam card (moves furniture, makes literal room) — rewrite attempted ("Sam picked the box up and cleared a path.") is worse because: "knees" as a one-word adverb of correct lifting, and moving the chair "six inches to the left" so the door can swing, are the owned care move at its exact grain — competence without comment.

HOLDS — "Ruth had not moved from the edge of the kitchen..." — sample compared: Ruth card ("stills, watches"; "withholds her own conclusion") — rewrite attempted ("Ruth noticed the deadline written on the receipt but said nothing.") is worse because: her eyes stopping on `FRI DEC 4 / NOON` and "June did not turn the receipt over" is a restraint duel conducted entirely in object behavior — Ruth declines to ask, June declines to hide it, and neither move is narrated as virtue.

HOLDS — "'I want to say one thing,' Ruth said. 'This fall I noticed things. I kept them to myself and called it manners.'... 'Some of it was easier for me.'" (highest-risk block, full comparison) — sample compared: Ruth card ("Sam thinks I waited too long."; "partial-truth clocker with cost"; one editorial-sharp line per appearance) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "'I should have said something this fall,' Ruth said. 'I'm sorry I didn't.'" — the rewrite is measurably worse on all three axes. Density: it loses "and called it manners" — the self-indictment naming the *mechanism* of her silence (privacy as cover, her arc's exact hinge) — and "Some of it was easier for me," which converts apology into audit. Drama: the strap-straightening between the two admissions is her card's stress tell placed where a softer writer would put a sigh. Fidelity: this is Ruth-watch beat 4 of 4 paid as care-without-advice, and the rewrite's generic apology asks June to manage Ruth's feelings, which the scene refuses. Cap check: "I kept them to myself and called it manners" is her one sharp line this appearance — 1/1, cap intact (cleared at the aphorism gate below).

HOLDS — "June looked at the receipt so she wouldn't look at Ruth..." + "'You can leave that part out,' Ruth said. 'We came for the dish.'" — samples compared: June card (self-interruption when vulnerable) and Ruth card (care without advice) — rewrite attempted ("June said she couldn't explain her absence yet, and Ruth didn't press.") is worse because: "because of a thing I'm not going to explain yet" is withholding visible *as* withholding (§2's requirement), the broken sentence "The class is--" then "the part that works" performs the card's compression under exposure, and Ruth's reply grants the omission while re-shrinking the visit to its errand. Followable cold: what June refused, what Ruth accepted, both statable in one sentence each.

HOLDS — "Sam was already at the door with the box when June said, 'I have a job answer due at noon tomorrow...'" through "'Noted,' June said. 'Both of you--thank you. For the box.'" — samples compared: June card, Ruth card, Sam card — the "I'm not asking for an opinion. I want to be clear that I'm not asking." doubling is same-speaker contract-setting emphasis (cleared at the echo gate); Ruth's entire reply to a disclosure of the chapter's biggest pending decision is "We have a car." — advice-shaped space filled with logistics only, which is the scene's thesis done rather than said; Sam's "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." cleared at the aphorism gate below; "thank you. For the box." aims the gratitude at the object so it stays acceptable to all three. Plain-speech floor met by every principal.

HOLDS — "Sam got the door open with a hip... The rectangle by the door was bare except for a strip of dust where the box had been." + "She washed the blue dish again. She dried it and set it on the shelf." — sample compared: June card (physically busy under feeling) — rewrite attempted ("After they left with the catalogs, June felt the apartment empty out.") is worse because: the dust strip is absence as floor fact, and washing an already-clean dish *again* — then moving it from rack to shelf — is the Tuesday decision ratified in dishware without one word of interiority. (The dish was clean since Tuesday night, established at line 5; the redundancy is the tell.)

HOLDS — "Asha called back at 4:05, freight noise behind her..." + "Talk fast, I'm holding a door with my whole body." — sample compared: Asha card ("clipped and schedule-aware"; work-world texture) — rewrite attempted ("Asha called back from work, sounding busy.") is worse because: the gate boom, the pallet jack, and the door held with a whole body are the load-in world June is choosing, present as sound; deleting them deletes the stakes' texture.

HOLDS — "'Two things. First one's a question and it's yours to say no to.'..." + "'Say the studio clause again.'" — samples compared: June card and Asha card — rewrite attempted ("June described the Tasker offer and asked if Asha wanted to be recommended.") is worse because: "yours to say no to" puts consent before terms (the referral-not-proxy order executed in the first sentence), "the pen capped, because this part she knew without notes" carries her certainty as an object state, and Asha's "Say the studio clause again" locates, in five words, the one term a working painter actually audits.

HOLDS — "'Who writes that?' Asha said. 'Nia Torres, apparently...'" + "'Why aren't you taking it? That's not me being polite.'" + "'That's tomorrow's phone call,' June said." — sample compared: Asha card ("direct, dry, generous with leads"; no pity) — rewrite attempted ("Asha was impressed by the terms and asked why June wasn't taking the job herself; June deflected.") is worse because: "She'll eyeball a run and put a level on it anyway" is work-witnessed praise in install diction; "Ninety days to benefits is real" prices the question; and June's deferral is dated and kept ("Today I need a yes or no") — deflection visible as scheduling, not dressed as wit. Followable cold.

HOLDS — "'Yes,' Asha said. 'Send it...'" + "'One thing, though. Send my name because I'm qualified. If you're trying to feel less bad, don't.'" + "June looked at the left page... 'I did want to feel less bad,' she said." — samples compared: Asha card (the chapter card's ordered warning against referral-as-avoidance) and June card ("full forms only... when trying not to fall apart") — rewrite attempted ("June admitted the referral partly eased her guilt.") is worse because: the cross-speaker "feel less bad" echo is charge → owned confession (tense-shifted, "did" uncontracted per her contractions policy — the full form is the tell), delivered while looking at GOOD in her own handwriting: the notebook plant cashed as shame check. Cleared at the echo gate.

HOLDS — "'Okay.' A wheel bumped metal at her end. 'Dana: first month plus one month deposit...'" through "'Okay,' June said, and Asha hung up before the word was finished." — sample compared: Asha card (rate/invoice/load-in specifics; hangs up when the information is transferred) — rewrite attempted ("Asha ran through the money and dates and asked if June could survive until the install paid out.") is worse because: "the radiator is decorative. Wear the coat inside until February." delivers the room's failure as deadpan spec and plants `FEB = coat`; "So the real question: can you get from here to March?" is the chapter's actual question asked plainly by the person with standing to ask it; "$2,643 and whatever paid crating I can get in December" answers in June's exact-figures register. One echo order inside this block — Asha's "The room's not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive." — is issued at the VERBATIM-ECHO gate below; the block otherwise holds.

HOLDS — "June uncapped the pen and filled in the right page. DEC 10--DANA, $980..." — documentary form (notebook fill) — the capped pen from the call's start uncaps only after consent and terms exist; `FEB = .` recopied still blank is the honest remainder. Not plain-translated.

HOLDS — "Friday she was awake at 6:10 without an alarm... She read it once. The To field was still empty. She deleted it." — sample compared: June card (exits before asks) — rewrite attempted ("She finally deleted the email to Nia she'd never sent.") is worse because: "the email she'd been not-sending to Nia for nine days" prices the want by duration; the never-filled To field is the nine days of hedge as a form-field fact; and the deleted footage question (forty-by-sixty run on the north wall) is the Tasker fantasy at its most specific in the same breath it dies. Ch18 plant paid.

HOLDS — "Scrolling for Dana's thread she hit the one that still ended *Okay. No chair.* She did not open it." — documentary quote of the Ch18 record, exempt as record; "She did not open it" is restraint as thumb action. Rewrite attempted (cutting the beat) is worse because: the chapter card requires Theo present only as object consequence, and this is that — one thread, not opened, no commentary.

HOLDS — "She put the right page beside it: $490, JAN 2--KEYS, ten feet of wall, FEB blank. If Tuesdays ended, if Theo never called..." (highest-risk block, full comparison) — sample compared: June card ("interiority rhythm: perception first, judgment second, self-rebuke third"; §8 earned-stay test) — binding-register rewrite attempted: "Even if she never saw Theo again, the New York numbers stayed bad. She chose them anyway." — the rewrite is measurably worse on all three axes. Density: it loses the three escalating conditionals (Tuesdays → Theo → the studio itself) that run the earned-stay test as arithmetic — the decision audited against the worst case, which is exactly what §8 demands be *legible*, and legibility requires the test be shown once. Drama: it loses the ground inspection — "holes, thin patches, places where wanting had been scumbled over need" — want examined in craft terms and admitted, then immediately priced by "The $340 room barely held heat." Fidelity: "She left the page where it was" closes on non-action as decision, June's exact grammar of resolve. Over-explanation interrogation (the prompt's special gate): this is the chapter's ONE explicit Theo-independence stress test; it argues in numbers, not slogans, and no narration claims independence as a virtue — cleared, with the note that it must remain the only one (see orders). "the way she'd look at a ground" — the 1/1 "the way" cap instance, craft-referent, cleared. "wanting scumbled over need" — cleared at the aphorism gate below.

HOLDS — "At 10:40 she called Nia. / 'Torres.' / 'It's June.'... 'I'm calling to say no.'" through "'I ran it four times. The job's good, Nia...'" — samples compared: Nia card ("brisk, friendly, practical"; not a strawman) and June card (allowed plainness) — rewrite attempted ("June called Nia and turned the job down, admitting it was a good offer.") is worse because: "I'm calling to say no" leads with the conclusion — plain-speech floor met in the first breath, no throat-clearing; the printer "feeding a page and catching for half a second" is the pause as office acoustics, not narrated silence; Nia's "Walk me through it. I ran the math with you three weeks ago. It wasn't close." keeps her the person the card requires — right enough that the no costs. "It wasn't," June said. "I ran it four times." — echo transformed (her math → June's four runs; the concession conceded, the count owned). Cleared.

HOLDS — "'The part I keep wanting is the Vandercook,' June said..." through "'People would be waiting on the job every morning.'" (highest-risk block, full comparison) — sample compared: June card ("uses visual/craft nouns instead of big feeling words"; "I don't know what to do with wanting it") — binding-register rewrite attempted: "She explained that if she took the job, she would end up maintaining the studio instead of painting in it, because that was who she was in a building with her name on the key sheet." — the rewrite is measurably worse on all three axes. Density: it loses her finger on the crossed-out VANDERCOOK line (the want touched through its own cancellation — the notebook plant paid by hand), and the specific failure chain: proof press needing trueing before a class, the sink, "They'd call the key number. It would be my phone." Drama: the self-knowledge arrives as facilities logistics — the card's demanded register (no therapy-speak) — and the broken sentence "Or the sink would--" is the card's self-interruption at the exact point the fantasy collapses. Fidelity: Nia's "That doesn't have to happen," gets the strong rebuttal, and June's "No... It could happen anyway. People would be waiting on the job every morning." answers with probability and other people's mornings, not destiny. This is where the no earns its cost; the rewrite pays with summary. Note: "The after-hours access is in writing," (Nia) is the cross-speaker "in writing" redeploy — rebuttal function, cleared at the echo gate.

DRIFTED — original: "'It is,' June said. She turned the receipt over so the print side was up, the Marchetti header, the faded total. 'The line it wins on doesn't fit in a column. Ten feet, north window. It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast.'" — binding-register version: "'It is,' June said. She turned the receipt over so the print side was up, the Marchetti header, the faded total. 'I know. I want the wall anyway. It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast.'" — what the rewrite preserves: the flat concession ("It is" — the deliberately uncontracted assent already logged as licensed), the receipt turned print-side-up (Marchetti facing her as she refuses the safer room — the object beat is untouched), the direct want stated plainly (the reading guide's own protected register: "the strongest beats in this book are direct ones"), and the freelance offer in her exact-competence diction; what drift it removes: (a) "The line it wins on doesn't fit in a column" — a named zero-tolerance aphorism family for this chapter, a portable maxim about unquantifiable value, pull-quote-shaped, and a constructed capping of Nia's column figure (June out-crafting Nia's own metaphor is cleverness-as-register, which §8's followability rule exists to catch); (b) "Ten feet, north window." — the FIFTH recitation of the spec, seconds after she read the same terms off the page at line 125, converting a notebook fact into a creed fragment. Preceding Nia lines interrogated and NOT changed: "That's a worse offer... That's a worse offer on every line I have a column for." — same-speaker emphatic doubling in her card's spreadsheet diction, said while losing a hire she is right about; the verdict must be true and stated for the no to cost (cleared at both gates). The dialogue-change license is met for June's line only: it violates the aphorism gate and the echo gate. ORDER: REPLACE. (Cross-listed under APHORISM-GATE and VERBATIM-ECHO.)

HOLDS — "'Noted,' Nia said. 'You know what I'm going to ask next.' / 'Send you someone good...'" through "'It's 10:52,' Nia said... 'I have payroll at eleven.'" — samples compared: Nia card ("If you say no, send me someone good. I still have a program to keep open.") and June card (precise, unsentimental praise as care move) — rewrite attempted ("June recommended Asha, and Nia accepted the referral professionally.") is worse because: June pre-empting Nia's card line ("You know what I'm going to ask next." / "Send you someone good. I did the asking already, yesterday, with her permission.") converts the sample into old-peer shorthand — anticipation as history, and consent documented in the same breath; the referral's evidence is witnessed work ("kept six installers moving while the freight elevator was stuck and nobody got loud") — June's devastating-praise care move aimed at Asha, not a testimonial; "I know her invoices. She itemizes." receives it as due diligence (the "itemize" echo cleared below — different referent, June's self-description at 129 vs. Asha's paper trail, the working-professional marker passing between them); "I didn't put the studio clause in to sweeten it. I meant it. And June, when it opens, come see it." gives Nia the last generosity — no villain, no strawman — and "I have payroll at eleven" exits her through her card's tic. The second "Noted" of the chapter lands here: cross-speaker, cap-spent per the Comedy Doctor; concurred, no third.

HOLDS — "June set the phone down and turned the receipt square with the table edge." — sample compared: June card (squares edges under feeling) — third squaring of the chapter (lines 13, 39 implied by "squared up," 141): all functional displacement at decision points, within the Ch07 precedent; no decorative fourth. Rewrite ("She hung up, relieved") is worse on all axes; the relief is nowhere claimed, which is correct.

HOLDS — "She did the rest before noon." + the Asha/Kessler/Dana/landlord block — documentary and procedural forms checked against themselves — "Said no at 10:52" repurposes Nia's clock-check as June's record of the act (transformed echo); "ok now the boring parts" is the spent-once Asha joke, logged; "She read it twice for typos" and "she typed January 31 twice, once in the sentence and once in the subject line" are her exactness spent on her own paperwork; "The front room was worse than described" migrates Nia's column verdict into accepted lived cost — the chapter's "worse" transformation completing (see echo gate) — and "June looked at the light longest" is the deliberate light image, uncaptioned. Watch: two "thumbs up" replies in adjacent beats (Asha, Dana) — documentary texture, vary next occurrence.

HOLDS — "Last things. She filled the blank in the notebook: FEB = coat..." — sample compared: June card + documentary form — rewrite attempted ("She updated her notebook and replaced the receipt with her new dates.") is worse because: `FEB = coat` pays the blank with Asha's exact word — the unknown answered by a garment, not a hope — and the receipt demoted from pinned deadline to a keepsake folded "once along the shiny crease" (the worry-crease of line 3 becoming the fold line) while the index card takes its place under the jar is the chapter's decision performed as a change of object regime. The tics ledger marks `FEB = coat` paid; it appears once. Compliant.

HOLDS — "The water jar came off the stack of studies..." + "It was the one of the studio from the leaving side..." (highest-risk block, full comparison) — sample compared: June card ("names what's actually good... rare and therefore devastating"; card sample "The left edge is good. Don't fix it.") — binding-register rewrite attempted: "She turned the top study over and looked at it from across the room. It was better than she remembered." — the rewrite is measurably worse on all three axes. Density: it loses the study's exact content (door's edge, rack, trestle table "foreshortened hard, the near edge left steep," warm floor) — the leaving-side series carried from Ch18 finally shown, and shown in painting diction that passes §8's smallness test — and "the distance she'd have at Dana's between the window and the wall," which converts the new room's ten feet into a viewing instrument. Drama: "She had not believed that when she painted it. She stepped in once, looking for where the corner failed. The corner stayed." is belief tested by physical approach — the P13 stepping-back plant paid in reverse (stepping IN, and the work holding). Fidelity: "The left edge was good. The value structure held all the way into the corner." turns her card's signature care move — precise, unsentimental praise — on her own work for the first time in the book; the transformation of the sample from second person to self is the arc, done without one word of naming. Interrogated "The corner stayed." as a fragment stamp: cleared — a two-word optical fact bound to a specific painted corner, meaningless detached.

HOLDS — "She got a nail from the drawer, and a hammer, and put the study up on her own wall, one nail, level enough." — sample compared: June card + chapter card's closing-beat commitment (end on action/object consequence, no stillness, no summary) — rewrite attempted ("She hung the study where she could see it and started counting the days.") is worse because: "one nail, level enough" is self-forgiving precision in three words (the Ch18 nail-hole filler now adding a nail — object reversal uncaptioned); the countdowns are exact (twenty-nine to Dana's key, thirty-one to the armory); "ask Chelsea office re: December crating" inked on the back of her hand is the December gap answered with a to-do on skin; and the study visible "from the table" seats the new wall in the decision's own geography. The chapter ends on an object and a sightline. No maxim survives the last line.

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## APHORISM-GATE (zero tolerance; named families swept: "wrong me" 0, "line it wins on" 1 — FAIL, "borrow anyone's apology" 0, "worse offer" — present, cleared, "clean answer" 0, "honest light" 0)

- APHORISM-GATE — "The line it wins on doesn't fit in a column." — ORDER: REPLACE per the DRIFTED verdict above ("I know. I want the wall anyway."). A named zero-tolerance family for this chapter; a portable maxim about unquantifiable value that survives detachment perfectly (pull-quote-shaped, epigraph-shaped), built by capping Nia's own column metaphor — cleverness-as-register in the book's most-protected direct-speech position (the no itself). The receipt action and the freelance offer around it are untouched.
- APHORISM-GATE — "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing." — ORDER: de-quotablize per the DRIFTED verdict above (break the chiasmus; keep the stepping-back plant). The balanced problem/problem inversion detaches as life-advice about avoidance and pre-explains the chapter's decision as thesis.
- CLEARED — "That's a worse offer. That's a worse offer on every line I have a column for." — the named "worse offer" family, interrogated: stays. It is Nia's verdict in Nia's spreadsheet diction, factually true, spoken by the party losing the exchange — the card requires her right enough that June's no costs something, and this is the cost stated. Detached, it is a judgment missing its object, not a maxim. The doubling is same-speaker emphasis under a decision going against her.
- CLEARED — "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." — strongest dialogue counter-candidate. Passes: the line is unintelligible without June's "I'm not asking for an opinion" two lines up; the joke deflates the advice frame into a physical object Sam is holding; Sam's card licenses quiet funniness and bans only teacher speeches, which this refuses to be.
- CLEARED — "I kept them to myself and called it manners." — Ruth's one sharp line (cap 1/1, logged in the verdict above). First-person, past-tense, self-indicting, with "them" bound to "this fall I noticed things" — an owned confession whose referent does not travel. Detached it inverts into a maxim about politeness it does not make in context, and the context is the preceding sentence.
- CLEARED — "places where wanting had been scumbled over need" — strongest surviving narration candidate after the two orders. Passes: "scumbled" pins it to craft (a thin opaque layer dragged over another — the direction of concealment is exact: the want laid over the need, visible through it); it sits third in a diagnostic list (holes, thin patches) aimed at a specific notebook page; and it is priced one sentence later by the cold room. With the P13 repair executed, this is the chapter's single self-analysis figure — inside the card's "visual analogies, used sparingly."
- CLEARED — "February is a blank line in my notebook." — a literal notation fact (`FEB = .` exists on the page she is reading from); documentary-bound, not portable without the notebook.
- CLEARED — "Send my name because I'm qualified. If you're trying to feel less bad, don't." — imperative bound to a named referral; the second clause is meaningless without the first; Asha's card-ordered warning delivered as terms, not wisdom.
- CLEARED — "It would be my phone." — the collapse of the whole Tasker fantasy into a phone number; referent-bound, four words, nothing to quote out.
- CLEARED — "It's indoors." — a fact about crating work in December; deadpan spec, not epigram.
- Nearest relatives of the absent families, quoted for the record: "The class is the part that works" (nearest to a "clean answer" shape — bound to the broken sentence before it and the refusal after it); "it was the best part of the dish" (flaw-as-best sentiment-shape, defused by the pooled-cobalt referent and Mara's known preference). Neither detaches.

## VERBATIM-ECHO (gate words swept: math, wall, keys, clause, good, worse, room, Tuesday)

- VERBATIM-ECHO — "The room's not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive." (line 87) vs. Chapter 09: "Not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive." (same speaker, same room, near-verbatim eleven chapters apart) — ORDER: vary. This is Asha's voice-card sample line deployed on the page a second time — the same flattening mechanism the harness has already blocked twice (Sam's "Not symbolically" callback, Ben's "not a personality" reuse): the card sample hardening into a catchphrase instead of generating fresh speech. Transformation that keeps the coin and shifts the agent: "The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it." (rate-specific, second-person, Asha-true).
- VERBATIM-ECHO — "ten feet" ×6 / "north window (light)" ×5 (lines 11, 83, 99, 125, 129, 151) — ORDER already issued via the line-129 REPLACE, which removes the creed-fragment instance ("Ten feet, north window."). The five survivors are cleared as diegetically distinct: Asha's text summarized into the notebook (11), Asha's spoken terms (83), June re-reading her own page (99), June reciting the counter off the page to Nia — "June read it off the right page" makes the recitation literal (125), and the photo verifying the spec as flat gray fact (151). After the repair the phrase is at ceiling: Ch21 does not inherit "ten feet"/"north window" as an incantation.
- CLEARED — "math" ×1 (Nia, line 107) + June's "I ran it four times" — transformation, not echo: her math becomes June's four runs; the concession keeps the count and drops the noun.
- CLEARED — "keys" — "keys day one" ×3 (lines 9, 65, 109) is contract language, verbatim by nature (an offer term does not paraphrase between recitations: notebook, terms-to-Asha, concession-to-Nia); against it the chapter runs `JAN 2--KEYS` (notebook → index card, plant/copy), "Key handoff January 2," "I'll take the key Jan 2," and "Twenty-nine days until Dana's key." The transformation is the chapter's title argument: keys-offered-elsewhere declined, one cheaper key accepted and dated. At ceiling; Ch21 should let keys rest as diction.
- CLEARED — "clause" ×3 (lines 9, 67, 135) — full function shift: notebook provenance fact ("not because June had asked") → Asha's isolation request ("Say the studio clause again") → Nia's disavowal of tactics ("I didn't put the studio clause in to sweeten it. I meant it."). Three speakers, three uses, no flattening.
- CLEARED — "good" — GOOD (notebook verdict, line 9) → "at GOOD in her own handwriting" (shame check, 77) → "The job's good, Nia" (spoken concession, 109) → "Send you someone good" (referral idiom completing Nia's own card line, 133). Each instance changes register and referent; the capitals stay documentary.
- CLEARED — "worse" — Nia's doubled verdict (127, same-speaker emphasis, cleared above) → "The front room was worse than described" (151): the column word migrating into accepted lived cost is the chapter's arc performed in one adjective. Transformative.
- CLEARED — "room" ×~10 — all literal referents (Dana's back room/front room, the proof press's back room, "$340 room"); the Ch19 standing order (room/side/reach at ceiling, must pivot) is honored: no incantation device, no his-side/her-side inheritance ("leaving side" ×2 and "print side" are different coins). Cleared with the pivot confirmed.
- CLEARED — "Tuesday" ×5 — distinct referents: the dish's clock ("since Tuesday night"), the delivery promise ("bringing the dish myself Tuesday"), the absence ("Tuesday I wasn't there"), the bank date ("$2,643 as of Tuesday"), and the one thematic use ("If Tuesdays ended"), which is inside the earned-stay conditional and does not recur. No flattening.
- CLEARED — "in writing" ×4 + "written" ×2 (lines 9, 65, 69, 109, 115) — argument-bearing repetition: the clause's writtenness versus its lived mornings IS the disagreement of the Nia call, and Nia's "The after-hours access is in writing," is a cross-speaker redeploy as rebuttal (function change). At ceiling: the phrase retires after this chapter.
- CLEARED — "feel less bad" ×2 cross-speaker (75, 77) — charge → confession, tense-shifted, full-form "did"; the transformation is the beat.
- CLEARED — "Two minutes." / "Two minutes is right." (25, 27) — limit → endorsement of the limit; hospitality fitted inside it.
- CLEARED — "I'm not asking for an opinion... I'm not asking." (47) — same-speaker contract-setting emphasis; the doubling is the plainness.
- CLEARED — "itemize"/"itemizes" (129, 135) — different referents (June's freelance offer; Asha's invoices), the working-professional marker passing between speakers as recognition, six lines apart, each load-bearing in its own claim.
- CLEARED — "Noted" ×2 (53 June, 131 Nia) — cross-speaker but function-parallel; the Comedy Doctor has already ruled it spent at 2. Concurred: no third in Ch21+.
- CLEARED — "Okay. No chair." — documentary quotation of the Ch18 record, unopened; records are exempt.
- WATCH (no order) — "thumbs up" ×2 in adjacent beats (147, 151) — documentary text-message texture; vary the next reply-reaction.

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## Chapter verdict

**DRIFT-FOUND (3 orders: 2 REPLACE, 1 VARY)** — 31 verdicts: 27 HOLDS, 3 DRIFTED (one carrying its order at the echo gate), 1 LOCKED. The close-third June register holds against her card in every narration paragraph; all four dialogue scenes meet the plain-speech floor and stay followable cold; the documentary forms (notebook, receipt, index card, texts) were checked only against themselves; the earned-stay test is run once, in arithmetic, without campaigning; zero dialogue diagnosis after interrogating the two strongest counter-candidates; all Ch18/Ch19 standing kills stay dead. The drift is exactly where the calibration pointed: one named-family aphorism installed in the no itself, one thesis chiasmus in the opening movement, and one voice-card sample line flattening into a catchphrase.

1. **ORDER (REPLACE, narration, line 13):** cut the chiasmus — "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing." → "She had kept stepping back from paintings all fall as if the problem were viewing distance." (keeps the plant the close pays; kills the epigram).
2. **ORDER (REPLACE, dialogue, line 129):** "The line it wins on doesn't fit in a column. Ten feet, north window." → "I know. I want the wall anyway." (named zero-tolerance family + fifth spec recitation; the receipt action, "It isn't about the program," and the freelance offer are untouched).
3. **ORDER (VARY, dialogue, line 87):** "The room's not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive." → "The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it." (Ch09 verbatim self-echo of the Asha card sample; sample-line families get one on-page use — precedent: "Not symbolically," "not a personality").
4. **ORDER (watch, forward):** "ten feet"/"north window," "keys day one," and "in writing" are at ceiling and retire as phrases after this chapter — the specs live in the notebook now and can be pointed at, not recited; "Noted" stays at two for the book; the deliberate light image ran adjacent to two literal light facts (dish glaze, painted floor) — Ch21 carries exactly one; "thumbs up" as a text-reply beat needs variation; the earned-stay conditional ("If Tuesdays ended, if Theo never called...") has now been run — it must not be re-run or referenced in Ch21+, and no future scene may explain the stay decision or certify its independence; care-without-advice remains unnamed on the page and must stay that way (the tics ledger already marks it fragile); `FEB = coat`, "the boring parts," and the blue-dish tether are each spent or scheduled (the dish goes to Mara's table Tuesday — deliver it as an object, not a symbol).
