# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 06: Sightlines — ROUND 4 (narrow verification re-audit after opposing-model repair of the round-3 blocker)

Auditor stance: cold re-read of the current accepted text, skeptical. Inputs: `output/chapters/chapter_06.md` (current), round-3 audit (`chapter_06.dialogue_doctor_round3.md`, OVERALL: BLOCKING, 1 finding), dialogue scene manifest (ch 06 = one scene, lines 2–169; current file ends at 169 — segmentation holds, single scene block, 59 dialogue lines / 78 quoted utterances, doctor required), voice cards (`output/style_and_voice.md`), `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` + `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`, mechanical gate report (ch 06: 0 open findings, 0 allowlisted, WATCH-only). No reading-guide exclusions apply: standard quoted dialogue, ordinary-outing scene — the ordinary-talk calibration *raises* the bar against sharpening. Discipline: round-3 rulings carry authority only where the text they quoted is unchanged; I verified every round-3 quotation against the current file before citing it. The only material delta since round 3 is the route-card handoff line.

---

## Round-3 blocker verification

Round-3 FAIL (BOOK-SPECIFIC followability, §8 / dialogue-fact contradiction): "The back was blank." (narration, corner of Allen) vs. Theo's handoff "Closing times are **on the back**. Everything's closed. The map part still works." Revision Order 1 directed: keep "The back was blank." verbatim; move the closing times to the map side in Theo's concrete register (suggested phrasing: "under the map"); add no beat of Theo writing on the back; leave Ben's ranked-fallback line standing.

Verified against the current text, clause by clause:

1. **"The back was blank." retained verbatim** — "He stood at the corner with the route card under his thumb. The back was blank." Unchanged, in position at the end of Ruth's walk, still functioning as the image of her unanswered question.
2. **Closing times moved to the map side** — current handoff: "Theo took the route card out of his chest pocket and put it in Ben's hand. 'Closing times are under the map. Everything's closed. The map part still works.'" "Under the map" places the times on the card's front face, below the map. The rueful tail the order required preserved ("Everything's closed. The map part still works.") is intact.
3. **No writing beat added** — between Ruth's "She went inside." and the handoff, Theo's on-page actions are: stands at the corner with the card, enters, declines to order for June ("'Two,' he said. 'Ask her first.'"), orders his own coffee, pays, drinks it. He writes nothing. The card's blank back travels to Ben blank; the question Ruth asked stays unanswered on paper, which the closing beat ("his thumb found the empty place on his shirt where the route card had been") still depends on and still gets.
4. **Ben's line stands** — "There's a fallback coffee place *ranked*," consistent with front-of-card content ("a ranked list of coffee options" that survived two cuts, line 9's setup).
5. **The repaired line independently re-tested** (it is new text, not grandfathered): Rule 4 — "Everything's closed" contracts; "Closing times are…" has no natural contraction. Voice card — key/label/schedule register, concrete spatial instruction; matches his card's practical-fact-then-plain-admission shape ("I can handle the labels. I know that's not the problem."). Fake-sharp — instruction plus admission at a genuine relinquishment, attached to the object's stakes, immediately deflated by Ben's reply; speakable, not quotable-composed. Residual ambiguity checked: could "under the map" be misread as the reverse face? Adjacent narration forecloses it — a reader holding "The back was blank." resolves "under" to below-the-map-on-the-front; the secondary support "Theo had the closing times for both galleries… and nothing in his pockets that touched Ruth's question" is now consistent rather than contradictory (the times are in his pocket; they don't touch the question). No new finding.

**Blocker REPAIRED.**

---

## Full sweep

SCENE 01 / gallery walk: Orchard basement → Vestibule on Rivington → frame shop → Allen St. walk → bodega → closing walk (entire chapter, manifest single scene):

- **1. Voice convergence — CLEAN** — Covered attributions and re-read; all round-3 register evidence is unchanged on the page and the repaired line does not pull Theo toward anyone else's cadence. Registers stay separated: Mara runs long and cites Luis ("I checked three forecasts, which Luis says is two forecasts past useful, and I have the gray one in my bag."); Ben spirals with numbers ("Fourth floor, no elevator. I know that's bad. The rent is less bad, which is how they get you."); Priya is directive-clinical ("I know. Your left knee keeps looking for a wall. Stool."); Ruth builds evidence inventories ("The form I saw had your email on it. The payment line had the gallery. The class contact was you. Maybe there's another page."); Luis stacks placement facts ("It's the wall. The floor slopes. The painting's level."); Sam directs bodies ("Stand here. Not symbolically. You can actually see all three from here."); June compresses ("Coffee. Black. Separate."). Strongest counter-candidate: the repaired handoff's three clipped sentences against Luis's three-sentence "It's the wall." stack — but Theo's triplet is schedule-and-object content in his card's key/label register, Luis's is placement diagnosis in his; no shared lexicon, and Theo's surrounding lines run medium ("The opening. We met at the opening, and then the class made it easy to—"). Survives.
- **2. Monotone Q/A rhythm — CLEAN** — Checked the Ruth–Theo walk, the rent-math thread, the coffee counter, and the new-ish handoff exchange. Strongest counter-candidate: Ruth's long build ("…who can she tell who isn't you?") against Theo's degrading answers ("Yes." → "I close out the tins. Odile counts them." → "Yes. I hear it." → the aborted "'I can,' he started."). Survives: asymmetric weights, Theo audibly loses material under pressure, and "Ruth looked at him." breaks any volley. The handoff is question ("Delancey entrance or East Broadway?") answered by an object instead of a sentence — the opposite of a matched volley.
- **3. Missing interiority — CLEAN** — Theo's mind stays lit through every exchange: "Theo did not hate it fast enough"; the stranded step ("In another room, at another hour, that would have been enough… This was not his wall."); the *Boss*-cover paragraph; "Both were his pockets."; the bodega reflex ("His mouth was already open to say it for her, to be useful, to anticipate, to stand in the middle of one more route."); the name-testing paragraph down Allen. Strongest counter-candidate (carried from round 3, text unchanged): the Ben overlap beat, where June's "It's the only data." is followed only by "The route card came back against Theo's shirt." Survives, narrowly, on the same grounds: the ease is pre-loaded at the wall beat ("he liked it more than he had planned to"), the cost lands on Ben's face ("The open table-look left his face before he recovered."), and the card's return reads as felt weight. The handoff beat itself carries its own registration: "Theo's evening no longer had a card in it."
- **4. Questions-as-statements — CLEAN** — Every question re-checked: Ruth's core question demands an answer-hunt and she says so plainly ("But I'd like there to be an answer.") while withholding her conclusion ("Maybe there's another page."); Ben's "What made it obvious the overlap was worth it?" is open and gets punctured; Ben's "Delancey entrance or East Broadway?" is a real logistics question answered with a real object; June's "Which way are you walking?" is answered and acted on ("'Delancey,' she said, and set off."). Strongest counter-candidate: Theo's "You think I'd hurt her." — a statement wearing no question mark, answered by Ruth with evidence, not portent. Survives.
- **5. Fake-McCarthy minimalism — CLEAN** — Strongest counter-candidate: "'Two,' he said. 'Ask her first.'" — four words, but the whole chapter prices the reflex it breaks, interiority immediately before it carries the temptation in full, and June converts it to action ("She paid from her own coat pocket, in singles, before Theo's wallet cleared his jacket."). Earned. "'Don't,' Ben said." remains comic refusal with full staging (Mara reading the sublet card "in Ben's direction"). The repaired handoff is clipped but fully attributed and object-anchored; Ben's two-handed receipt and pocketing stage it. No performed starkness.
- **6. Jargon-trading without translation — CLEAN** — "plate tone," "miters," "glassine sleeves," "CORTADO YES," "track work," "the overlap" re-checked. Strongest counter-candidate: "Is that plate tone, or did they just not wipe it?" — untranslated, but the payload is Theo's "I genuinely don't know," and the reading guide's smallness test affirmatively sanctions technical craft truth (named exclusion, declining to flag). "The overlap" is defined by Ben's own prior sentence ("Not the lease.").
- **7. Attribution opacity — CLEAN** — Eight speakers plus the kid and the counterman; re-checked Vestibule, the bodega, the handoff, the goodbyes. Strongest counter-candidate: the unattributed "I'm fine." — pins to Mara via the stool set "behind Mara" and Priya's reply ("Your left knee keeps looking for a wall."). The handoff exchange is two speakers, both action-tagged ("put it in Ben's hand" / "Ben received it with both hands"). No drift.
- **FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN** — Full cut-list re-run with weight on the one new line. (a) Repaired handoff: "Closing times are under the map. Everything's closed. The map part still works." — tests as a possible compact-aphorism delivery vehicle ("The map part still works" has shape), but it is an instruction attached to a physical object at the moment Theo gives up the evening's instrument, his card licenses plain admissions after practical facts, and Ben's reply deflates rather than caps it ("There's a fallback coffee place *ranked*"). Speakable at a bodega door. Survives. (b) Strongest chapter-wide counter-candidate remains Ben's "We are considering paying twenty-nine hundred dollars a month to live in this gallery minus the ceiling." — landed comic image, but mid-anxiety, attached to actual stakes, after visible nervous measurement ("paced the length of the room with his heel-to-toe walk, lips moving"), with Priya answering in flat friction ("Put the phone down for one room."); his card licenses self-mocking logistical jokes tied to stakes. (c) Ruth's walk: one edged line ("Don't solve it on this block."), plain exit ("It should be one she can use."), card-verbatim "I saw enough to be worried. Not enough to be right." — within her one-editorial-line cap. (d) Loaded-short-line check: "'Don't,' Ben said." is followed by June's miter-reading; no unregistered weight — Ben's temptation is paid off later ("read the sign as if terms might be hidden in it"). No exchange exists to deliver a quotable.
- **INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN** — Checked whether the repair stripped anything: the handoff paragraph kept its registration line ("Theo's evening no longer had a card in it."), the coffee counter keeps full interiority ("He knew it from Sonia's, twice over, the way he knew the alarm code."), and the closing walk remains the chapter's answer-in-progress ("Mara would ask him first… Odile's name came up and he set it down again."). Strongest counter-candidate: the Ben overlap beat (see Mode 3) — survives on the same three entry points. No over-stripped exchange.
- **BOOK-SPECIFIC (zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis, §2) — CLEAN** — Re-swept the full current text including the repaired line, which describes a card, not anyone's speech. Nearest misses re-checked and declined, unchanged from round 3: "and heard himself do it" (registers the act of pre-empting, not the sentence); "That means no." (targets the eating fact; deflection visible as deflection, which §2 requires); "*Boss* had passed because every public fact supported it" (cover mechanics, fact pattern); "The listing says *study* about a closet." (rates a document, not speech); "Sam said, not in a whisper" (volume staging); "Ruth said good night to everyone equally." (behavior). `load-bearing` ban: zero hits against `reading_guide_bans.tsv`; gate report confirms 0 open findings on ch 06. Plain-speech floor holds per principal: Theo "You think I'd hurt her." / "I'll find one."; June "We don't live together."; Ruth "I'd like there to be an answer."; Ben "I know that's bad."; Priya "I just don't trust a cheap room when I'm tired."; Mara "I keep losing the middle one when I stand over here"; Sam "Say it or let it go."; Luis "It's the wall."
- **BOOK-SPECIFIC (followability, §8 / dialogue-fact reconciliation) — CLEAN** — The round-3 contradiction is resolved: "The back was blank." (corner of Allen) and "Closing times are under the map." (bodega door) now describe the same card without conflict — map and times on the front, back blank. A cold reader can state what is written on the card, what Theo gave Ben, and what stayed unwritten; the closing "empty place on his shirt" beat reads as intended absence. Strongest counter-candidate: the residual prepositional ambiguity of "under the map" (front-below vs. reverse face) — survives because "The back was blank." is on the page eighteen lines earlier and forces the front-face reading; no beat shows or implies writing in between. Secondary checks re-confirmed: "There's a fallback coffee place *ranked*" remains consistent with front-of-card content that outlived two cuts ("He had cut it twice."), and "Theo had the closing times for both galleries… and nothing in his pockets that touched Ruth's question" now agrees with the card rather than contradicting it.
- **VOICE-CARD / RULE 4 — CLEAN, one WATCH carried forward** — Contractions: all casual dialogue contracts ("don't," "isn't," "I'd," "Here's," "Everything's"); the two full-form candidates both resolve as sanctioned ("Rent math is not a proposal." is quoted written text, verbatim from Ben's card; "We are considering paying twenty-nine hundred dollars…" is Ben's mock-deliberative announced-findings emphasis, the register his card's "I am practicing." models). The repaired line sits squarely in Theo's key/label/schedule lexicon and his practical-offer-before-plain-admission quirk; no never-says violation (no polished aphorism about care — the line is about a card and a closed evening, and it costs him the card). WATCH, not a finding (carried from round 3, text unchanged): Mara cites Luis three times in this chapter ("which Luis says is two forecasts past useful," "Luis won't let me blame the lights," "Luis checked it from two places before anyone asked, so now we all benefit") — the density dramatizes her card's contradiction, but a fourth instance here or a repeat at this density in chapter 07 tips the tic into hammering. No rewrite ordered.

REVISION ORDERS: none. The single round-3 finding is repaired per its order; no new findings.

OVERALL: CLEAN
