# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 17: The Acknowledgment Page

Audited: `output/chapters/chapter_17.md` (accepted revised text). Provenance checked against `output/drafts/claude/chapter_17.round_01.md` — the dialogue is carried over essentially verbatim from the Claude raw draft (diffs limited to early-paragraph restructuring and one cut "finally"), so every finding below exists in both. The Codex parallel draft and its Codex-tic audit were consulted for cross-draft calibration: that audit ordered "He had told her all of that in the register of wages and shifts" out of the Codex draft as narration-about-speech; the accepted chapter contains the same move (finding 1 below) — it survived only because that audit's scope was the Codex draft.

Manifest scope: scene 01, lines 2–123, 31 dialogue lines. All dialogue sits in the back-stair confrontation (lines 41–119); the apartment movement (lines 2–37) has no spoken lines and is assessed only as the interiority running into the exchange. Stance: skeptical professional editor; every verdict carries quoted evidence. Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_17.dialogue_doctor.md` (manifest showed coverage missing).

## SCENE 01 — back stair, Marchetti Rooms service door (lines 41–119)

**1. Voice convergence: CLEAN** — read with attributions covered; the two speakers never trade rhythms. June: short imperatives and cuts ("Stop." / "Say it anyway." / "Ask your aunt."), full form only at the card-sanctioned trying-not-to-fall-apart moment ("I would have stopped coming... That was mine to decide."). Theo: list-shaped, practical-to-emotional, self-interrupting ("I'll tell her tomorrow morning. I'll tell her the class was my idea — the whole thing, the application, all of it on me... I'll redo the labels myself, you won't have to—"), per his card's offer-spiral. Strongest counter-candidate: June's longest speech ("You're trying to get a task... you want a list, you want errands, you want to carry it for me the way you carried the catalogs") approaches Theo's length — it survives because its repetition is accusatory and aimed at him, where his lists are placatory and aimed at tasks; covered, the speeches are still assignable one way. Contraction policies hold on both cards (Rules 4–5): Theo "would've," "wasn't," "I've"; no stiff uncontracted forms outside sanctioned emphasis.

**2. Monotone Q/A rhythm: CLEAN** — line weights swing from one word ("No.") to ~80 words (the offer spiral at 79); June interrupts twice mid-clause ("Stop." at 53; "Stop offering me things." at 81). Strongest counter-candidate: the three-question run at 57–67 ("Did you know this page was in the box you packed for me?" → "So you carried it to my table and hoped I'd only read the plates." → "How long has *boss* been the word?") — it survives because the middle "question" is an accusation in statement form, answer lengths vary from one line to five, and the interiority beat at 65 breaks the volley.

**3. Missing interiority: CLEAN** — June's mind stays lit and reacts rather than recaps: "That was probably true, and it changed nothing" (65); "she let him, because neither of them was going to stand on this stair and name the kiss" (69); "she found she took no pleasure in it, which was its own information" (103); "she got one step down before the rest of it arrived" (111). Strongest counter-candidate: the unanswered beat at 97 ("He didn't answer that. Down on the street a car passed and its headlights ran along the bottom of the stair and went away.") — the focalizer goes quiet for one sentence, but the cost registers two beats later in the no-pleasure line, so the silence is not unmarked (cut-list bullet 7 checked and survived).

**4. Questions-as-statements: CLEAN** — every June question is real and gets a real answer ("Did you know this page was in the box you packed for me?" → the packing account at 59; "How long has *boss* been the word?" → "Since the first night."). Strongest counter-candidate: "How long has *boss* been the word?" is portent-adjacent in shape — it survives because it targets the lie's duration, not staged profundity; "boss" is the lie's name, not a rating of his phrasing, and he answers it as information.

**5. Fake-McCarthy minimalism: CLEAN** — clipped exchanges are pressure-earned, attribution never strips below trackability, and the bareness is June's card behavior (compresses when exposed). Strongest counter-candidate: "Stop." / He stopped. (53–55) — survives because the scene has built the interruption's weight (he is mid-spiral through the payroll defense) and the strip is immediately re-inflated by her concrete next question rather than held as a pose.

**6. Jargon-trading without translation: CLEAN** — the world-terms exchanged ("the pair," "the ground," "the slot," "the wall in the show," "the book") are all priced for the reader by Ch14–16 and by this chapter's own logbook line (`Catalogs (9) – J. Park – out Thurs 11/19`, line 29). Strongest counter-candidate: "The ground's still—" (99) — survives because "ground" is established craft vocabulary (the Ch14 twelve-by-sixteen choice; June's word list owns "ground") and the broken clause is the point.

**7. Attribution opacity: CLEAN** — two speakers, strict alternation, action beats re-anchor every three or four lines (box set down, latch, hands/pockets/keys, flinch, steps). Strongest counter-candidate: the unattributed pair at 93–95 ("I know." / "Saying *I know* isn't giving it back.") — survives because alternation is locked by the attribution at 91 and the lines are only assignable one way.

**FAKE-SHARP: FAIL** — "That's the whole grievance. It fits in one sentence. I've checked." (June, line 75). The grievance sentence itself ("Every Tuesday I stood in her room knowing she could throw me out, and you stood in it knowing she couldn't.") is the packet-required one-sentence grievance, concrete and June-true. The three-beat tag after it is a compact aphorism closing her own speech (cut-list bullet 1), a self-rating of her own line's size and finish ("It fits in one sentence" is line-quality commentary in a speaker's mouth — the zero-tolerance rule does not carve out self-comment), and "grievance" is a legalistic register word June's card does not own (her list: edge, value, ground, wash, exact, decent, alleged). It arrives at the moment she should be hurt and performs composure as polish instead. Also checked and surviving: "Tuesday looks like a room with one less chair in use" (107) — chair fact, not a count-shaped joke; it concretely answers his direct question. "Strangers know the way out" (119) — aphorism-edged, but anchored to her literal exit and her literal six-week status, sideways-true per her card, and immediately paid by action ("He didn't follow past the second step"). "Write it in the book — you'll want the record straight, you're staff" (111) — sarcasm, but concrete to the logbook and speakable.

**INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN** — tested both directions per Rule 9: the mind is present (mode 3), and the interiority reacts rather than explaining lines twice — "That was probably true, and it changed nothing, and she filed it where true useless things went" processes his answer; it does not restate it. Strongest counter-candidate for double-explaining: "He flinched at the word, which was the first honest thing his face had done since the door closed" (103) — narration interprets, but it reads his face, not his sentences, and it adds June's response (no pleasure, "its own information") rather than re-explaining "Ask your aunt."

## FOCUSED EXTRA CHECKS

**Dialogue diagnosis (zero tolerance): FAIL — 2 instances, both in narration.**

1. "she knew his closing schedule; she knew it because he'd told her, weeks ago, in the voice of an employee explaining shift work" (line 39) — narration classifying the register of Theo's past speech. This is the exact move the Codex-tic audit ordered out of the parallel draft ("in the register of wages and shifts," tic 2 instance 1). The reading guide's rule covers narration about speech, not just spoken comments.
2. "'Okay,' he said. And then, with everything practical stripped off it: 'I was scared you'd stop coming.'" (line 89) — narration captioning the delivery/register of the line before it lands. The speech itself demonstrates the stripping (no offers, no logistics, a stated fear from his allowed-plainness list); the caption rates it in advance — same defect class as the Codex draft's ordered-out "The words were plain. That did not make them small."

Checked and surviving: "*She's my boss* was payroll-true" (29) — tests the fact, not the phrasing (the permitted shape the Codex-tic audit itself cites). "Then the facts came, the way she'd known they would" (77) — names the behavior class his card owns (lists facts under pressure), is anchored to body (hands, pockets, keys), and is immediately cashed by an actual fact-list; it characterizes the person's move, not any sentence's craft. "in the careful hand of staff" (29) — penmanship, not language. "She heard her own voice come out level" (85) — composure-as-cost interiority, vocal control rather than line-rating. "Saying *I know* isn't giving it back" (95) — rates the act's sufficiency (the withheld decision is not returned), not the wording.

**Grievance followable as asymmetry/safety net, not generic "you lied": PASS** — a cold reader can state it without decoding: she risked expulsion and public humiliation as a stranger; he risked nothing because he was family with keys. On the page in two concrete forms: "if she caught us, I was a stranger who'd conned her way into a class with a lie... you'd be her nephew who pulled a stunt. You'd have helped her stack the chairs after." (71) and "Every Tuesday I stood in her room knowing she could throw me out, and you stood in it knowing she couldn't." (75). It never collapses to generic lying — the job's reality is conceded on-page ("she pays me, there's a payroll service, I clock in, all of that is real," 51), which keeps the wound on the asymmetry.

**June visually exact and hurt, not legalistic or aphoristic: PASS except the counted FAKE-SHARP finding** — her hurt stays in objects and placement: "You'd have helped her stack the chairs after" (71), "a room with one less chair in use" (107), the catalog set down "square to the edge, slip out, spine toward the door, the way stock went back on a shelf" (109). The one legalistic/aphoristic slip is the "grievance / fits in one sentence / I've checked" tag (finding 3).

**Theo: logistics first, then plain shame; no grand romance speech, no public-confession plan: PASS** — the sequence runs exactly per card: facts/payroll defense (51), task spiral (79: telling Odile privately, storage, labels, "all of it on me"), called out and stopped (85–87), then stripped shame: "I was scared you'd stop coming. That's the actual reason... I kept not telling you on purpose, every week, because I wanted you in that room." (89). The Odile disclosure he proposes is private and logistical ("I'll tell her tomorrow morning"), not a public confession; "I wanted you in that room" is the closest he gets to romance and it stays a plain admission of motive, not a claim on her. His last moves are small and humiliating in the right register: "I'll walk you to the train" (113), the box picked back up "because his hands had to hold a job even now" (121).

**No Odile final-knowledge/design reveal; no Tasker/Philadelphia decision: PASS** — the dialogue never states or implies Odile knew from night one; Theo's confession covers only his own withholding. June's inference stays at the permitted level and is explicitly shelved: "Odile had named the shelf. All nine, third shelf, left side. She set that thought down... decided the pile could wait." (33). Tasker/Dec 4 appears only as the face-down phone ("Nia's thread in it, and the fourth of December in the thread... Neither was tonight's problem," 3); Theo learns nothing; nothing about Philadelphia is decided; the fight runs entirely on the asymmetry.

**Borderlines noted for the tics tracker / synthesis, not counted as Doctor findings:** "she filed it where true useless things went" (65) adds a filing figure to June narration with the packet's clerical/custody family at cap after Ch16 — route to the pattern audit. "past the dark glass with the room behind it where two unvarnished canvases hung as a pair because pairs that don't hang together lie" (121) re-sounds Odile's Ch16 dictum as a narration beat-closer in the exit paragraph; outside dialogue scope, flagged against the packet's paired-echo-closer ban.

## REVISION ORDERS

Findings are BLOCKING and route to the opposing-model lane (Codex rewrite), not back to the drafting model.

1. **Line 39 — dialogue diagnosis in narration.** Quote: "she knew his closing schedule; she knew it because he'd told her, weeks ago, in the voice of an employee explaining shift work." Failure: narration classifying the register of past speech (zero-tolerance rule; the same move was ordered out of the Codex draft). Rewrite direction: keep the fact and its sting — he told her the schedule weeks ago as part of the staff cover — with no classification of the telling. State what he told her (closing nights, the service light) and let the relabeling already running in June's head (the "payroll-true" frame at 29) carry the irony; June's narration tests facts, not phrasings.

2. **Line 89 — dialogue diagnosis in narration.** Quote: "'Okay,' he said. And then, with everything practical stripped off it: 'I was scared you'd stop coming.'" Failure: narration captioning the delivery of the line before it lands (zero tolerance; defect class of the Codex draft's ordered-out "The words were plain"). Rewrite direction: cut the caption clause entirely. The register change is already enacted — hands out of pockets, keys staying, "Okay," then the bare admission; Theo's card ("strips down to apology") must be performed by the line, not announced over it. Land on the shape: "'Okay,' he said. 'I was scared you'd stop coming. That's the actual reason.'" with at most a body beat between, and no narration about the speech.

3. **Line 75 — fake-sharp self-rating tag.** Quote: "That's the whole grievance. It fits in one sentence. I've checked." Failure: compact aphorism closing her own speech (cut-list bullet 1); line-quality commentary in a speaker's mouth ("It fits in one sentence"); "grievance" off June's register (legalistic, against her word list). Rewrite direction: end the speech on the grievance itself — "...and you stood in it knowing she couldn't." — and let Theo's silence at 77 answer it; if a landing beat is needed, give June something visually exact and hurt in her idiom (the stair, the catalog, the door light), or move the cost into interiority. Do not replace one epigram with another; the strength here is the uncushioned concrete sentence, per the plain-speech floor.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (3 findings)
