# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 20: No Advice / Keys Here

audit: comedy_doctor | owner: claude | tier: risk | chapter: 20
chapter text: `output/chapters/chapter_20.md` (2,707 words)
calibration: READING_GUIDE §2 (warm, precise, lightly comic; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; plain-speech floor), §5 (care moves, never announced), §6 (tic catalog), §8 (warmth floor, smallness, earned-stay, followability); chapter card 20 prose dials: "June plain, less jokey, precise about money and materials." Voice cards: June, Ruth, Sam, Nia, Asha. Tracker: `output/tics.md` Ch16–Ch19 standing orders.

INVENTORY:
1 — "Twenty-six hours, give or take the walk from the sink to the table." (l.3) — mechanism: deflation (deadline idiom collapsed to apartment scale) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the receipt-under-jar countdown is this book's object) — dramatic work: sets the deadline clock and June's arithmetic self-defense in one stroke — workshopped: no
2 — "It was the one object in the apartment that didn't require a decision. Restful to look at." (l.5) — mechanism: incongruity (a dish valued as a non-decision) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Mara's blue dish, planted Ch18) — dramatic work: measures decision fatigue; loads the dish for the Tuesday-return commitment — workshopped: no
3 — "It was still good. That was the entire problem with the left page." (l.11) — mechanism: reversal (goodness as the problem) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the left page is the TASKER ledger the scene just built) — dramatic work: states the dilemma without therapy-speak — workshopped: no
4 — "There's coffee. There hasn't been milk since Sunday." (l.29) — mechanism: deadpan anti-hospitality — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("since Sunday" dates the rupture-week neglect) — dramatic work: documents the bad week without narrating sadness — workshopped: no
5 — "We're double-parked. ... Two minutes." / "Two minutes is right." (l.27–29) — mechanism: unexpected agreement (the host endorses the visit limit) — source: character (Ruth's no-fuss care; June's siege state) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets the care-without-advice terms in the doorway — workshopped: no
6 — "picked the box up properly this time, knees," (l.39) — mechanism: understated physical self-correction — source: character (Sam) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Odile's catalogs are the plot freight) — dramatic work: Sam's practical care; gets the rupture's freight literally out of June's apartment — workshopped: no
7 — "Tell Mara I'm bringing the dish myself Tuesday. Tell her I'll sit where she tells me." (l.37) — mechanism: pre-emptive capitulation (surrendering to Mara's seating in advance) — source: character (Mara's hosting; June's re-entry) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June chooses the cohort on its own terms — the chapter-card revelation enacted as a joke — workshopped: no
8 — "You can leave that part out. We came for the dish." (l.47) — mechanism: deflation (retreat to the errand) — source: character (Ruth's dry restraint) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: releases June from explaining; the no-advice contract kept under pressure — workshopped: no
9 — "We have a car." / "And a hand truck if you need it." (l.51–53) — mechanism: sideways non-answer (an emotional boundary answered in freight logistics only) — source: character + situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (only lands against June's "I'm not asking" two lines up) — dramatic work: the chapter's engine, care without advice, delivered as its best laugh — workshopped: no
10 — "Both of you--thank you. For the box." (l.55) — mechanism: scope-limitation (gratitude confined to the errand) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June accepts care without conceding she asked for any — workshopped: no
11 — "set it on the shelf where she'd see it Tuesday morning and not be able to invent a reason to forget it" (l.59) — mechanism: self-directed irony (outmaneuvering her own avoidance) — source: character (June's exit-before-asks wound) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the dish into a commitment device — workshopped: no
12 — "Talk fast, I'm holding a door with my whole body." (l.65) — mechanism: literalized hyperbole — source: character/situation (Asha mid-load-in) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the freight-gate world is Asha's established register, Ch09/Ch15) — dramatic work: sets the call's compression; forces June to lead with terms — workshopped: no
13 — "Who writes that? ... Nia Torres, apparently. ... She checks a level after her eye says yes." (l.73) — mechanism: self-answered rhetorical + specificity (craft-grounded praise) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (level/eye is installer trade idiom) — dramatic work: validates Nia and the job's realness right before June refuses it, so the refusal costs — workshopped: no — weighed "checks a level after her eye says yes" for composed-for-quotation symmetry; it survives because it is information-bearing trade assessment inside Asha's licensed rate/load-in vocabulary, not coined wit
14 — "the north window's honest light and the radiator is decorative. Wear the coat inside until February." (l.85) — mechanism: deadpan reclassification (heater as decor) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: yes ("the radiator is decorative" is a stock cheap-apartment quip that would survive unchanged in any city novel) — dramatic work: delivers the no-heat fact that seeds FEB = coat — workshopped: borderline (quip-shaped clause inside an otherwise information-bearing speech)
15 — "and Asha hung up before the word was finished." (l.91) — mechanism: timing cutoff — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the deal at load-in tempo; nobody sentimentalizes the referral — workshopped: no
16 — "FEB = coat." (l.93) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation / structural payoff (the l.13 blank "FEB = " resolved with a non-number) — source: character (arithmetic self-defense meeting its limit) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (requires the two-page ledger this chapter built) — dramatic work: commits to New York while admitting February is still unfunded; keeps the cost sharp — workshopped: no
17 — "She deleted it, and the folder said *No drafts*" (l.97) — mechanism: found-object deadpan (UI copy as verdict) — source: narrator-overlay (the folder is made to speak for the reader's benefit) — funniness: 1 (smile-shaped but predictable; interface-text-as-poignancy is a stock contemporary move) — portable: yes — dramatic work: minor; the deletion plus "the first thing that had felt like the decision" already carries the beat — workshopped: no
18 — "Walk me through it, because I ran the math with you three weeks ago and I win the math." (l.111) — mechanism: competitive reframe (arithmetic as a contest she is winning) — source: character (Nia's money-without-shame candor, old-peer license) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the three-weeks-ago call is Ch15, on the page) — dramatic work: forces June to argue vocation instead of numbers — workshopped: no — weighed against the Ch15 Nia-zinger flattening order; this opens one sustained frame rather than scattering quips
19 — "Okay. So tell me the counter, so I know what I lost to." (l.127) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation on item 18's contest frame (conceding the match) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: professional grace that opens the Asha handoff — workshopped: no
20 — "That's a worse offer," Nia said. / "It is," June said. (l.131–133) — mechanism: deadpan verdict + instant concession — source: situation (June defending the materially worse deal her own ledger just lost) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the loss out loud; June does not flinch it away — workshopped: no — named watch line, cleared: four plain words, no punchline syntax, and it only lands on top of the left-page/right-page arithmetic
21 — "I know her invoices. She itemizes. That's already more than most references." (l.139) — mechanism: deadpan professional standard (invoices as a character reference) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (answers June's "I itemize and I'm fast," l.133 — itemizing = trust in this work world) — dramatic work: Asha's referral lands on merit, not pity, honoring Asha's l.77 condition — workshopped: no
22 — "Good. Have her email before one. I have payroll at eleven." (l.143) — mechanism: bathos (the "come see it" warmth cut by payroll) — source: character (Nia deadline-driven) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: prevents the goodbye from going sentimental; the loss stays a business fact — workshopped: no
23 — "a thumbs up, and eleven seconds later, *ok now the boring parts.*" (l.151) — mechanism: timing (the counted gap) + callback-with-variation (Asha's Ch09 "I can do the boring parts and still paint at night," recalled Ch15) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the hypothetical she offered in Ch09 becomes real and she treats it as logistics — workshopped: no
24 — "The front room was worse than described: bare bulb, paint-scabbed floor... June looked at the light longest." (l.155) — mechanism: anticlimax flipped (bad-listing deadpan turned into want) — source: situation → character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (ten feet of wall and the north window are the goods she bought) — dramatic work: earned-stay evidence — she wants the worse room for the right reason — workshopped: no
25 — "She had no printer. Paragraph 14 allowed email; she checked. She sent it." (l.157) — mechanism: deadpan proceduralism (of course she checked) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the January 31 lease death is the plot clock) — dramatic work: June's rigor applied to her own leap, not just her ledger — workshopped: no

WATCH-LINE CHECKS (named in the audit request):
- "worse offer" — present (l.131). Cleared; see item 20.
- "coat" — present (l.85, l.93). Cleared as items 14 (the coat clause itself is fine) and 16; the coat is anchored by the FEB = payoff and stays a cost, not a bit.
- "printer thing" — no quip survives. Two literal printers: Nia's office feed "catching for half a second" (l.111, silence-filler detail) and "She had no printer" (l.157, enabling the Paragraph 14 beat). Clean.
- "go get your clause" — absent. All "clause" uses (l.9, 67, 69, 113) are literal offer-letter language. Clean.
- "listing of my dreams" — absent. The Dana-photo beat runs on "worse than described" (item 24) with no dream-listing irony. Clean.

TRACKER CHECKS (`output/tics.md`):
- Ch19 order (no stool-count joke, no extra jar symbolism): jars are literal paperweights (l.5, 7, 159, 161); no stool appears. Compliant.
- Ch16 order (chair facts allowed, no new count-shaped joke): Sam moves a chair silently (l.39); "*Okay. No chair.*" (l.99) is a quoted artifact deployed for grief, not comedy. Compliant. The retired "Not symbolically" family does not reappear.
- Ch18 order (no ledger/debt figure narration): all money language is literal notebook arithmetic (l.9, 13, 15, 129); no fiscal-metaphor narration found. Compliant.
- Ruth editorial-sharp cap, 1 per appearance: "I kept them to myself and called it manners." (l.43) is the one sharp line; "We came for the dish" and "We have a car" are plain assembly around it. At cap, compliant.
- Nia zinger density (Ch15 repair standing): ~3 polished constructions across a full call (items 18, 19, 21) — one sustained contest frame plus one dry standard, all information-bearing. Within tolerance; do not add Nia wit in her next appearance.
- "boring parts": third total appearance, second live utterance (Ch09 spoken, Ch15 recalled, Ch20 varied to text-message form as the payoff of the Ch09 offer). Variation is real, but the idiom is now spent — retire after Ch20.
- "I'm cargo" callback allowance: unused. Ben/Priya/Mara/Luis/Odile are absent; no cap pressure from their families.

DISTRIBUTION:
- Density: 25 items in 2,707 words, nearly all low-amplitude — correct for the card's "June plain, less jokey" dial; the lightly-comic register commitment is met without any scene being played for comedy.
- Mechanism variety: deadpan/dry statement 6; deflation/anticlimax/bathos 5; structural payoff/callback 3; self-directed irony 3; timing 2; competitive frame 2; literalized hyperbole 1; reversal 1; scope-limitation 1; reclassification 1. No monoculture.
- Source: character 20, situation 4, narrator-overlay 1 (item 17 — the only one, and the chapter's weakest item; not a pattern).
- Sweetness: NOT oversweetened at the loss. Evidence: June's side of the refusal call is joke-free from "I know myself in rooms like that" (l.121) through "I'm trying not to set it up" (l.125); "The clean answer was gone." (l.145) stands bare; item 16 makes the New York choice funny only by admitting February is unfunded; item 22's bathos cuts warmth rather than adding it. The Tasker loss keeps its full price.
- Cringe: none found. Nothing plays at a character's expense (warmth floor holds — the closest, item 24, mocks a room, and June wants the room).

VERDICT: CLEAR
23 of 25 items score funniness-2; sources run overwhelmingly character/situation; mechanisms are varied; the humor sharpens rather than softens the refusal.
Strongest item: #9 — "We have a car." / "And a hand truck if you need it." — the chapter's thesis (care without advice) compressed into two logistics offers that are funny precisely because they refuse to be anything else.
Weakest surviving item: #25 — "Paragraph 14 allowed email; she checked." — smallest amplitude on the page; survives because the joke is June's rigor and it is doing plot work.

Blocking findings: 2 (items 14 and 17). The chapter is not committable while they stand.

REVISION ORDERS:
1. Item 14 (l.85), "the north window's honest light and the radiator is decorative." — failure: portable. The clause "the radiator is decorative" is a stock cheap-apartment quip any broker comedy could carry unchanged, and it is quip-shaped against Asha's information-bearing register (voice card: short, information-bearing, no mystique). Fix: replace the clause with a fact only this room has — sourced from Dana or Asha's former-studio-mate history with the building (what the last tenant actually did about heat; the specific dead riser or painted-shut valve) — or cut the clause entirely and let "Wear the coat inside until February" carry the no-heat fact; that sentence is already anchored by the FEB = coat payoff (l.93) and by June's plain restatement "no real heat" (l.129). Do not keep the quip by softening it.
2. Item 17 (l.97), "She deleted it, and the folder said *No drafts*, and that was the first thing that had felt like the decision instead of the arithmetic." — failure: funniness-1 and the chapter's only narrator-overlay item; the italicized UI readout is the narrator framing an interface for the reader, a stock contemporary poignancy move June is not generating. Fix: cut "and the folder said *No drafts*" so the sentence reads "She deleted it, and that was the first thing that had felt like the decision instead of the arithmetic." No replacement joke; the beat's work is the deletion.

Non-blocking note (outside comic inventory): "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing." (l.15) is not a comic attempt and is excluded from the inventory, but its chiastic polish is maxim-adjacent; flagged to the Plain Translation lane against the Ch12 standing order that craft notation stay process-specific, not maxim-shaped.
