There is already a `chapter_15.dialogue_doctor.md` and numbered round files in `output/critiques/claude/` (a round-4 stream is being captured for this session), so I am not overwriting any file — the audit itself follows.

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# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 15: Keys Elsewhere

Manifest coverage: `output/chapters/chapter_15.md` is segmented as a single scene (scene 01, lines 2–117, 28 dialogue lines / 38 quoted utterances, doctor required). The scene comprises the Nia phone call (lines 15–82) and the text-thread block (Asha, group thread, Theo; lines 85–107). Both are audited below as one scene per the manifest. Read cold against the voice cards, the reading guide's plain-speech floor and zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis rule (§2, §6), and the chapter packet's offer-chapter risks.

**SCENE 01 (June's apartment — Nia call + text threads, lines 2–117):**

- **1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN** — Covered attributions and read the call blind; checked June vs. Nia in the call and June vs. Asha vs. Priya vs. Theo in the texts. Strongest counter-candidate: June's "They were complicated panels." (line 21) against Nia's "This is why I called you and not the other names on my list" (line 33) — both dry, and dryness-convergence is this book's standing risk. It survives because the rhythms and lexicons pull apart under pressure: June compresses toward the material ("Define run." / "Renewal?" / "Sticking open or sticking shut?" — spring, grease, math, overtightens), while Nia expands toward infrastructure ("We're two grants and a city line item," board, postings, panels, youth grant reporting). In the texts, Asha writes unpunctuated work-shorthand ("You in or do I give your slot to Dario," line 87), Priya writes print specs ("Matte looks clean; photo holds at 8x10," line 101), and Theo writes complete reporting sentences with a logged ruling ("one occupied by a coat that I ruled counts," line 103). Four registers, no merge.
- **2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN** — Strongest counter-candidate: the run "Define run." → block answer; "Keep going. Money." → block; "Renewal?" → block (lines 25–53), which is structurally an interview volley. It survives on three grounds: the interview shape is diegetic — June literally wrote the question list *pay, dates, scope, press* on the page at line 11, so Q/A is the scene's stated procedure, not a default the prose fell into; answer weights vary sharply (the gripper exchange has play, the money beat is flat, the deadline lands heavy, the Tuesday walkthrough at line 67 is the emotional peak); and Nia twice breaks the volley by volunteering unprompted — the after-hours clause ("I want to be clear that's in the actual job description, because I wrote the job description," line 47) and the deadline ("One more thing. It has a date on it," line 57).
- **3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN** — June's mind stays on during the call: the invoice glance at line 39, "June heard herself and stopped. 'Hypothetically.'" (line 35), the margin math at line 45, the back-room vision at line 71 ("The version that kept returning put her at the press with a rag. Behind her, the wall stayed clean and empty"), and the post-call register at line 83 ("She went down the page once more, looking for the line to cross out, and did not find one"). Strongest counter-candidate for darkness: the deadline stretch (lines 59–63), where interiority thins to transcription — it survives because "The date sat in the same neat handwriting as the gripper notes" is June's established tell (line 29: "Her handwriting had gotten neat") doing the cost-registration, which is her card's exact stress behavior, not an absence.
- **4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN** — Checked every interrogative for manufactured portent. Strongest counter-candidate: June's "There's a deadline." (line 59) — a position delivered declaratively where a question was available. It survives because it manufactures nothing: it is anticipation immediately cashed in facts ("Friday, December fourth, noon. The board meets the Monday after"), and June's actual questions ("Sticking open or sticking shut?", "If I take this. Walk me through a Tuesday.") are real requests that get real answers.
- **5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN** — Strongest counter-candidate: the clipped close "'December fourth,' June said. 'Noon.'" (line 79). It survives because the starkness is earned by the deadline that just landed, the attribution stays marked, and Nia answers with a functional line ("I'll send the description tonight") rather than significant silence; elsewhere the exchange keeps full conversational connective tissue ("Okay." at lines 23 and 39, Rule 7's unremarkable floor).
- **6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN** — The chapter trades real shop terms: Vandercook, gripper bar, etching-press bearing, W-2, net-45, load-in. Strongest counter-candidates: "a Vandercook with a gripper bar that sticks on the return" (line 27), translated within two beats by Marco's screwdriver (line 33) and June's "that's a spring or it's twenty years of grease… it's an afternoon" (line 35), which converts the term into stakes the reader can weigh; and Asha's "pays net-45" (line 87), which she translates herself in the same text: "Invoice Jan, see it in Mar." The money is likewise weighable — "Forty-nine five" sits against June's written *1,180* and *1,475 now* and the Kessler gross at line 45. Per the focused check: the offer is followable as job terms and pressure — role (run the Tasker Street rooms), pay ($49.5K W-2, six months funded, benefits at ninety days), the perk that tempts (keys, after-hours access, the wall, in writing), the risk (two grants and a city line item), and the clock (Dec 4 noon) are all stateable by a cold reader.
- **7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN** — Two voices on a phone, then sender-labeled texts. Strongest counter-candidate: the unattributed pair "'June.' / 'I'm here. I'm taking notes.'" (lines 73–75) — it survives because only Nia can speak the summons into June's silence, and the reply names the activity the reader has watched for a page.
- **FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN** — Ran every exchange against the cut-list. Three counter-candidates considered: (a) Nia's "I'm offering you work, June, not a rescue. I need somebody who can keep the rooms running. I've seen you do that." (line 57) — survives as the near-verbatim card line ("I am offering you work, not absolution"), speakable, and immediately grounded in her own need rather than left as aphorism; (b) June's "The coat counts. Somebody marked their position and left." (line 105) — the chapter's most composed line; it survives because it is literal label-note drafting for the *After Class* piece, filed as such by Theo ("That's going in the label notes"), and the thematic echo of June's own exit habit stays unwinked subtext; (c) June's "He overtightens everything." (line 89) — a dodge dressed as craft judgment, but the deflection is visible *as* deflection because Asha presses it on the spot ("So that's a yes?") and June has to answer plainly ("That's a hold. I'll know by early Dec."). Also checked Nia's "the six months becomes a year and the year becomes a job" (line 53) for workshop polish — it survives as pitch language from a woman who demonstrably pitches boards for a living. No noun-question/portentous-answer pairs, no "in [abstraction]" lines, no loaded silence left unregistered.
- **INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN** — The integration pass cut the raw draft's explanatory interiority (raw line 73: "called the competence a personality"; raw line 75: "she was never at the wall. She was at the press"), so I tested whether the trap is still readable. It is: "The line that interested her was *true up the Vandercook.*" (line 69) plus the vision where she's at the press and "the wall stayed clean and empty" (line 71) lets the reader catch that the offer's studio perk is the part June's attention skips — shown once, through job details and her painter's eye, not explained twice. June is never a therapist about it; the chapter's one direct naming of the problem stays on the page as objects ("The page still had the crossed-out question near the top and, lower down, *wall, on the paper*," line 115).
- **DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2 plain-speech rules / §6 zero tolerance): FAIL** — "**You're being very fair about the part where it might evaporate.**" (June to Nia, line 55, immediately after Nia's renewal-odds answer). This captions the conversation: it characterizes and rates the manner of Nia's disclosure ("very fair") and refers to a portion of her speech as a unit ("the part where it might evaporate") instead of doing something with what was heard. The reading guide is explicit that perceptiveness is "shown by what a character *does* with what they heard, never by captioning the conversation," and that any instance, in any speaker's mouth, is a defect — zero tolerance, no per-chapter allowance. It is also off June's card, which specifies she "turns exposed questions into material ones"; this is the single line in the call where she goes meta instead of material. I checked the other candidates and pass them with reasons: "I know you're taking notes. I can hear the pen." (Nia, line 77) reports physical evidence of an activity, not a rating of June's language; "June heard herself and stopped" (line 35) is narration registering a content slip (she'd answered as if already hired), which the spoken repair "Hypothetically" shows rather than tells; the integration pass already removed Asha's raw-draft caption "*Mysterious.*" — it must not return in rewrite.

Focused-check attestations not already covered above: Nia is direct, practical, respectful, and neither strawman nor oracle — her pressure is entirely deadline-and-budget shaped ("I either bring them your name or I bring them a search plan," line 61), she names money without shame ("Forty-nine five," line 41), and the raw draft's one oracle drift ("I'm not going to talk you into it and I'm not going to talk you out of it… Both those things can be true") was correctly cut in integration to "I'm not adding anything else tonight. Read the description." (line 77) — the rewrite below must not reintroduce it. The texts carry no exposition smell: Asha's confirm advances a live decision (hold vs. Dario), Priya's is pure print spec, and Theo's chair count fulfills a Chapter 14 promise without leaking the offer. Contraction policy (Rules 4–5) holds across all speakers; no stiff full forms found in dialogue.

**REVISION ORDERS:**

1. Line 55, June to Nia — "You're being very fair about the part where it might evaporate." / "Because I need the answer to hold up when I take it to the board." — **dialogue diagnosis (zero-tolerance rule, reading guide §2/§6)**. Replace June's caption with a material restatement of the renewal risk itself, per her card ("compresses when exposed; turns exposed questions into material ones; visual/craft nouns over feeling words") — e.g., June states the downside as a flat fact she is writing down (the six-months-and-a-reference version, the city line item dying) rather than rating Nia's candor. Preserve Nia's board-motive sentence, which is the exchange's real cargo and is card-true ("deadline-driven," "I need the answer to hold up when I take it to the board"); adjust only its connective so it answers a fact-probe instead of a "why are you being fair" prompt. Do not let the rewrite drift Nia toward reassurance or life advice (her cut oracle line stays cut), and do not reintroduce any caption of either speaker's manner.

**OVERALL: BLOCKING (1 finding)**
