Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_20.comedy_doctor.md`. The completed document:

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

Register audited: warm, precise, lightly comic; never sitcom, never banter-for-banter (READING_GUIDE §2). Target-reader calibration: O'Leary warmth, Henry at ~60% banter density, Morisaki/Coffee quiet — a reader who wants small routines to carry feeling and will be bored by workshopped wit. Chapter card demands: comedy from June's arithmetic self-defense, Sam's practical help, Ruth's dry restraint, Asha's load-in directness, Nia's professional briskness; Ruth one sharp line max; no inspirational refusal; humor must not soften the Tasker loss.

INVENTORY:

1 — "Twenty-six hours, give or take the walk from the sink to the table." (line 3) — mechanism: mock-precision deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets the deadline clock and June's arithmetic-as-coping in one stroke — workshopped: no. (Checked as overlay-wit candidate: the precision is June's card-licensed idiom, and the chapter's whole spine is her running this exact arithmetic.)

2 — "It was the one object in the apartment that didn't require a decision. Restful to look at." (line 5) — mechanism: deflation (aesthetic pleasure measured in decision-load) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: shows decision fatigue without naming it; plants the blue dish for the Tuesday promise — workshopped: no.

3 — "It was still good. That was the entire problem with the left page." (line 11) — mechanism: paradox/reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: crystallizes the dilemma while keeping the offer genuinely good, which the loss later depends on — workshopped: no. (Two-sentence turn shape checked; "the left page" pins it to the notebook procedure, not quotation.)

4 — "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing." (line 15) — mechanism: craft-metaphor chiasmus, dry self-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names her avoidance pattern; sets up deleting the Nia email as "the decision instead of the arithmetic" — workshopped: no. (This is the chapter's strongest workshopped counter-candidate: setup-turn syntax. Ruled earned because stepping back from paintings is her literal practice and the guide licenses her sparing visual analogy; this is the chapter's one. A second epigram of this shape would flip the ruling.)

5 — "Mara wants her dish back before Luis refills it." (line 19) — mechanism: implied escalation (the Valdez care-conveyor pre-empted) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: motivates the visit; pays the Ch18 blue-dish tether as a practical object, per the tracker's standing order — workshopped: no.

6 — ""We're double-parked," Ruth said. "Two minutes." / "Two minutes is right," June said. (lines 27–29) — mechanism: mutual-boundary deadpan — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: both parties want the care bounded; the visit's terms are the chapter's thesis in miniature — workshopped: no.

7 — "There's coffee. There hasn't been milk since Sunday." (line 29) — mechanism: deadpan self-report — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the fridge documents the rupture week without a feeling being named — workshopped: no.

8 — "The box is the errand. The dish is separate." (line 37) — mechanism: over-categorization as self-defense — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June's compression-when-exposed; the taxonomy is how she keeps the Theo-adjacent errand handleable — workshopped: no.

9 — Sam "picked the box up properly this time, knees," then "moved the chair that was blocking the door's swing six inches to the left" (line 39) — mechanism: physical care comedy, specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Sam's owned care move (makes physical room) enacted instead of stated; help without advice — workshopped: no. (Checked against the Ch16 spent chair-count family: this is a chair action, not a count-shaped joke.)

10 — "June watched her read it and watched her decline to read it out loud" (line 41) — mechanism: restraint made visible, dry parallel syntax — source: character (Ruth, through June's eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Ruth-watch beat 4 delivered as care-without-advice — workshopped: no. (Checked against the zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule: no speech is being characterized; Ruth declines to speak at all.)

11 — "You can leave that part out," Ruth said. "We came for the dish." (line 47) — mechanism: scope-limiting mercy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: releases June from explaining Tuesday; privacy honored as jurisdiction — workshopped: no.

12 — ""We have a car," Ruth said. / "And a hand truck if you need it." (lines 51–53) — mechanism: non-sequitur care escalation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter card's engine in two lines — June says she isn't asking for an opinion and receives logistics instead; opinion withheld, help total — workshopped: no.

13 — "Noted," June said. "Both of you--thank you. For the box." (line 55) — mechanism: scope-limiting thanks (mirror of item 11) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June accepts care while refusing advice, completing the exchange item 12 opened — workshopped: no. (Items 11 and 13 are the same mechanism used as a matched pair; ruled deliberate call-and-response. Cap registered: no third scope-limiting joke in Ch21–22.)

14 — "the box of catalogs left June's apartment forty minutes before eleven on Thursday" (line 57) — mechanism: mock-precision clock notation — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the visit; marks the catalogs' exit by a route "that had nothing to do with her" — workshopped: no. BLOCKING: the arithmetic is wrong. Sam and Ruth come up at 10:40 (line 25) for a two-minute visit; forty minutes before eleven is 10:20, before they arrived. A flourish whose engine is exactness dies when the exactness is false — and this is June, whose 26-hour count in item 1 is correct to the minute.

15 — "set it on the shelf where she'd see it Tuesday morning and not be able to invent a reason to forget it" (line 59) — mechanism: pre-empted self-sabotage — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the dish into a commitment device; June knows her own exits — workshopped: no.

16 — "Talk fast, I'm holding a door with my whole body." (line 65) — mechanism: hyperbole grounded literal — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets the call's economy; Asha's attention is priced — workshopped: no. (Strongest portability counter-candidate in the chapter: the sentence could live in any warehouse novel. Ruled non-portable because the item's comedy in situ is Asha's established load-in world from Ch09/15, and the line is doing scene-constraint work, not decoration.)

17 — "Say the studio clause again." … "Who writes that?" Asha said. "Nia Torres, apparently." (lines 69–73) — mechanism: deadpan disbelief + self-answered question — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: a working installer independently certifies the offer June is refusing — this is the chapter's best insurance against the loss going soft — workshopped: no. (Checked against the watch-phrase "go get your clause": absent from the chapter; this earned version is interrogative, not quip-shaped.)

18 — "She'll eyeball a run and put a level on it anyway. She's serious." (line 73) — mechanism: redundant verification as praise — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: certifies Nia peer-to-peer; plants the level that item 31 pays off — workshopped: no.

19 — "Wear the coat inside until February." (line 85) — mechanism: pragmatic reframe (heat problem stated as apparel policy) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the New York cost sharp and survivable in one breath; sets up item 21 — workshopped: no. (Watch-phrase "coat" checked: the line is information-bearing Asha speech, not a workshopped tag.)

20 — "and Asha hung up before the word was finished" (line 91) — mechanism: timing undercut — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Asha's no-pity pragmatism enacted; the favor is closed as business — workshopped: no.

21 — "FEB = coat." (line 93) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation payoff (the earlier "FEB = " left blank "because there was nothing to put there," line 13) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the dread line gets an answer that is endurance, not money; the cost stays visible inside the joke — workshopped: no. FINDING (continuity, order below): on Friday June tells Nia "February is a blank line in my notebook" (line 129) — but she filled the line in on Thursday. The joke currently falsifies the chapter's sharpest plain statement of risk.

22 — "Theo's apology, if it came, would not put heat in the room. That was why she'd written it in numbers." (line 103) — mechanism: literalization (apology audited in BTUs) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enforces the earned-stay test — the decision is materially hers, not romance-shaped — workshopped: no. (Checked for epigram polish; the follow-sentence roots it in the notebook procedure rather than leaving it quotable-clean.)

23 — "Walk me through it, because I ran the math with you three weeks ago and I win the math." (line 111) — mechanism: agonistic deadpan (job market as contest) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: forces June past the arithmetic to the real reason, which produces the Vandercook confession — workshopped: no. (Borderline composed — the math/math repetition is punchline-adjacent — but it is speakable, on Nia's card, and structurally necessary.)

24 — "Okay. So tell me the counter, so I know what I lost to." (line 127) — mechanism: agonistic framing, second instance — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: pivots the call to the counter-offer — workshopped: no, but the most composed line in the chapter. BLOCKING: this is item 23's mechanism run twice in the same call — Nia framing the exchange as a contest she is scoring. The first instance does the dramatic work; the second is the same joke with a grace note pre-installed, and it reads rehearsed where Nia's briskness should read busy. Ch15's tracker history (12 polished Nia constructions flattened on order) makes this the exact regrowth pattern to catch early.

25 — ""That's a worse offer," Nia said. / "It is," June said. (line 131) — mechanism: blunt deadpan agreement (refusal to argue) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the chapter's sharpest loss-preserving beat; June concedes the math she spent two days running and takes the worse thing anyway — workshopped: no. (Watch-phrase "worse offer" checked: two flat declaratives, no ornament, no punchline syntax; the words would port but the force is entirely this chapter's arithmetic. Passes.)

26 — "I know her invoices," Nia said. "She itemizes. That's already more than most references." (line 139) — mechanism: professional-criteria comedy (character vouched by paperwork); pays off June's "I itemize and I'm fast" (line 133) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the reference lands in the book's material idiom; Asha is hired-adjacent by the same virtue June just claimed — workshopped: no.

27 — "Have her email before one. I have payroll at eleven." (line 143) — mechanism: scale juxtaposition (June's crossroads vs. the program's Tuesday) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: anti-sentimental close; the world does not pause for June's decision, which is why the decision counts — workshopped: no.

28 — "ok now the boring parts." (line 151) — mechanism: deflation pivot — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: swings the chapter into execution; consistent with Asha's established "boring parts" idiom — workshopped: no.

29 — "The front room was worse than described: bare bulb, paint-scabbed floor, the north window putting flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall. June looked at the light longest." (line 155) — mechanism: reversal of listing convention (worse, not better, than advertised) — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: de-romanticizes the chosen path, then re-sharpens the want on the one thing that matters to a painter — workshopped: no. (Watch-phrase "listing of my dreams" checked: absent; this beat is where that quip would have gone, and the text inverted it instead.)

30 — "She had no printer. Paragraph 14 allowed email; she checked." (line 157) — mechanism: bureaucratic deadpan compression — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: material precarity (no printer) and diligence (she checked) in eight words — workshopped: no. (Watch-phrase "printer thing" checked: no portable printer quip exists; this and the office printer catching for half a second at line 111 are both literal, functional beats.)

31 — "one nail, level enough" (line 165) — mechanism: self-directed deflation; repetition-with-variation off item 18 (Nia puts a level on everything; June hangs her own work by eye) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: good-enough acceptance; she hangs her own painting in the apartment she is leaving — workshopped: no.

Distribution checks:
- **Density:** 31 attempted items across ~3,000 words of a decision-heavy, flag:reflective chapter — at or above the register's commitment; no joke-free stretch longer than the Nia call's serious middle, which earns its dryness (the confession about keys is the chapter's non-negotiable sharp beat and correctly carries no comedy).
- **Source:** character 26, situation 5, narrator-overlay 0. Items 1, 4, 10 were interrogated as overlay candidates and ruled character (June's focalized idiom in all three).
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan family 8, scope-limiting 2 (capped pair), repetition-with-variation 3, mock-precision 2, reversal 2, literalization 1, hyperbole 1, timing undercut 1, physical care 1, paradox 1, others singletons. Not MONOTONOUS; deadpan dominance is the guide's committed register, and the deadpans are distributed across five different mouths.
- **Sweetness (special check — the Tasker loss):** the loss chain stays sharp: "It was still good. That was the entire problem" (line 11) → "That's a worse offer." / "It is." (line 131) → "The clean answer was gone." (line 145) → the receipt folded away as "a record of a thing that was over" (line 159). No comic item sits on any of these beats. Item 21 (FEB = coat) is the nearest sweetening risk and passes on content — the coat is a cost, not a comfort — but currently creates the continuity falsification ordered below. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe:** none. Nothing plays for a generic workshop; nothing misjudges the O'Leary/Henry-at-60% reader.
- **Card compliance:** all five mandated comic sources present and doing the work assigned (June items 1–4, 7–8, 13–15, 21–22, 31; Sam 5, 9, 12; Ruth 6, 10–12; Asha 16–20, 28; Nia 23–27). Ruth's sharp-line cap: one ("I kept them to myself and called it manners," line 43); "We have a car" was checked as a second sharp line and ruled deadpan-practical care, not editorial. No inspirational refusal: June's no to Nia is arithmetic plus self-knowledge, no aphorism.

Tracker checks (Ch17–19 obligations):
- Ch19 stool/jar: no stool-count joke, no jar symbolism in Ch20. Clean.
- Ch16 chair-count family: Sam's chair move (item 9) is action, not count-joke; "Okay. No chair." (line 99) is a non-comic thread callback used as grief texture. Clean.
- Ch18 ledger/debt figure ban: Ch20's money is entirely literal decision material required by the card; zero fiscal metaphor in narration. Clean.
- Ch17 "the way" connective (cap one per chapter from Ch11): one instance, "the way she'd look at a ground" (line 101), craft-specific and varied. At cap, not over.
- Ch17 keys cluster: key mentions here are literal job/room terms plus one transformed thematic beat ("I'd still be the person with keys," line 121) — non-comic, and the payoff the motif was banked for. Clean.
- Ch15 Nia zinger density: four polished constructions this chapter versus twelve pre-repair in Ch15; the clustered contest-framing pair (items 23–24) is the regrowth point and is ordered down to one.
- Watch: "Noted" appears in two mouths (June line 55, Nia line 135). Ruled a functional professional-register mirror — care offers acknowledged identically — but it is now spent; no third "Noted" in Ch21–22.

VERDICT: **CLEAR**
Majority funniness-2, character/situation-sourced throughout, zero narrator-overlay, mechanisms varied across five voices, and the comedy consistently does the card's dramatic work (care-without-advice rendered as logistics; the loss kept sharp). Strongest item: 12 — ""We have a car." / "And a hand truck if you need it."" Weakest surviving item: 27 — "Have her email before one. I have payroll at eleven." Two blocking findings and one continuity order stand; the chapter is not committable until they are resolved.

REVISION ORDERS:
1. **Item 14 (BLOCKING, funniness-1):** "the box of catalogs left June's apartment forty minutes before eleven on Thursday" (line 57). Failure: false precision — Sam and Ruth arrive at 10:40 (line 25); forty minutes before eleven is 10:20, before they arrived. Fix: correct the arithmetic — "twenty minutes before eleven" or "a quarter to eleven." Do not cut the flourish; June's clock is the chapter's spine and item 1 proves she counts correctly. The number must be right or the mechanism is dead.
2. **Item 24 (BLOCKING, funniness-1, mechanism repeat):** "Okay. So tell me the counter, so I know what I lost to." (line 127). Failure: second contest-framing in one call after "I win the math" (line 111); the pre-composed grace note reads rehearsed against Nia's voice card (brisk, deadline-driven, payroll at eleven). Fix: keep one contest frame per call — retain item 23, flatten this line to plain briskness: "Okay. Tell me the counter." The itemize exchange and the payroll close already carry Nia's wit for this scene.
3. **Item 21 (continuity order):** "FEB = coat." (line 93) versus "February is a blank line in my notebook" (line 129). Failure: the Thursday joke falsifies the Friday plain statement — the chapter's most important unsweetened line to Nia is untrue as written. Fix: relocate the "FEB = coat" fill-in from the Asha-call aftermath (line 93) into the Friday execution sequence ("She did the rest before it could cool," lines 149–159, beside the index-card beat), so the page still reads "FEB =" when June describes it to Nia. This also improves the joke's timing: the coat answer lands after the no has been spent, as part of doing the boring parts. Do not fix by revising the Nia line toward the coat — that would promote "coat" into exactly the portable tag the watch list feared.
