# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 13

Source audited: `output/chapters/chapter_13.md` (cold read) against raw draft `output/drafts/claude/chapter_13.round_01.md`, chapter packet, voice cards, reading guide register rules, mechanical gate (open=0, 64 WATCH), and the Codex local audits (`TIC-CLEAN`, `CLEAN`). The two prior audits cleared tic-level patterns; this pass hunts what they don't cover — smooth, grammatical, generic.

## 1. Paragraphs portable to another novel

`PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH` — "Fine was going onto a flyer. Fine was going into the group thread. Fine was going to sit at the front table with PARK / BRENNAN underneath it and the record of six inches between them." — Anaphoric three-step escalation on a pivot word is a workshop figure, not this book's perception engine; swap two nouns and the paragraph runs in *The Unhoneymooners* or any Christina Lauren fake-couple midpoint unchanged ("Fine was going on the wedding website. Fine was going in the family group chat."). The proper nouns are decoration on a portable chassis, and the material is double-spent — two paragraphs later the same inventory recurs ("six inches of air, June's folded arms, PARK / BRENNAN waiting on the flyer copy"). — ORDER: break the anaphora and collapse the two inventories into one; keep a single concrete projection (front table, label, six inches) and let Mara's thumb sliding to the next name carry "nobody will ask for more."

`PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH` — "June nearly laughed while she was still kissing him. The laugh stayed where it was." — The second sentence is the packet's banned refusal-to-conclude shape ("left that thought where it was" and equivalents) transplanted onto a laugh; as a freestanding wry beat it would sit unnoticed in any *Beach Read*-adjacent kiss scene. — ORDER: cut it or replace it with the physical fact of a suppressed laugh (what her breath does, the kiss going off-center a second time); the brush held clear of the scarf already owns the comedy.

Checked and passing — strongest counter-candidate: the kiss paragraph itself ("She missed the center of his mouth, corrected before she could stop herself, and felt him steady into the correction... holding burnt umber clear of Mara's scarf"). "Correction" as a painter's verb, the loaded brush, and Mara's borrowed scarf cannot be transplanted without the class coming with them. The offer aftermath ("rolled posters in the corner and the mug full of dead pens... the clean wall that would need screws by January") also passes: install-trade objects, not relocatable furniture.

## 2. Pressure summarized rather than inhabited

`SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE` — "After class, Theo would know the room with chairs up, jars soaking, mistakes drying in racks. June knew it as a place she left every week with paint under her nails." — The asymmetry that makes `After Class` a dangerous subject (he owns the aftermath; she is a leaver) is concluded by narration as a tidy antithesis before the dialogue is allowed to discover it; the exchange that follows ("You've never seen it after class." / "You have.") then merely ratifies what the narrator already filed. — ORDER: cut the two narrated sentences down to the objects June actually sees (paired easels, tape scars, black windows) and let "You've never seen it after class" / "You have" land as the discovery, not the ratification.

`SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE` — "'I missed that,' June said." — The post-kiss scramble is claimed by this line, but the reader watched June hear the same instruction in her own POV at eight o'clock ("Wet work stays here tonight. Name on tape, rack by the sink, pickup Thursday"), so the daze is asserted against the record instead of staged. — ORDER: stage the miss — either move the rack-assignment detail to the post-kiss window so the miss is literal, or replace the line with the scramble enacted (June reaching to carry her wet panel home out of habit, Priya stopping her).

Checked and passing — strongest counter-candidate: the showcase-clock paragraph ("Until tonight, the eighth Tuesday had been a date at the far edge of a packet... Now it had a door, a room of other people's coats, a table with plastic cups, and a label that might put PARK / BRENNAN under a thing they had made together"). It converts the announcement into objects and is immediately cashed by June's voice-card stress tell — rinsing a brush she still needs. The flyer sequence itself also passes: Priya turning people ninety degrees, "Rail behind you," and the croppable six inches keep social proof in the room rather than above it.

## 3. Polished, therapeutic, or aphoristic dialogue

Note on the focused check: the line "subject that can hold both of us" does not appear in the revised chapter; its surviving analog is the line flagged below.

`POLISHED-DIALOGUE` — "'Same room,' he said. 'Two views. I don't want to explain your half for you.'" — Theo is too articulate about the joint piece's conceptual scheme: "Two views" states the orientation split the packet explicitly reserves ("they should not yet... say what it means; later chapters will split orientation"), and "I don't want to explain your half for you" is a composed relational-ethics statement arriving pre-resolved minutes after an announcement that should have him doing logistics. Under pressure Theo lists practical facts and goes plain only when cornered; he would not coin the show's thesis on the spot. — ORDER: keep his half practical (panel, ground, sizes) and make the refusal to narrate her half happen as a stop, not a statement — he starts describing what she sees and abandons the sentence; the principle stays unsaid.

Checked and passing — the other focused targets: Odile's "Do not improve it. Do not punish it for being ordinary," "Than when you liked it," and "Acceptable. Empty rooms flatter badly" are aphoristic but licensed — she is the only character permitted high-density lines, and each targets the work or the person, never anyone's sentence. Mara's stairwell menu ("I can hold the photo... Or send it tomorrow. Or crop it first... I can lie to Priya. Badly.") is composed, but a four-option hosting menu is her documented stress response (over-hosts, fills silence) and is followable as text. Priya's post-kiss tact passes by being sub-verbal: "Top rack," repeated, plus carrying June's gray water to the sink — tact through chores, not phrasing.

## 4. Figurative where literal would win

`FIGURATIVE-WHERE-LITERAL` — "awkward as a semaphore" — Generic simile outside the book's sanctioned figuration roots (paint, ground, card stock, room geometry, photo framing), pasted onto a fact the sentence already states literally ("His right arm held the brush away from her body... burnt umber drying at the tip"). — ORDER: cut the simile; if the arm needs more, give its literal geometry — full extension, elbow locked, brush tip up.

`FIGURATIVE-WHERE-LITERAL` — "The message did not make Philadelphia larger. It made it printed: board, yes, formal, call tomorrow." — Epigrammatic not-X-but-Y antithesis (a packet-banned seesaw where avoidable) wrapping a conceit ("printed") around information the colon-list and the office objects that follow already deliver literally. — ORDER: drop the "did not make... It made..." frame; run straight from Nia's text to what June can see — rolled posters, dead pens, spare keys, loading dock, the wall needing screws by January.

`FIGURATIVE-WHERE-LITERAL` — "She knew exactly where they were: wet rack behind him, windowpane against her shoulder, Odile's roster table somewhere to the left..." — "Somewhere" breaks the sentence's own claim of exactness, and the inventory names the wet rack twice (behind him; "the top rack where their two wet panels waited"). The paragraph's entire job is June's literal spatial precision mid-kiss. — ORDER: commit to the roster table's position or drop it; de-duplicate the rack so every item in the inventory is singular and placed.

Checked and passing — strongest counter-candidate: "secondhand daylight at the bottom of four stories." It reads figurative but is a painter's value note tied to mixing the gray wash — the chapter's one deliberate light image, rooted in the airshaft. "It arrived with the exact caution of a borrowed frame" also passes, narrowly: borrowed-object handling is Theo's actual trade, and the comparison clarifies custody — the arm is not his to place — which is the licensed purpose of figuration in this book.

## Chapter verdict

`LLM-CLEAN-FOUND`

Orders for the rewriter:
1. Break the "Fine was going..." anaphora; merge its inventory with the later preview re-inventory; one concrete projection plus Mara's thumb moving on.
2. Cut or physically literalize "The laugh stayed where it was."
3. Reduce the After-Class narration to seen objects; let the "You've never seen it after class" / "You have" exchange carry the asymmetry.
4. Stage the post-kiss missed instruction (move the rack detail or enact the scramble); delete the unsupported "I missed that."
5. Strip "Two views" and the stated principle from Theo's line; the refusal to explain her half must happen as an abandoned sentence, not a thesis.
6. Cut "awkward as a semaphore."
7. Remove the "did not make Philadelphia larger / made it printed" antithesis frame.
8. Fix "somewhere to the left" and the doubled rack in the mid-kiss spatial inventory.
