# Chapter 22 Comedy Doctor — Round 3 (current-text re-baseline)

Scope: full current chapter (`output/chapters/chapter_22.md`), all three scenes, re-swept cold. This round is a re-baseline, not a repair verification: the round-2 CLEAR was issued against a text that no longer exists — Positive Prose rounds 1–2 and Dialogue Doctor rounds 3–4 have since cut, replaced, or restaged material that round 2 inventoried (the ninety-minute-installments litotes, the placing-things insight, "I can accept that.", "Look at you." / "I'm trying not to ruin it.", the caddy-on-slip preemption, "Both things could be true. She let them be."). Every item below was scored against the current file; no round-1/round-2 score was carried without re-reading the current line. Register calibration unchanged: reading guide §2 — warm, precise, lightly comic; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; Morisaki/*Before the Coffee Gets Cold* quiet as floor. Target reader: the O'Leary/Henry-calibrated reader who wants comedy generated by these two people's specific damage, not narrator wit. Chapter-card constraints applied: private romantic climax, "release, earned and unspectacular," "no public-grand-gesture energy," plainness over eloquence. Dialogue Doctor round 4 (CLEAN) and Positive Prose round 2 (LLM-CLEAN-FOUND, both orders since executed — verified: L5 now carries Dana's observable facts; L163 ends at "this morning"; L139 has no "back") consulted. Line numbers cite the current file.

## Re-inventory of the five named current-text changes

1. **Opening drafts now verbatim (L15).** "*We should probably talk, yes*, which looked like a dentist's reminder. *Fine* was meaner than she felt." plus the deleted guilt-management paragraph. The comic item survived the repair and got stronger: the reader can now verify the dentist read against the comma-stiff draft on screen instead of taking the narrator's word for it. "looked like" stays inside June's optical register on words she is looking at (DD4 concurs). Inventoried as item 4.
2. **Apology and admission roughened (L45–79).** The confession stretch remains joke-free by design; the roughening cut one former comic item entirely — the ninety-minute-installments/"not shaved with total success" litotes (round-2 item 11) is now a non-comic observation run (collar, razor line, primer at the thumbnail, L73). Density impact assessed in distribution; the replacement attempts no comedy and is excluded. June's "The good easel was just free. The clean jars were just there." (L79) was tested as a comic candidate (the alibi-word repetition has a dry shape) and excluded: it is self-indictment mid-confession, no release valve, and reading it as a joke would soften the beat the calibration protects.
3. **Payment beat restaged (L135–141).** The old caddy-on-slip preemption (round-2 item 17) and both cut cappers are gone. The comedy survived translation into the new staging and is re-inventoried fresh: bills-before-his-arm (item 16), the term-literalism keeper (item 17), the caddy-beside-napkin-holder yield (item 18), and the third conduct grade (item 19). No fourth grade was introduced.
4. **Sidewalk re-anchored (L157).** The delivery bike with salt-dried tires attempts no comedy — plain non-portable street fact; excluded. Nothing comic was lost here: the round-1 casualty at this site ("the morning had committed to December") was already cut and stays cut.
5. **Cold/good-sweater thread (L23 → L165 → L177).** The sweater item survived the PP trim (the "Both things could be true" tail is gone; the joke now lives in one clause, item 6) and the thread gained a middle beat — the cold nose at the kiss (item 26) — before the "as suspected" callback closes it (item 29). Inventoried as a three-beat bodily-comic thread.

## Items considered and excluded as non-comic (tension or texture, not attempted comedy)

- "Dana had cleared the north wall before she arrived and stood out of the way until June asked about the outlet." (L5) — tact rendered as fact (the PP2 repair); mild warmth, no incongruity engine.
- "The two bubbles sat there the way they had sat there for a day and a half." (L7) — stasis, carried exclusion, re-verified.
- "the exit installed before she'd even reached for the door" (L13) — reads the second text's mechanical function; her register, not a joke.
- "The tape crackled under her." (L33) — physical texture.
- "The coffee came fast because it was all she had asked for." (L41) — strongest exclusion candidate this round: the cause-effect economy has a dry cadence, but there is no incongruity — it is diner logistics stated plainly in June's register. Excluded; do not let a future touch sharpen it into a tag, the family is over cap (see distribution).
- "the circles matched badly enough to bother her" (L41) — fussiness as dread displacement, carried.
- "Week what?" / "Three." / "Three." (L49–53) — arithmetic dread, carried.
- L73 observation run (collar, razor line, primer) — replaced the cut litotes item; every clause an observed fact, no comic turn; plants the stockroom reveal and the L163 payoff.
- "The good easel was just free. The clean jars were just there." (L79) — see re-inventory note 2.
- "in front of a bodega with a cat in the window" (L91) — evidence-grade specificity for the earned-stay case; charm, not a joke, and it must not become one — the stay decision stays unsoftened.
- "If you were going, I'd hope it went well. Since you're staying, I'm glad." (L93) — composure as content, graded on the page by item 13.
- "a square with my name on it" (L103) — pathos, carried.
- "Oh," (L115) — the §6-sanctioned once-at-the-confession instance, grep-verified single, spent correctly.
- "Not the part I didn't see." (L121) — consent precision under pressure, carried; deadpan-shaped but reading it as comedy would soften the portrait-consent terms.
- "not to anything with a guest list" (L131) — terms enforcement; the dryness serves precision, not release.
- Delivery bike / salt-dried tires (L157) — see re-inventory note 4.
- "I learned it this morning, but I know it." (L169) — honest recency admission; his careful-apology cadence (DD4 concurs), not a bid for a laugh.

INVENTORY:
1 — "washed it at seven for no defensible reason ... took it back out, and put it on the kitchen table, because Tuesday was two days away" (L3) — mechanism: deadpan self-audit + literalized indecision (the wrap/unwrap loop enacted, then justified with straight-faced logic) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the blue dish is the Ch18-planted Mara tether; the tote/Tuesday system is this book's) — dramatic work: nerves through object; arms the item-30 bookend — workshopped: no
2 — "she stood there cataloguing that like anyone was paying her to" (L3) — mechanism: deflecting tag, self-surveillance caption — source: character-shaped (the paid-eye resonance with the Tasker/W-9 texture is real, which is why it is not scored portable) — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: NONE beyond what the sentence already did — the cobalt-going-green observation IS the cataloguing, and "for no defensible reason" one clause earlier already deflated this exact displacement; the second tag under-commits and re-grows the caption the Positive Prose §4-3 order cut ("one practical object do too much work") in a wittier costume — workshopped: no — BLOCKING (funniness 1); also the sixth member of the deflecting-tag family (see distribution)
3 — "made her want to tuck the phone under the Tasker receipt and close the notebook, which was not a plan" (L13) — mechanism: literalized avoidance impulse (filing the problem as paperwork) + deflecting tag — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Tasker receipt, notebook, her filing system) — dramatic work: pressure spike before drafting — workshopped: no
4 — "The first draft was *We should probably talk, yes*, which looked like a dentist's reminder. *Fine* was meaner than she felt. A paragraph ... turned, halfway through, into an explanation of why he should not feel guilty before he'd even arrived, so she held her thumb down until it disappeared." (L15) — mechanism: escalating failed drafts, register collision (clinical politeness vs. stakes), now with the evidence on screen — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the comma-stiff "yes," the Tuesday class, the pre-emptive guilt management map her exact wound and derive "Sunday. 9. Just coffee.") — dramatic work: produces the chapter's terms; the reader watches words die — workshopped: no (re-tested post-repair: the dentist figure now sits on verifiable evidence rather than narrator assertion)
5 — "It was 8:04. She sent it before the hour could argue with her." (L21) — mechanism: personified second-guessing, compressed — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (borderline, carried with re-verification; the argument she outruns is the specific 8:04-proposing-9 awkwardness on the page) — dramatic work: decision under self-suspicion in one clause — workshopped: no
6 — "put on the good sweater, telling herself it was the warm one" (L23) — mechanism: self-aware rationalization, deadpan self-permission — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no as the opening beat of the three-beat cold thread (items 26, 29) — dramatic work: desire through object without confession; tighter post-PP-trim, and the trim cost nothing — the alibi is funnier unexplained — workshopped: no
7 — "considering the usefulness of walking to the corner and back once" (L27) — mechanism: deadpan audit register on a stalling impulse, quantified ("once") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("usefulness" does ironic advance work for "Don't be useful right now," L85) — dramatic work: entry pressure; primes the theme the booth detonates — workshopped: no
8 — ""They do the cinnamon thing on Sundays," Theo said, and stopped. "You didn't come for that." / "I did not."" (L37–39) — mechanism: host-reflex misfire caught mid-line + full-form deadpan — source: character (his card: practical offer before emotional statement; her card: full forms for emphasis) — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the cinnamon thing" is Sonia's-Sundays texture; still the book's single instance, grep-verified this round) — dramatic work: the misfired practical care he is about to renounce, self-caught — still his, not narrator wit, per calibration — workshopped: no
9 — "She waited for the list, schedules and keys and how he would restructure the known world so this could never happen again. He reached for his cup instead." (L61) — mechanism: hyperbolic anticipation + misdirect — source: character (schedules/keys are his card's diction) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: sets up the refused list; his restraint lands as change — workshopped: no
10 — "I wrote six things. I'm not going to read them." (L63) — mechanism: specificity + refused performance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the renounced list is his tic renounced) — dramatic work: repair dramatized as not managing her — workshopped: no
11 — "She watched him nearly do it anyway, nearly tell her she'd had no way to know, and then he drank his coffee instead." (L81) — mechanism: misdirect, repetition-with-variation of item 9 (the cup-swerve recurs, but item 9 refused his own list and this obeys her "I need you not to fix it") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the swerve only means anything against her L75 instruction) — dramatic work: he passes her stated test physically, on camera — workshopped: no (new to inventory this round; the cup-misdirect family stands at 2, varied — a third would repeat untransformed)
12 — ""Don't be useful right now," June said. "You were about to offer me crates." / "Freight elevator," he admitted." (L85–87) — mechanism: anticipatory unmasking + escalation-by-confession (she guesses crates; the truth is bigger) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (crates and the freight elevator are his art-logistics identity — the instrument of the harm — almost recurring at the worst moment) — dramatic work: the wound performed live and declined; "admitted" costs him; sits immediately before the joke-free stay declaration and does not leak into it — workshopped: no
13 — "That's the right amount." (L95) — mechanism: deadpan quantification of feeling — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (grades his claim-size against the staying-isn't-for-you term she just set) — dramatic work: enforces the earned-stay terms; conduct grade 2 of 3, at the DD ceiling — workshopped: no
14 — "The waitress refilled them both without asking, which was the correct level of involvement." (L97) — mechanism: deadpan grading — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("involvement" is the scene's negotiated subject; the waitress accidentally models the terms June wants) — dramatic work: thematic echo disguised as service note — workshopped: no (tag-family member, counted below)
15 — "I'd been walking past it for a month like it was going to file a complaint." (L99) — mechanism: personification in bureaucratic register + self-deprecation — source: character (complaint-filing is the admin world he lives in) — funniness: 2 — portable: no in his mouth about that canvas — dramatic work: confesses avoidance and proceeds straight to "I read it wrong" without deflecting — workshopped: no
16 — "June took two bills from her notebook and set them on the slip before Theo's arm made it across the Formica." (L135) — mechanism: physical preemption, timing (the race is over before his reach completes) — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (check standoffs travel; this one is her L19 term enforced from the notebook that holds the Tasker receipt and Dana's wall) — dramatic work: "just coffee" enforced bodily; survives the restaging with the joke intact and the antecedent fixed — workshopped: no
17 — "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (L137) — mechanism: term-literalism — her own text enforced as payment law — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (callback to the L19 text; fourth and final "just coffee" instance) — dramatic work: keeps the repair asymmetry legible; the gag's terminal escalation — workshopped: no (six speakable words; the reply it earns is an action, not a returned capper)
18 — "He moved the sugar caddy beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (L139) — mechanism: displacement activity as concession — the reaching hand redirected into tidying — source: character (his card's stress vocabulary: straightens labels, performs competence; here the performance IS the yield) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the caddy business only reads because the book built his tidying-under-stress; DD4's "back" fossil confirmed deleted) — dramatic work: he practices receiving without a word; sets up the grade — workshopped: no
19 — ""Good," June said. "Keep doing the quiet version."" (L141) — mechanism: deadpan imperative grading conduct — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the quiet version" has the concrete referent set: the unread six things at L63, the un-offered crates at L85, the un-contested check one line up) — dramatic work: sets the terms of how he gets to love her; conduct grade 3 of 3 — the ceiling; any added grade in any future touch fails on sight — workshopped: no (the cut of "Look at you." / "I'm trying not to ruin it." removed the volley and left the grade landing on an act, which is stronger)
20 — "put it in her notebook against the page with Dana's wall on it, where later it would confuse her. That was fine. Her life had earned one confusing receipt." (L143) — mechanism: anticipated-future deadpan + self-permission — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the receipt filed against Dana's wall is the two lives entering one notebook) — dramatic work: integration without a speech — workshopped: no ("earned one confusing receipt" is composed but object-bound and self-directed; re-checked, holds)
21 — ""you do not touch my stain." / "The umber one," he said. "There's a jar under it. I put it there Thursday. Old habit. I can take it away." / "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays."" (L145–149) — mechanism: mock-property terms over a flaw + pragmatic alibi for accepting care (the alibi shape is item 6's, varied) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (umber stain, water jar, *After Class* are the class-world inventory) — dramatic work: she claims her half's imperfection as hers and accepts his care move without granting absolution — workshopped: no
22 — ""I'll try in front of you. It'll be terrible." / "It won't, though," she said, aggrieved. "That's the other annoying thing about you."" (L151–153) — mechanism: compliment-as-grievance — source: character (her card's honest-warning-dressed-as-joke, inverted into praise) — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("the other" indexes the wanting she confessed at L79) — dramatic work: her rare devastating praise with her dignity kept; closes the booth warm without going soft — workshopped: no
23 — "my plan was nothing. My whole plan was to do nothing and let it be your call." (L159) — mechanism: repetition, escalating commitment to passivity — source: character (his recursive over-explaining under shame) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: consent posture stated as logistics — workshopped: no
24 — ""I know," June said. "You put it in the second text."" (L161) — mechanism: deflation-by-citation — his confession graded against his own paperwork — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the second bubble is the chapter's opening wound, L11–13) — dramatic work: closes the loop on the exit-installed text without absolving it — workshopped: no
25 — "black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation, and she had watched him doctor it this morning" (L163) — mechanism: incongruity via audit register (efficiency review of a man) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no ("his entire operation" is the usefulness identity the book built; the order memorized since week one is her secret care move) — dramatic work: desire through specificity; loads the kiss — workshopped: no (the PP2 cut of "without admitting she was memorizing it" is confirmed; the clause now ends on plain watching and the known/not-known payoff stands alone at item 27)
26 — "coming up half a step from the curb and getting the angle wrong at first, off-center, his nose cold against her cheek. Then it was right, and brief because she made it brief" (L165) — mechanism: physical imperfection deadpan + agency-repetition ("brief because she made it brief") — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no, as a unit — the wrong-angle first kiss alone is genre-stock and was interrogated hard, but the unit is anchored by the cold nose (the December thread's middle beat, between items 6 and 29) and by her governance of the kiss's duration, which is the terms-setting comedy of the whole chapter compressed into one clause — dramatic work: keeps the climax unspectacular per the card; consent legible (his hands stay pocketed) — workshopped: no
27 — "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (L165) — mechanism: epistemic chiasmus — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (pays off items 16 and 25 inside the kiss; the chapter's single known/not-known instance, PP2-verified) — dramatic work: renders the kiss as accumulated attention — workshopped: no
28 — ""It does," he said. "I stocked it in October." He winced. June laughed, first time all morning." (L173–175) — mechanism: self-incriminating reassurance — his truthful answer re-confesses the courtship-by-provisioning; the wince is him hearing it — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the asymmetry wound still live inside the warmest beat, made survivable instead of erased; the laugh stays uncaptioned — workshopped: no
29 — "the cold working through the good sweater, which was, as suspected, not the warm one" (L177) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation callback ("as suspected") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (closes the three-beat cold thread: sweater alibi, cold nose, cold verdict) — dramatic work: retro-confirms she dressed for him while letting her keep the alibi — workshopped: no (tag-family member, counted below)
30 — "she wrapped the blue dish in the towel again and set it in the tote by the door, two days early, and this time she left it there" (L177) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation bookend (the opening's wrap/unwrap loop resolved; "two days early" reverses "because Tuesday was two days away") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the dish is the Mara tether; the loop is item 1's) — dramatic work: decision embodied — the morning's indecision is over without a sentence saying so — workshopped: no (new to inventory this round; rounds 1–2 tracked the dish only as item 1's payoff and never scored the close)
31 — "`TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn`" (L177) — mechanism: deadpan legalism — the morning's terms compressed to index-card grammar — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the pinboard system and `FEB = coat` lineage are this book's; the jar and turning terms exist only in this chapter) — dramatic work: renders the portrait-consent terms as object, not summary; the comedy sharpens the terms rather than softening them — workshopped: no

CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR

31 items: 30 at funniness 2, 1 at funniness 1 (item 2), 0 at 0. Sources: character 27, situation-shared 4 (items 8, 16, 18, 26 lean on scene pressure), narrator-overlay 0 — the overlay hunt was run on every narration item and found none; item 2 is the closest thing to overlay and is blocked on other grounds. Mechanism variety holds: misfire-and-catch, anticipatory unmasking, term-literalism, refused performance, physical preemption, displacement-as-concession, compliment-as-grievance, self-incrimination, deflation-by-citation, epistemic chiasmus, mock-property terms, bookend resolution — no dialogue mechanism repeats untransformed; the one narration repeat (the cup-misdirect, items 9 and 11) is varied and capped at 2. Strongest item: 12 — ""You were about to offer me crates." / "Freight elevator," he admitted." — the book's central wound almost recurring in real time, caught by her, escalated by his honesty. Weakest surviving item: 5 — "She sent it before the hour could argue with her." — still the closest survivor to overlay; it holds because the personified hour is her own hesitation with a deadline, compressed to one clause.

Distribution findings. Density: right for the card's "release, earned and unspectacular," and the shape survived the roughening repairs — the confession stretch (L45–79) carries zero jokes; items 9 and 11 are the only comic beats inside the accounting and both exist to be refused/obeyed; the loss of the round-2 litotes item at L73 costs nothing the stretch needed, because that stretch is contractually joke-free and the replacement observation run works harder (plants the thumbnail plot). Sweetness: NOT OVERSWEETENED — verified against the three protected beats per calibration: the apology (L45–71) is joke-free; the portrait-consent terms (L119–133) are joke-free until the comedy returns as enforcement (items 21, 31 sharpen the terms); the stay declaration (L89–95) is joke-free between item 12 and the grade at item 13; and "I stocked it in October" re-opens the wound inside the warmest beat. Cringe: none for this reader. THE ONE DISTRIBUTION FAILURE, with counts: June's deflecting-tag deadpan family now stands at 6 — "for no defensible reason" (L3), "like anyone was paying her to" (L3), "which was not a plan" (L13), "which was the correct level of involvement" (L97), "where later it would confuse her" (L143), "as suspected" (L177) — against the ceiling of 5 that rounds 1–2 established and both later doctors carried as binding ("any further Ch22 revision touch must not add a member"). The Positive Prose §4-3 repair added the sixth: it cut the dish caption and grew a new tag in its place, two tags in one opening paragraph on the same displacement beat. Six of 31 is below the round-1 count of 7 that drew the near-monotony warning, so the verdict stays CLEAR rather than MONOTONOUS — but the ceiling breach converts to Order 1, which also resolves the inventory's only blocking item; the two failures converge on the same clause, exactly as they did in round 1.

Tracker checks (current text, grep-verified). "just coffee": exactly 4 instances (L19, L35, L137, L159), each an escalation, none added since round 2 — SPENT, at its useful limit per calibration; no Ch23+ reuse without transformation. "Cinnamon thing": still the book's single instance (grep across all chapters), still Theo's misfired practical care self-caught mid-line, not narrator wit — cleared per calibration; do not reuse as Sonia's-charm. Conduct grades: exactly 3 ("Good." L65; "That's the right amount." L95; "Good... Keep doing the quiet version." L141) — at ceiling; Order 1 adds none. "Oh,": once (L115), sanctioned. No smirk/chuckle/"Noted." `FEB = coat`: L5 and L179 pinboard anchors only; the comedy lives in the new card (item 31), the required variation. New at-ceiling counts this round, for the tics.md rows: cup-misdirect at 2 (items 9, 11 — varied; a third repeats); June self-noticing notes at 2 ("cataloguing that" L3, "filed that away" L73 — Positive Prose round 2 warned a third filing-note would tip; Order 1 takes this to 1). Housekeeping: the round-1 Ch22 tracker rows are still not appended to `output/tics.md`; append them updated to this round's counts (deflecting-tag family: 5 after Order 1; add the cup-misdirect and self-noticing rows).

REVISION ORDERS:

1. L3 — "and she stood there cataloguing that like anyone was paying her to." Failure: funniness 1 (blocking) — the tag is the paragraph's second deflation of the same displacement beat ("for no defensible reason" already made this joke one clause earlier, and the cobalt-going-green observation already dramatizes the cataloguing), so it under-commits, smile-shaped and redundant; it is also the caption the Positive Prose §4-3 order cut ("one practical object do too much work this week") regrown in a wittier costume at the same site, and it is the sixth member of the deflecting-tag family, one over the binding ceiling of 5. Fix: cut the clause — end the sentence at "where the glaze thinned at the rim." Do not replace it with anything; the glaze observation is the joke's evidence, "for no defensible reason" is its verdict, and the paragraph needs no third pass. This single cut clears the blocking item, returns the tag family to its ceiling of 5, and takes June's self-noticing notes to 1. Add no new tag anywhere in the chapter while executing.
