# Chapter 22 Dialogue Doctor — Round 4 (post-payment-staging repair verification)

Scope: full current chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_22.md`), re-swept cold — not a diff review of the round-3 repair, though the repair is verified point-by-point below. Manifest scenes: 01 (apartment, L3–23, zero quoted utterances), 02 (Sonia's booth, L27–153), 03 (sidewalk and walk home, L157–179); the manifest spans (26–159, 162–185) predate the Positive Prose tightening and the scene identities are unchanged. Exclusions applied before flagging: the single "Oh," (L115) remains the §6-sanctioned once-at-the-confession instance, licensed by the chapter card ("one possible 'Oh.' only if earned"); the two text bubbles (L9–11) and June's quoted unsent drafts (L15) are message content, not utterances — failure modes 1–7 do not attach to them; the ordinary-talk allowance is not needed, both required scenes are peak-pressure. Everything outside the payment beat was checked against round 3's quotations and is verbatim-stable; it was nonetheless re-verified cold, not carried.

## ROUND-3 REVISION ORDER 1 VERIFICATION (payment beat, L135–143)

The order's terms, checked one at a time against the current text:

1. **June's cash exists before Theo's beat** — EXECUTED. "June took two bills from her notebook and set them on the slip before Theo's arm made it across the Formica." (L135). The counting-out moved ahead of his action, as ordered. The bills arrive from a named, on-page container — the notebook has been in the scene since L5 and receives the receipt at L143 — so the object exists when touched.
2. **The dangling antecedent is gone** — EXECUTED. The failed phrasing "He looked at the bills" is cut entirely; the only money reference in his beat is "her cash" (L139), whose antecedent ("two bills") is one exchange earlier.
3. **Theo's action reads only as yielding** — EXECUTED. "He moved the sugar caddy back beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (L139). The old ambiguity (standing down vs. un-pinning her claim) is structurally dead: in the current staging June never places the caddy on the slip, so no reading of the caddy move can undo a claim, and "left the slip under her cash" admits exactly one reading — he stands down and the check stays hers. June's grade in the next line lands on an act the reader has already parsed.
4. **Beat stays action-only** — EXECUTED. No replacement capper, no attribution caption, no narrator gloss on what the gesture "meant." The only reading of the act on the page is June's spoken one: "Good," June said. "Keep doing the quiet version." (L141), exactly as the order required.
5. **No double-counting** — EXECUTED. L143 no longer counts out cash; it only tops up: "She added a tip that would keep them welcome, folded the receipt in quarters..." One payment, tracked continuously: bills on slip (L135) → slip under cash (L139) → tip added, receipt pocketed (L143).

New-defect sweep of the repaired text (each candidate tested, work shown in the scene 02 block): the word "back" in "moved the sugar caddy back beside the napkin holder" (mode 5 counter-candidate — survives); attribution of the unattributed "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (mode 7 — locked); conduct-grade count (still exactly three); the comedy-audit deflecting-tag family (no new member added by the repair; count holds at the ceiling of 5: L3, L13, L97, L143, L177).

## SCENE 01 / apartment (L3–23) — note, not a required block

Zero quoted utterances; modes 1–7 do not attach. The repair did not touch this scene; §2 zero-tolerance re-sweep confirms the round-2/round-3 clearances on the current text: "The first draft was *We should probably talk, yes*, which looked like a dentist's reminder. *Fine* was meaner than she felt." (L15) — June's own unsent text, on screen verbatim, deleted before any exchange exists; no delivered speech is captioned; "looked like" is her visual register applied to words she is looking at on a phone; and the perceptiveness resolves into action — "she held her thumb down until it disappeared" / "Then she wrote what she meant." (L15–17). The third-draft description ("an explanation of why he should not feel guilty before he'd even arrived") describes content, not delivery. "the exit installed before she'd even reached for the door" (L13) — reads the second text's function and motive, not its phrasing. Cleared.

## SCENE 02 / Sonia's booth (L27–153)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — full scene reread with attributions covered. June compresses and sets terms ("Week what?" L49; "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays." L149); Theo runs practical-to-emotional at length, facts first ("Boss was true. Odile is my aunt. My job runs through her. So does my apartment. So does that classroom." L45). The repair added one June line and one Theo action, neither of which converges: "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (L137) is her term-literalism, and his reply is not verbal at all — the caddy-and-slip beat is his card's object vocabulary (straightens, restores, yields logistics). Strongest counter-candidate unchanged from round 3: the fragment run in Theo's harm sentence — "About me. About what we were pretending to be." (L45) — June-shaped compression in his mouth; survives because the block's architecture stays his (fact-list opening, practical nouns, plain landing "I kept it.") and his card's under-pressure spec ("lists facts… then strips down to apology") predicts exactly this shape.

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — long confession blocks against one-word replies, then inverted (June's seven-week accounting at L57 against "Yes," he said, L59); no interrogative chain anywhere. The repaired payment run is line/action/line — June's claim (L137), his physical reply (L139), her grade (L141) — an asymmetric shape, not a volley. Strongest counter-candidate remains "Week what?" / "Three." / "Three." (L49–53) — survives because June repeats the number as arithmetic and immediately expands into the scene's longest speech.

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's mind present at every hinge: the observed catalog with "She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for" (L73); "He opened his mouth. She watched him nearly do it anyway, nearly tell her she'd had no way to know" (L81); "He had made the blank into a prize. It cost her a second to answer." (L105); the week-three arithmetic after "Oh," (L115–117). The payment run, round 3's dark-stretch candidate, re-tested on the repaired text: her perception tracks the race ("before Theo's arm made it across the Formica", L135) and her read of the outcome arrives spoken (L141) and then interior (the confusing-receipt paragraph, L143). Not dark; the beat's spareness is the ordered design and June owns its meaning on the page.

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "Can I ask what happens now?" (L83) — survives because Theo audits it mid-line and strips it to a real question ("Not as a pitch… No. I'm asking. Are you going?") and June answers with facts. "Did you paint my face?" (L119), "What?" (L111), and "And?" (L101) are genuine information-seeking and get factual answers.

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — the round-3 FAIL is repaired. The beat under test: "He moved the sugar caddy back beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (L139; Theo's entire reply between June's two lines). Followability re-tested cold per §8: a reader can state what each party did and conceded — June claimed the check with cash and her own term ("Just coffee means I buy the coffee.", L137, enforcing her L19 text); Theo did not contest it, redirected the reaching hand into tidying, and left the check under her money. Strongest counter-candidate, and the only residue of the old staging: "back" in "moved the sugar caddy back" — it implies a displacement the page never shows (nothing moves the caddy earlier; June's old caddy-on-slip action was cut by this repair). Survives: "back beside the napkin holder" names the caddy's home position, so a cold reader parses it as restoring a slightly-out-of-place object — ordinary diner-table fact requiring no prior beat, and card-true stress behavior for Theo ("straightens labels… performs competence") — and no reading of the clause can alter the tactical outcome, which the second clause carries alone and unambiguously. Watch note for any future touch: delete "back"; the clause loses nothing and the fossil goes. The scene's other clipped stretches stand on round-3 grounds, re-verified: palms flat on the Formica "nowhere near her" (L113); "Did you paint my face?" / "Not the part I didn't see." / "Tell me nothing else." / "Okay." (L119–125) — starkness is the content, June is demanding less information.

6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN, at capacity — the noun cluster verbatim-stable at the round-1 ceiling ("do not add nouns"): "I called Nia from the sidewalk, in front of a bodega with a cat in the window. I gave her Asha's name after asking Asha first. I'm taking Dana's room, and I sent Kessler the W-9." (L91). Scene 01 still pre-weights Tasker and Dana (L5); every noun arrives attached to a completed action. The repair added no world-terms — bills, slip, caddy, napkin holder are booth furniture; Formica is already on the page at L29. The jar/umber exchange (L147–149) trades only objects already present.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — the repaired run alternates strictly and locks twice over: "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (L137) is unattributed but follows June's action sentence, and its content ("I buy") can only be hers — a callback to her own text (L19); L139 opens "He"; L141 anchors "June said". Strongest counter-candidate, carried and re-verified: "'I said no to Tasker Friday morning.' He went still, cup halfway back to the table." (L89) — June's line shares a paragraph with Theo's reaction beat; survives because the preceding line is Theo's ("Freight elevator," he admitted, L87), content locks the speaker (only June can refuse Tasker), and L91 re-anchors with "she said" four words in. Round-3 watch note stands: do not let another speaker's beat open that paragraph.

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — full cut-list sweep with the repaired run as priority candidate, work shown. "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (L137) — quotable-adjacent term-literalism, but it survives: it is the keeper the Positive Prose order designated, it states the rule governing the physical action she just completed (functional, not composed), it is speakable in six words, and the reply it earns is an action, not a returned capper — the five-capper density Positive Prose flagged stays resolved. "Keep doing the quiet version." (L141) — conduct-grade with a concrete referent (the unread six things at L63, the un-offered crates at L85, the un-contested check); third and final grade, at the established ceiling. Carried candidates re-checked and standing on round-3 grounds: "if we're dating things now" (L79) — deflection visible as deflection after the plain payload, followed by a sentence that fails to finish; "I had the fact that would have changed what you could say yes to. I kept it." (L45) — first-person, situation-specific, self-indicting, landing on two plain words; "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) — composure as content, graded exactly by "That's the right amount." (L95); "I'd been walking past it for a month like it was going to file a complaint." (L99) — self-aimed, immediately un-deflected by "I read it wrong."; "It isn't evidence of anything and it doesn't fix anything." (L113) — anti-grand-gesture function per the chapter card; "It won't, though," she said, aggrieved (L153) — her card's compliment-as-grievance care move.

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2, zero tolerance): CLEAN — the repaired beat contains zero narration about language: L139 is object action; "the quiet version" (L141) grades conduct, not phrasing or delivery. Carried clearances re-verified on the current text: "I keep wanting to make it sound cleaner." (L67) — the naming is the event (the wrong being confessed IS narrative management, "I was deciding what you got to know"), he rates no delivered sentence and no one else's language, and June's "Don't." (L69) converts it to action, after which he produces the unpolished version (L71); "I called it taking care of you because that sounded better." (L71) — same carve-out; "She made herself finish." (L91) — effort of completing an utterance, an act, not a characterization of the sentence; "beating her there" (L99) — timing and anticipation, not language; "He did not say anything, so she kept the canvas between them instead of softening it." (L107) — at the line, not over it; no delivery clause has been added. Conduct-grade ceiling re-counted post-repair: exactly three ("Good." L65; "That's the right amount." L95; "Good… Keep doing the quiet version." L141).

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — the ordered action-only payment beat was tested as a possible over-strip: it is not one. The order reserved the act's meaning for June's spoken line; her interiority resumes within one sentence (L143, the receipt filed against the page with Dana's wall — the integration read: "Her life had earned one confusing receipt."); and adding narrator orientation inside the beat would have violated the order's no-gloss term. Carried sites re-verified: "He had made the blank into a prize." (L105) orients rather than repeats — "prize" names his error in her register before her spoken correction ("It's a portrait, Theo."); the week-three arithmetic (L117) returns her to the object ("She looked at her cup on the old coffee ring."); after "You paint before the room fills up." (L107) the narration still gives Theo no cushion before "I painted," (L109) — the cost correctly stays in the dialogue.

## SCENE 03 / sidewalk (L157–179)

Text verbatim-unchanged since round 3 (checked against its quotations); re-verified cold rather than carried.

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — Theo over-explains recursively ("my plan was nothing. My whole plan was to do nothing and let it be your call.", L159); June answers in compressed imperatives ("Tuesday. Four. Bring nothing.", L171). Strongest counter-candidate: "I know the difference now," Theo said (L169) — short and June-adjacent, but the qualifying second half ("I learned it this morning, but I know it") is his careful-apology cadence, not hers.
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — no interrogatives; the kiss block breaks any volley pattern; the third Tuesday-setting adds a new term ("Bring nothing") over L107 and L145 — overheard-speech consolidation, not composed repetition (Rule 7 cuts the other way).
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — densest interiority in the chapter: the memorized order ("black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation", L163) and "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (L165) — the single surviving known/not-known instance per the Positive Prose order, anchored to the literal sugar fact.
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — no spoken questions; the old "its own kind of question" narration remains cut, replaced by behavior ("neither of them turned toward the corner", L157).
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — the one weighted silence (the kiss) is marked with its meaning: "His hands stayed in his pockets the whole time." (L165) — consent information; the cut-list's requirement that silence register what it carries is satisfied.
6. JARGON-TRADING: CLEAN — nothing traded; "Tuesday. Four." is a held fact from L107/L145.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — six spoken turns, four attributed, two locked by adjacency.

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "That happened because the terms are set," she said. "Not instead of them." (L167) — quotable, but protected direct register: a fact about her own action, structurally required by the earned-stay test, and Theo refuses to match its sharpness ("I learned it this morning, but I know it" admits recency instead of returning a beat). "It does. I stocked it in October." plus the wince (L173–175) — self-incrimination repaired in-scene by her laugh; warmth floor holds.

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (§2, zero tolerance): CLEAN — "Thank you for the nine o'clock… And the just coffee." (L159) thanks her for the terms' content, not their phrasing; "I know. You put it in the second text." (L161) is factual citation of what he sent; no narration about speech anywhere in the scene.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — interiority reacts (the sugar she "had not known she knew") rather than explaining the kiss twice; the closing index card (`TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn`, L177) renders the terms as object, not summary.

REVISION ORDERS:

None. Round-3 Revision Order 1 is executed on all five of its terms and introduced no new defect; every scene block above is all-CLEAN with counter-candidates shown.

Housekeeping (non-blocking, for the orchestrator, not a rewriter): (a) On any future Ch22 touch, delete "back" from "moved the sugar caddy back beside the napkin holder" (L139) — a one-word fossil of the cut caddy-on-slip staging; it survives cold reading (see scene 02, mode 5) and is not a finding, but it references a displacement no longer on the page. (b) The Comedy Doctor file supplied as current (`chapter_22.comedy_doctor.md`, headed "Round 2") predates the Positive Prose and round-3 repairs: its inventory items 17–19 quote text no longer in the chapter ("I can accept that.", "Look at you." / "I'm trying not to ruin it.", the caddy-on-slip preemption), and its exclusion list quotes the cut "its own kind of question" line. The comedy contract itself still holds on the current text — conduct-grades at three, the deflecting-tag family at its ceiling of five with no member added by the repair, the physical-preemption joke surviving in bills form (L135) — but the comedy inventory needs a re-baseline pass before Ch22 is marked committable on comedy.

OVERALL: CLEAN
