Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_13.comedy_doctor_round2.md`. The full audit text follows.

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# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 13 ("The Memory and the Kiss") — Round 2 (repair verification)

Stance: skeptical professional editor. Register calibrated to the reading guide: warm, precise, lightly comic; observational and character-true; Emily Henry at ~60% banter density; never sitcom rhythm. Target reader: the cozy contemporary-romance reader who wants adult romantic pressure with wit inside the situation, craft specificity, and the dignity of small routines — not portable narrator wit, not quotable zingers. Standing Ch13 directives enforced this round: zero clerical/legal narration figures; no new refusal-to-conclude variants; `, which` evaluative captions monitored-at-cap; Odile quotability nearer 3–4, not 5; no sitcom banter; kiss-sequence comedy must heighten Theo/June specificity and awkwardness, not explain or defuse the kiss. Full re-inventory performed; this round is not limited to round-1 findings.

## ROUND-1 ORDER VERIFICATION — 5/5 EXECUTED

**Order 1 (portable stall aphorism) — EXECUTED.** "Reading had become a way of not starting." is gone. Line 7 now enacts the stall physically: "She had already checked the clothespin line twice and thumbed the stripe flat once, as if either action could count as preparing." The avoidance runs through the card's own objects (clothespin line, Sonia's rubber-band stripe through *Theo, 9*), per June's voice-card physical-stall spec. The trailing clause was checked for replacement-aphorism risk: it cannot be lifted without the two actions it judges; non-portable, self-rebuke rhythm, not epigram.

**Order 2 ("administrative weather") — EXECUTED.** Line 85 now reads "a date at the far edge of a packet, easy to leave stapled there instead of in the room." The coinage is gone; "stapled" is the physical packet the order explicitly licensed. Chapter-wide clerical/bureaucratic narration-figure count after repair: 0.

**Order 3 (invoice simile) — EXECUTED.** "as if the gallery had asked them to wait while someone found the correct invoice" is gone from line 115. "the posture he used with difficult clients" survives as ordered (June's earned knowledge of Theo's work self, not a narration coinage), and Ruth's "Committee chairs" (121) carries the label. Same-target "they look professional" count drops from three renderings in six lines to two, differently sourced.

**Order 4 (`, which` captions ×3 + "leave it alone") — EXECUTED.** Item 9: line 45 now reads "Her painter's eye wanted to move it. She kept the brush away from the pin until the urge passed." — caption gone, banned string gone, inversion enacted as physical restraint. Item 33: "which was such an absurdly Theo answer" is gone; line 131 keeps the brush held "burnt umber clear of Mara's scarf" and converts the laugh into action — "June nearly laughed and felt the kiss slip off-center for half a second before she pulled back." Item 15 stands at line 79 ("she did not look again, which was the most obvious thing she had done all night") as the permitted lone survivor: chapter-wide evaluative `, which` count is exactly 1 (line 151's "Theo's card, which she tucked back into the roll" is a restrictive relative on a literal object, not an evaluative caption).

**Order 5 (Odile quotability 5 → nearer 3–4) — EXECUTED.** "Invite people you can stand in a warm room." is flattened to "The last Tuesday will be open for two hours. A small showcase. Invite people you can stand for two hours." (83) — the wit is now bound to the announced duration and reads as instruction, not freestanding aphorism. Post-repair aphorism-grade census: 4 — "Do not punish it for being ordinary" (11, the assignment instruction proper), "Than when you liked it" (41), the Brennan/wet-mistakes line (81), "Empty rooms flatter badly" (105). This is the landing round 1 pre-approved as defensible.

**Repairs beyond the five orders (logged, all net-positive):** other passes cut "nothing in that kitchen had the courtesy to stay out of anything else," the dear/bleak failure taxonomy, "the room had been looking back all evening," the gray wash "bounced down four stories and lost the argument" figure (now "secondhand daylight at the bottom of four stories"), "a tact so complete June wanted to be angry," "That was worse than persuasion," the wet-panels kiss analogy, Priya's "I am choosing not to be helpful about why," and Theo's "I need thirty seconds without asking." Net effect: narration-caption wit is down, the same beats now run through action and dialogue (Mara presses the phone flat against her sweater; Priya intercepts with a paper towel; Theo's jar clicks and his brush steadies). Density drops slightly from round 1's 39 items; distribution improves.

**Tracker discrepancy (correct at commit):** tics.md Ch13 rows cite "`, which` 3 after repair at line 61," a surviving "the room had been looking back all evening" at line 89, and "The laugh stayed where it was" as spent syntax. None of these strings exist in the current text. Correct rows at commit: evaluative `, which` = 1 (line 79); room personification = 0; the laugh-suppression sentence is absent (replaced by the off-center slip).

## INVENTORY

1 — "checked the clothespin line twice and thumbed the stripe flat once, as if either action could count as preparing" (line 7) — mechanism: pretext self-exposure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: stages the stall before the card's intimacy through her physical tells — workshopped: no
2 — "Do not improve it. Do not punish it for being ordinary." (11) — mechanism: imperative paradox / insult-as-instruction — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the "thing handed over" is the entrusted memory) — dramatic work: sets the no-rescue test — workshopped: no
3 — "Ben raised one finger with a practical objection already assembled. Odile looked at him until he lowered it." (13) — mechanism: silent deflation via stare-down — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: no-negotiation assignment — workshopped: no
4 — "hated that she knew the pause was orange" (17) — mechanism: intimacy-as-evidence incongruity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: desire becoming evidence against herself; the POV engine — workshopped: no
5 — "Luis gave me his grandmother's kitchen in Caguas. I had to stop eating to ask questions." (19) — mechanism: self-reported enthusiasm deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: honest handoff against June's "Fine" — workshopped: no
6 — "He gave me a fourth-floor window. I gave him a wall." / "That sounds like both of you." (21–23) — mechanism: compression + accurate read — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cover strain visible as deflection — workshopped: no
7 — "Then keep the scarf through next week. Orange is doing things for you." (27) — mechanism: tact pivot to wardrobe — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (S-SCARF-01 loan) — dramatic work: privacy granted, thread alive — workshopped: no
8 — "Better." / "Than what?" / "Than when you liked it." + "She moved on before June could decide whether that was useful." (37–41) — mechanism: insult-as-diagnosis + exit-timing topper — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enforces no-rescue — workshopped: no. (Topper checked against the refusal-to-conclude family: the non-conclusion is imposed by Odile's exit, not chosen by the narrator; cleared.)
9 — "Her painter's eye wanted to move it. She kept the brush away from the pin until the urge passed." (45) — mechanism: instinct inversion, enacted — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: fidelity beating craft vanity — workshopped: no
10 — "Eighty-nine cents a pound." (55) — mechanism: specificity deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the entrusted memory unsentimental — workshopped: no
11 — "The numerals had the pleased cleverness of a restored sign." (57) — mechanism: craft self-verdict — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: she catches her own prettifying mid-pass — workshopped: no
12 — "the gladness made her set the brush down too hard" + "The sound made her want to move the fourth pin after all. She kept her hands off the panel." (59–61) — mechanism: involuntary tell + repetition-with-variation on the pin gag — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: feeling displaced into handling — workshopped: no
13 — "She needed paper towels, or had decided she needed them" (63) — mechanism: pretext self-exposure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: licenses the look at his canvas — workshopped: no
14 — "He had put the formula tape on the can, exactly where a store clerk would have put it: DECORATOR'S WHITE. FLAT." (67) — mechanism: fidelity-overload deadpan — source: character (Theo via June's eye) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: he honored the ugly version of her memory — workshopped: no
15 — "You said the left screw sat proud." / "I said the screw, not the whole plate." / "I made the plate crooked to match it." ... "Don't. It looks like a room." (69–77) — mechanism: precision-correction volley + over-fidelity — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: memory custody dramatized; she sanctions the truer error — workshopped: no
16 — "she did not look again, which was the most obvious thing she had done all night" (79) — mechanism: conspicuous-restraint paradox — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: not-looking as the loudest public tell — workshopped: no. Lone surviving `, which` caption; cap honored.
17 — "Do not make Brennan carry everyone's wet mistakes down Broadway." / "Theo made a small sound behind June. Odile ignored him." (81–83) — mechanism: imperative synecdoche + reaction topper — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: showcase logistics + Theo's carrying role public + reread clue — workshopped: no
18 — "Invite people you can stand for two hours." (83) — mechanism: dry imperative, wit bound to the announced duration — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: showcase as social risk — workshopped: no (flattened per Order 5; no longer freestanding)
19 — "June heard the word flyer and wished she had not." (83) — mechanism: dread compression — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: plants the forcing mechanism early — workshopped: no
20 — "Then she remembered she was not supposed to waste time cleaning a brush she still needed." (85) — mechanism: involuntary-tell relapse, self-caught — source: character (her voice-card stress tic) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: panic rendered as owned tell — workshopped: no
21 — "Acceptable. Empty rooms flatter badly." (105) — mechanism: verdict + embedded warning — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: approves the joint subject, plants its risk — workshopped: no
22 — "a sketch Ben was protecting from paint with one forearm" (105) — mechanism: physical secrecy comedy — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the application outcome hidden in plain sight — workshopped: no
23 — "both frowning as if the paper had taken a position" (107) — mechanism: object personification — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: housing thread alive without revealing outcome — workshopped: no. Weakest survivor; stock personification on built capital.
24 — "Sam answered by drawing one line, badly, with the cap still on his pen." (107) — mechanism: committed anti-demonstration — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort going public by degrees — workshopped: no
25 — "Mara wrote LUIS'S STOVE on a strip of tape, crossed out the apostrophe, put it back, and laughed at herself before Luis could do it for her." (107) — mechanism: self-correction race / gag inversion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: inverts the capped Mara-cites-Luis family; arc movement — workshopped: no
26 — "turning people ninety degrees with two fingers and an apology" (113) — mechanism: precision-care specificity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: photo pressure made bodily — workshopped: no
27 — "enough air between them for either one to be cropped out" + "the posture he used with difficult clients" (115) — mechanism: photographic deadpan + earned work-read — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the cover exposed as professional; kiss ignition — workshopped: no
28 — "Priya will have to crop you into separate boxes." (117) — mechanism: deadpan logistical verdict — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (flyer boxes, this layout) — dramatic work: social-proof failure made concrete; forces the repair — workshopped: no. New since round 1; checked against Mara's card ("avoid making every line a social punchline"): verdict in flyer-logistics terms, not punchline syntax; cleared.
29 — "Committee chairs," Ruth said, and returned to wiping a brush. (121) — mechanism: two-word deadpan label — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the failure, triggers June's repair instinct — workshopped: no. Ruth sharp-line cap 1/1: her stair-rail question is plain; "Absolutely not" (137) checked — blunt refusal in scene, not editorial-sharp; cap holds.
30 — "It's fine. Priya can crop." + "Mara did not offer to take another preview. Her thumb slid toward the next name on the list." (123–125) — mechanism: deflation via logistics + tact-as-action — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: removes June's exit without persuasion; round 1's evaluative caption ("That was worse than persuasion") is now enacted instead — workshopped: no
31 — kiss comic matter (127–131): "She had planned one public correction"; "missed the center of his mouth, corrected before she could stop herself"; "She had meant one count, two."; "elbow locked, brush tip up, burnt umber clear of Mara's scarf"; "June nearly laughed and felt the kiss slip off-center for half a second" — mechanism: painter's-correction misapplied to a mouth + character paradox under pressure, laugh enacted as physical slip — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: heightens awkwardness and Theo/June specificity while the pressure lines sit between the beats ("felt him steady into the correction"; the shutter noise; "she was still there, her fingers hooked in his lapel") — workshopped: no
32 — "He was crouched before she had finished lowering her hand, the rag already out of his pocket" (133) — mechanism: displacement-speed paradox — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: post-kiss awkwardness through action, per the card — workshopped: no
33 — Mara presses the phone "flat against her sweater" + "Ruth, Sam, give me one without the brush rag." / "Absolutely not," Ruth said. / "Sam lifted the rag anyway." + Odile "wrote something beside a name and did not look up" (135–139) — mechanism: tact-as-action + couple counterpoint + withheld reaction — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the room grants cover without applause; the Odile beat is a reread clue — workshopped: no
34 — "Your sleeve." / "Old jacket." / "I have solvent downstairs." / "Old jacket, Theo." / "Right." (141–149) — mechanism: repetition-with-escalation; repair reflex rebuffed twice — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the kiss renegotiated entirely through one umber mark; her refusal means she keeps the mark; "Right." is usefulness collapsing as a hiding place — workshopped: no
35 — "She went back to her easel and found nothing there to fix." (151) — mechanism: displacement denied — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: her own usefulness-exit removed — workshopped: no
36 — Priya "shifted the clean paper towel between June and the rack. 'Top rack,' she repeated" + "Thank you." / "Mm." (153–161) — mechanism: discretion via logistics; minimal-acknowledgment deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: privacy granted without comment; stronger than the cut self-narrating version — workshopped: no
37 — "They left with no panels to carry. That was the strange part at the bottom of the night" (163) — mechanism: absence inversion — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: nothing to hold between them but the cuff mark and the card — workshopped: no
38 — "I can hold the photo... Or send it tomorrow. Or crop it first... I can say the windows went wrong." (165) — mechanism: over-hosting escalation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Mara's smoothing wound on display; June's "Tomorrow" caps it — workshopped: no
39 — "washing the brush she had made him drop" (167) — mechanism: quiet callback — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: aftermath ownership without group discussion — workshopped: no
40 — "I'll be here Thursday. For the joint panel, I mean." + "One panel," June said. "She said one." / "One panel. One ground." + "He put his keys in his coat pocket and did not take them out again." + "Limit the list." / "I'll send two." (171–179) — mechanism: self-correction + quantity-capping volley + suppressed stress tell — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: post-kiss pace negotiation in panel counts; "I'll send two" as restraint offered like a gift — workshopped: no. June-caps-Theo's-optionality family now at 2 uses (Ch12 easels, Ch13 panels); mutate or rest before next use.
41 — "Theo held the door with his shoulder before he seemed to know he had done it." (181) — mechanism: involuntary care reflex — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: undone and still himself; last warmth before the phone — workshopped: no
42 — "That was true in the same limited way *boss* had once been true." (191) — mechanism: rueful parallel — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the cover's own logic now aimed at the leaving secret; sharpens the withholding rather than softening it — workshopped: no

Checked non-items (inventory hunt, ruled not comic attempts): "secondhand daylight at the bottom of four stories" (31) — figuration replacing round 1's cut "lost the argument" item; quieter, painter's-eye, cleared. "June let it stay there and painted" (29) — checked against the banned refusal-to-conclude strings: literal scarf-on-rail placement, an action, not a withheld judgment; cleared. "by the way a person could stand too far back and call the room finished" (67) — recognitional "the way a person" family at 1/1 chapter cap; zero budget for Ch14. "the mug full of dead pens" (185) — texture inside a serious beat, correctly unjoked; the Nia close now ends on the curb-step action.

## FOCUSED CHECKS

**Kiss sequence keeps romantic pressure: PASS.** Comic matter inside the kiss is items 31–32 only. Both heighten: the elbow-locked brush is Theo's exact care under pressure (protecting Mara's scarf mid-kiss is the most Theo fact available, and the text now trusts the reader with it — no narrator grading); the near-laugh is a physical event that changes the kiss ("felt the kiss slip off-center for half a second") rather than a comment on it. The pressure ledger: she plans "one count, two" and is "still there" past the shutter; "felt him steady into the correction" carries his answer; "the windowpane pressed cold through her jacket" is contact, not weather-mood. No zinger after — his first words are "Your sleeve."; nobody claps; Odile does not look up. Nothing in the sequence explains the kiss to the reader or defuses it.

**Standing directives:** Clerical/legal narration figures: 0 (full-text hunt; "stapled," "roster," "label," and "formula tape" are literal objects; "difficult clients" is licensed earned knowledge per Order 3). Refusal-to-conclude variants: 0 (see checked non-items; "until the urge passed" concludes in action). Evaluative `, which` captions: 1, the permitted lone survivor (79). Odile quotability: 4 — within the 3–4 directive. Sitcom-banter check: closest candidates are the sleeve/solvent volley and the panel-count volley; both are need-driven, asymmetric, and nobody answers a feeling with a punchline; the "Absolutely not"/rag-lift beat is a real-pair counterpoint in scene, not a zinger exchange. Cleared.

**Inherited closures:** Dom-forms — 0. Water gag — 0 (rinse water at 85 is process). Decorative straightening — 0 (the stripe-thumbing at 7/151 is the card's own object, bookended). June process-monologue — compressed throughout. `not a personality` / `cargo` / `Not symbolically` / `That's the whole ___` / label-theme jokes — 0. Standalone "Oh." — untouched. `load-bearing` — 0 (mechanical gate: 0 open findings, 0 BANNED hits). Hands foreground — photo blocking and painting mechanics only, no romance-hand shorthand.

**Off-scope flags for other passes:** Mara's "The windows are still workable" (111) — "workable" is Priya's voice-card word, not Mara's; still present after repair; re-flagged for the Dialogue Doctor. The deliberate light image is the late-night green glass (125), comic-lite and within the one-per-chapter cap (89's "windows black with work-lamp reflections" is room inventory, not a built image); noted for the tracker, not a comedy defect.

## DISTRIBUTION CHECKS

- **Density:** 42 inventory entries across ~3,300 words — leaner in narration-figure comedy than round 1 (several captions cut or converted), thickest in class business and the photo sequence, thinnest inside the kiss paragraphs, near-zero after the deli door. Meets the register's midpoint commitment; the post-repair comedy sits more in dialogue and action and less in narration figures, which is the direction every standing directive points.
- **Source split:** 38 character / 4 situation (22, 23, 33-partial, 37) / **0 narrator-overlay**. The overlay hunt ran on the four most composed survivors (11, 16, 27, 42): all are June's optical, restorer's, or work-world reads. Round 1's one overlay-adjacent move (the "absurdly Theo" joke-explanation) is gone.
- **Mechanism variety:** pretext exposure, stare-down deflation, insult-as-diagnosis, instinct inversion, specificity deadpan, precision-correction, conspicuous restraint, synecdoche, dread compression, anti-demonstration, gag inversion, photographic deadpan, tact-as-action, displacement speed, escalation-rebuffed, absence inversion, over-hosting, suppressed tell, rueful parallel — no chapter-level monotony. Local censuses: dry correction 3 (items 15, 25, 40 — different speakers, one self-aimed; under threshold); logistics-joke spine still high (17, 30, 32, 34, 36, 40) but card-sanctioned as the post-kiss awkwardness channel and varied in function — confirmed spent; Ch14 must not inherit it as default texture.
- **Sweetness:** not oversweetened. The cohort's tact (30, 33, 36) keeps the kiss inconvenient without awarding it applause; "Old jacket, Theo." keeps the mark instead of cleaning it; the Philadelphia beat is unjoked and the chapter ends on the dark phone, not a softener.
- **Cringe:** none. Warmth floor holds — Theo's dropped brush is dignified within the same paragraph by his competence (32), and Ruth/Sam absorb the redirected photo with their own comedy.

## CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR

All five round-1 revision orders are executed in the current text, and the full re-inventory finds no new blocking items: 42 of 42 items at funniness 2, zero narrator-overlay, zero portable, zero workshopped, mechanisms varied, all standing Ch13 directives at their post-repair targets (clerical narration 0, refusal-to-conclude 0, `, which` at 1/cap, Odile at 4, no sitcom banter), and the kiss sequence carries more romantic pressure after repair than before — the cut explanations forced the comedy into the brush, the slip, and the sleeve, where it makes the awkwardness larger. Strongest item: 34 ("Old jacket, Theo." / "Right.") — the entire kiss renegotiated through one umber mark, both voice cards firing at once. Weakest surviving item: 23 ("as if the paper had taken a position") — lands, but on Priya/Ben capital built in earlier chapters, with personification doing stock work.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. No blocking findings stand.

**At commit, correct and append tics.md rows:** evaluative `, which` Ch13 = 1 (line 79), not 3 — fix the stale row citing line 61; room personification = 0 — remove the stale "looking back all evening" row; "The laugh stayed where it was" no longer exists — strike the inheritance note; clerical/legal narration figures = 0 confirmed; Odile quotability = 4 confirmed; recognitional "the way a person" 1/1 (line 67), zero budget Ch14; logistics-joke density spent as Ch13 spine, no Ch14 inheritance; June-caps-Theo's-optionality volley at 2 uses — mutate or rest; Mara "workable" voice-borrow re-flagged to Dialogue Doctor.

CLEAR
