The audit is complete and saved to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_23.dialogue_doctor_round2.md`.

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# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 23: Finished Together / Labels (Round 2)

Read cold against `checks/audits/dialogue_doctor.md`, the reading guide's binding voice rules (plain-speech floor and zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis, §2/§6), the voice cards, and `tics.md` calibration. Round 2 verifies the four round-1 repairs against the current text and re-scans all seven manifest scenes for new or residual defects. Findings are BLOCKING and resolve via opposing-model rewrite.

**Global checks.** Contraction policy verified per speaker (June, Theo, Odile, Priya, Ben default-contract; Odile full-form only when cutting): compliant — no stiff uncontracted forms under Rule 4. Plain-speech floor (§2) met in every scene: Scene 01 Theo "the bottom half is Tuesday mornings, and it's blank, and it stays blank"; Scene 02 June "I'm not taking it down for a study. I know it by heart"; Scene 03 June "Leave the seam"; Scene 04 June "I'm not sorry I'm not going"; Scene 05 Ben "I'm scared it's the wrong call"; Scene 06 Theo "It's accurate"; Scene 07 Theo "I know." A per-scene `DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS` line is carried because the chapter's first-priority watch item is the §2/§6 zero-tolerance rule; `VOICE-CARD` lines are retained for Scenes 04–05 to trace the round-1 findings to closure. Mechanical check: no `load-bearing`, no speech-craft caption vocabulary ("the rhythm of," "careful/rehearsed/lawyerly," "a beat"); the sole "the word for it" hit is line 65 painting jargon ("Pentimento, the word for it"), glossed in place, not speech.

## Round-1 repair verification (all four confirmed closed)
1. **Scene 03 speech-act caption — CLOSED.** "It wasn't a question. He didn't answer it." is gone; line 71 now carries the beat as action only: "He left the brush where it was." Grounded by the brush already stopped "an inch off" the corner (line 67). No stiffness introduced; June's utterance is no longer classified.
2. **Scene 04 therapy-speak — CLOSED.** "Both of those are true and I can hold both." is gone; line 89 now reads "I can be glad for her and still not go." The abstract processing frame ("hold both") is replaced with concrete emotion/action (glad / go), inside June's register; the turn still resolves on her plain "I'm not sorry I'm not going," so no over-clarification.
3. **Scene 05 Priya delivery captions — CLOSED.** "When she spoke it came out as a question." and "She started it as an instruction and caught it and put it down and picked up the other one." are gone; the control→ask shift is now physical: "She wasn't managing anything. She rolled the coffee sleeve flat under her thumb." and "She adjusted one chair, stopped with both hands on the back, and left it crooked." The actions render the mode without naming it.
4. **Scene 05 Ben retired syntax — CLOSED.** "Which I know is not a—" is gone; line 105 now reads "I checked the walk between our two buildings. Eleven minutes. I checked twice." The retired self-cancel clause is removed, the checking detail is repurposed toward the plain fear ("I'm scared it's the wrong call"), and the comic tag is re-shaped ("Who knew. Everyone. Everyone knew that.") — new syntax and stakes per the `tics.md` standing order.

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**SCENE 01 — lines 2–23, Odile boundary / check-out clipboard (Odile, Theo)**
- Voice convergence: CLEAN — Odile's clipped imperative-plus-diagnosis ("Pull the two drawings from the third flat file") vs. Theo's logistical boundary lists ("They go on the sheet by the door, out and back"); blind-POV holds. Strongest counter-candidate: Theo's "If your collectors want a private view they can want it at eight-oh-five" — nearest her register, but a boundary term in his warm-with-spikes voice, not her insult-as-diagnosis.
- Monotone Q/A: CLEAN — negotiation, not volley; she instructs, he counters with terms. No questions traded.
- Missing interiority: CLEAN — "He let that be true, because it was"; "which from her was a yes" keeps Theo reading her (Rule 9).
- Questions-as-statements: CLEAN — all declarative.
- Fake-McCarthy: CLEAN — attribution intact, lines carry logistics; no unearned starkness.
- Jargon-trading: CLEAN — "the Rauch and the little Diebenkorn," "the Zurich loan you keep not calling about" weighable as named drawings / an archive loan.
- Attribution opacity: CLEAN — two speakers, never lost.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "You met your feelings and issued a form." The scene's one high-density line; Odile is the sole character licensed for it (style bible), it is speakable, and it is her only aphorism here.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — not over-stripped; interiority reacts (reads the folded sheet as assent) without restating the spoken terms.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "You met your feelings and issued a form." Targets his behavior (bureaucratizing feeling via the physical clipboard), not his wording or rhythm; permitted by §2 ("her diagnoses target the person or the work, never the sentence"). "She read the clipboard… the way she read a badly hung frame" describes her visual appraisal of an object, not speech.

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**SCENE 02 — lines 26–41, June enters with the four studies (June, Theo)**
- Voice convergence: CLEAN — June names studies optically ("oil on board," "the source for my side"); Theo catalogs jar/water/tape. Distinct blind.
- Monotone Q/A: CLEAN — "Hi." / "Hi." then statements; no volley.
- Missing interiority: CLEAN — Theo reads her at 27 and 39.
- Questions-as-statements: CLEAN — none.
- Fake-McCarthy: CLEAN — "Hi." / "Hi." is earned ordinary greeting (Rule 7), not performed starkness.
- Jargon-trading: CLEAN — studies described by function ("for finding the shapes").
- Attribution opacity: CLEAN.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — nearest is interiority, not dialogue: "She had spent the fall painting her own exit from four angles." Heightened, but it supplies the read June withholds; not a spoken zinger.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — closest double-explain call: June's functional "That one's the source for my side" vs. Theo's "Every one of them was the room leaving." The interiority adds the meaning she declines to state; it does not restate her line.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "he watched her clock the second jar… and not remark on it, which was her way of remarking on it" (line 27). Reads a non-verbal choice (a withheld remark); no utterance is being classified for wording, rhythm, or delivery. Survives — though it is a `, which`-caption of the family `tics.md` watches, which is a prose-sweep concern outside this audit's scope, noted only.

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**SCENE 03 — lines 44–73, the shared canvas / table, "Mine," the corner (June, Theo)**
- Voice convergence: CLEAN — June's clipped painterly imperatives ("Don't." "Leave the seam." "Mine.") vs. Theo's explanatory lines ("I was going to bring your edge up to mine. So it reads across.").
- Monotone Q/A: CLEAN — "Don't." / "I'm not." / "I know you're not." is stichomythia, broken by June's longer "Leave the seam…" turn; not question/answer.
- Missing interiority: CLEAN — Theo present at 45–47 (table calculation) and 67 (the corner).
- Questions-as-statements: CLEAN — "You're doing the table" / "You left the corner" are flat observations.
- Fake-McCarthy: CLEAN — the clipped run and the "Mine" beats are earned by the brush-down action and thesis stakes, and de-dramatized in narration; not performed starkness.
- Jargon-trading: CLEAN — "So it reads across," "plumb the corner," "pentimento" glossed by action or narration.
- Attribution opacity: CLEAN.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "Line them up and you get a third one neither of us saw." Quotable, but a real painting judgment in June's precise register; speakable, not composed.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — closest call: Theo's table calculation (45–47) reaches the same "don't merge" insight June then states at 57. It survives because the two do different jobs — his is private temptation-and-restraint (he loads the brush, sees the price, sets it down), hers is the spoken aesthetic law plus the new "a third one neither of us saw" escalation; not verbatim re-explanation. The pentimento passage (65) leans expository but stays oriented through Theo's condition-report knowledge and restates no spoken line.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: CLEAN — repair confirmed: line 71 is now "He left the brush where it was." (action), and June's "You left the corner" stands as a flat observation with no narrated classification. Strongest surviving counter-candidate: "twice she said 'Mine' before he'd decided whether to cross, not sharp about it, the way you'd claim a coat at a party" (line 63). "Not sharp about it" is emotional-tone narration, and "the way you'd claim a coat at a party" likens the social act (claiming territory casually) — i.e., what June does with the word, §2's sanctioned mode ("what a character does with what they heard"). It does not rate the utterance's construction, rhythm, or register, so it stays on the permitted side; distinct in kind from the removed "It wasn't a question" speech-act caption. (Featured as the closest call in the chapter; overridable, but survives on the rule as exemplified.)

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**SCENE 04 — lines 76–89, the phone / Dana keys / Asha (June, Theo)**
- Voice convergence: CLEAN — June's money-plus-craft plainness vs. Theo's restrained-usefulness lines.
- Monotone Q/A: CLEAN — statements, no volley.
- Missing interiority: CLEAN — "He had four things he could have said… He picked his brush back up." keeps the withheld-usefulness choice on the page.
- Questions-as-statements: CLEAN — none.
- Fake-McCarthy: CLEAN — attribution and interiority intact.
- Jargon-trading: CLEAN — "Kessler's money doesn't land till March," "the studio-access form" weighable in context.
- Attribution opacity: CLEAN.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "March is a long way to carry January." Theo's most lyrical beat and near his card's "polished aphorisms about care" line, but grounded in the concrete Jan/March timing, offered as his single sanctioned non-help utterance while he withholds four practical fixes, and immediately deflated ("That's all I get to say about it. I know it doesn't solve anything."). Sits at the ceiling. Also considered: "like it was a sonogram" — June's one visual simile, in her painter-eye register, tied to the concrete form. Survives.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — not stripped.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: CLEAN — repair confirmed (therapy-speak tag gone). Strongest counter-candidate: "she said the other one sideways" (line 89). "Sideways" is June's own canonical descriptor ("says the true thing sideways") pointing at topic-approach, not a speech-act classification. "He watched it cost her a second before it paid her one" reads her reaction to a text, not her speech. Both survive.
- VOICE-CARD: CLEAN — repair confirmed. Replacement "I can be glad for her and still not go." carries the both-sides beat in concrete plain speech, off the therapy register; not on June's never-says list and consistent with her allowed plainness ("I can't do this" lands without ornament). It survives because the abstract "hold both" processing frame is gone.

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**SCENE 05 — lines 92–115, Priya/Ben slower-choice payoff (Ben, Priya, Theo, June)**
- Voice convergence: CLEAN — Priya asks the real thing; Ben talks logistics-as-emotion; Theo is the spare witness.
- Monotone Q/A: CLEAN — mostly declarative with one genuine question ("Can you come to April knowing that?"); no volley.
- Missing interiority: CLEAN — "Theo waited, which was a thing he was learning to do with his mouth shut"; the Priya/June beat is watched from his position ("She wasn't managing anything"), not gone dark.
- Questions-as-statements: CLEAN — "Can you come to April knowing that? That's my condition." is a real question then framed plainly, not portent.
- Fake-McCarthy: CLEAN — attribution present across four bodies ("he said, to a chair"; "from behind a chair").
- Jargon-trading: CLEAN — "first and last," "the wall share," rent terms weighable.
- Attribution opacity: CLEAN — four speakers, each tracked.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "a spreadsheet with an empty column is just a lie with math on it." Near the ceiling, but visible deflection the scene dismantles with the plain "I'm scared it's the wrong call. That's the real thing under the eleven minutes." (plain-speech floor; Ben's card "'I'm scared' should eventually replace a plan"). The re-shaped comic tag "Who knew. Everyone. Everyone knew that." is a self-answer, speakable, attached to real stakes — not the retired "not a personality" shape.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — not stripped; "She wasn't managing anything" is a brief orienting read that the following actions then show, within Rule 9.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: CLEAN — both captions repaired. Priya's control→ask shift is now action only ("adjusted one chair… and left it crooked"), with no speech-act classification; "She wasn't managing anything" characterizes her behavioral mode (managing conditions), not the wording, rhythm, or delivery of a line. No surviving caption.
- VOICE-CARD / CALIBRATION: CLEAN — repair confirmed. Ben's line no longer reprises the retired "I checked the [X]. [figure]. which I know is not a—" shape; "I checked twice" is his core checking behavior repurposed into the fear admission, satisfying the `tics.md` "new syntax and stakes" order. Strongest counter-candidate is "I checked twice" itself; it survives because the self-cancelling deprecation clause — the actually-retired element — is gone and the beat now lands on "That's the real thing under the eleven minutes."

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**SCENE 06 — lines 118–151, the label (June, Theo)**
- Voice convergence: CLEAN — June's editorial imperatives ("Cut it." "So say only that." "That one.") vs. Theo's literal over-building ("It's accurate." "It doesn't say who finished which side.").
- Monotone Q/A: CLEAN — a working edit with varied line lengths, not a volley.
- Missing interiority: CLEAN — Theo present at 121 and 151.
- Questions-as-statements: CLEAN — "What are they. Actually. Under the paint." is a genuine prompt.
- Fake-McCarthy: CLEAN — attribution intact.
- Jargon-trading: CLEAN — "wall text," "stretcher," "underpaintings" grounded by the editing action.
- Attribution opacity: CLEAN.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — chapter's closest call: "It's explaining the joke before anyone tells it." and "'views' is a tour bus." Quotable, but work-critique of a jointly-authored caption artifact (June's sanctioned precise-critique care move), explicitly guarded — "She wasn't grading him. She was doing to the card what she'd done to the doorway, lifting away everything that wasn't the thing" — and the beat resolves on the plain "What are they. Actually. Under the paint." / "So say only that." At the ceiling; add no more.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — "He didn't write a paragraph in his head about what the label meant… let them be two cards" keeps Theo present without re-explaining the label.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: CLEAN — the label is a designed object being edited, not conversational speech; June critiques the copy ("'views' is a tour bus" is a diction verdict on the artifact), not Theo's phrasing-as-a-person, and the narration draws the line ("She wasn't grading him"). Permitted as work-critique; distinct from captioning an interlocutor's delivery.

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**SCENE 07 — lines 154–177, the tape / close at the door (June, Theo)**
- Voice convergence: CLEAN — June's exit-and-wanting register ("I'll be at the coffee pretending I'm not watching the door") vs. Theo's spare warmth ("I know.").
- Monotone Q/A: CLEAN — "Mine or yours" answered with a term, not a volley.
- Missing interiority: CLEAN — "June would turn it tonight or she wouldn't" keeps Theo present.
- Questions-as-statements: CLEAN — none.
- Fake-McCarthy: CLEAN — "I know." is spare but earned by the whole afternoon.
- Jargon-trading: CLEAN — "the shallow angle you use so the tape lifts clean" self-glosses.
- Attribution opacity: CLEAN.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "Someone's going to tell you it's crooked and offer to fix it… tell them it's supposed to." Thesis-bearing, but plainly said in June's warning-as-care register and closed by the vulnerable, speakable "I'll be at the coffee pretending I'm not watching the door"; composed-sounding but character-true, not a detached zinger.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — spare close, Theo's mind present; not stripped.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS: CLEAN — no caption on speech; nearest risk is none.

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## REVISION ORDERS
None. All four round-1 findings are verified closed against the current text (see repair verification above), and the cold re-scan surfaced no new or residual dialogue-diagnosis, voice-card, calibration, fake-sharp, monotone, convergence, attribution, or interiority defect.

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**OVERALL: CLEAN** — Seven of seven manifest scenes all-CLEAN with per-criterion counter-candidates shown. The two round-1 dialogue-diagnosis captions (Scene 03 line 71; Scene 05 lines 107/109) are gone and rendered as action; the Scene 04 therapy-speak tag and the Scene 05 retired Ben syntax are replaced without introducing stiffness, over-clarification, or new voice-card violations. Plain-speech floor, contraction policy, attribution clarity, and Theo's focalizing presence hold across the chapter, and no principal beat is explained twice. The single closest surviving call is the Scene 03 tone narration "not sharp about it, the way you'd claim a coat at a party" (line 63), retained here with its reasoning so it is overridable at routing.
