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

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# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 13 ("The Memory and the Kiss")

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 directives inherited from the Ch12 audit and tics.md and enforced this round: zero new clerical/legal narration figures in Ch13; Dom-forms family closed; water gag closed; no decorative straightening beat; June process-monologue license expired; no new refusal-to-conclude variants; `, which` captions monitored-at-cap; Odile quotability target "nearer 3" for the next class chapter (this is that chapter).

## INVENTORY

1 — "Reading had become a way of not starting." (line 7) — mechanism: deadpan self-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: yes — dramatic work: stages her stalling before the intimacy of the card — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING (partial + portable).** The avoidance is book-specific (Theo's block capitals, the rubber-band stripe through *Theo, 9* sit in the same paragraph) but the sentence itself is a freestanding procrastination aphorism any book about an avoider could host unchanged; it declares the stall instead of enacting it, and June's voice-card stalls are physical (packs, sorts, cleans), not epigrammatic.

2 — "Ben raised one finger with a practical objection already assembled. Odile looked at him until he lowered it." (line 13) — mechanism: silent deflation via stare-down — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: no-negotiation assignment; new Ben shape, no retired-family reuse — workshopped: no

3 — "hated that she knew the pause was orange" (line 17) — mechanism: intimacy-as-evidence incongruity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the orange interval is her own entrusted memory) — dramatic work: desire becoming evidence against herself, the chapter's POV engine — workshopped: no

4 — "Luis gave me his grandmother's kitchen in Caguas. I had to stop eating to ask questions." (line 19) — mechanism: self-reported enthusiasm deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: models an honest handoff against June's "Fine" — workshopped: no

5 — "He gave me a fourth-floor window. I gave him a wall." / "That sounds like both of you." (lines 21–23) — mechanism: compression + accurate read — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the cover strain made visible as deflection, per the card — workshopped: no

6 — "Then keep the scarf through next week. Orange is doing things for you." (line 27) — mechanism: tact pivot to wardrobe — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (S-SCARF-01 loan extension) — dramatic work: Mara grants privacy while keeping the thread alive — workshopped: no. Checked against the Ch08 scarf-as-agent cap ("moved in," "hired to"): this is a person-to-person color compliment, not narration personifying the scarf; cleared.

7 — gray wash "the color of a day after it had bounced down four stories and lost the argument" (line 31) — mechanism: personification via painter's eye — source: character (June's optical voice; the four stories are Theo's airshaft) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the memory's geometry into pigment choice — workshopped: no

8 — "Better." / "Than what?" / "Than when you liked it." (lines 37–41) — mechanism: insult-as-diagnosis, two-line economy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enforces the no-rescue assignment; reread-consistent — workshopped: no

9 — "Her painter's eye wanted to move it, which was how she knew to leave it alone." (line 45) — mechanism: instinct inversion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: fidelity beating craft vanity, the assignment's whole test in one clothespin — workshopped: no. **ORDER REQUIRED on syntax:** this is a new evaluative `, which` caption (family monitored-at-cap since voice_check_10) and it lands on the exact "leave it alone" string the chapter packet bans as a refusal-to-conclude variant; literal-object use is a defense, but the string will read as the tic.

10 — "I know," Theo said. "I need thirty seconds without asking." (line 53) — mechanism: self-aware restraint announcement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: growth beat off Ch12's four-questions item; June marks it as new — workshopped: no

11 — "the dinner price entering a drawing because nothing in that kitchen had the courtesy to stay out of anything else" (line 57) — mechanism: personified-poverty deadpan — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Key Food circular, chicken-thigh ghost) — dramatic work: keeps the entrusted memory unsentimental, which is the assignment — workshopped: no

12 — "There were several failures available to her, and she had missed them by inches." + the dear/bleak taxonomy (line 61) — mechanism: inverted achievement — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the rescue trap and her install-career wound without nobility — workshopped: no (the dear/bleak symmetry was checked as composed-for-quotation; it survives because each clause is a crit-room verdict in her licensed register, not punchline syntax)

13 — "She needed paper towels, or had decided she needed them" (line 63) — mechanism: pretext self-exposure — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: licenses the look at his canvas; she catches herself mid-alibi — workshopped: no

14 — "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." (lines 69–77) — mechanism: precision-correction volley + over-fidelity comedy — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enormous — his devotion over-applies her own testimony, she corrects it, then sanctions the error because it is truer; memory custody dramatized — workshopped: no

15 — "she did not look again, which was the most obvious thing she had done all night" (line 79) — mechanism: paradox of conspicuous restraint — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: not-looking as the loudest public tell — workshopped: no. **ORDER REQUIRED on syntax:** second new `, which` evaluative caption.

16 — "Do not make Brennan carry everyone's wet mistakes down Broadway." / "Theo made a small sound behind June. Odile ignored him." (lines 81–83) — mechanism: imperative synecdoche + reaction topper — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (wet panels, Broadway, Theo-the-carrier) — dramatic work: triple — showcase logistics, Theo's usefulness wound made public property, and a reread clue (an aunt needling her nephew by roster surname while pretending class-distance; fully consistent with her knowing) — workshopped: no. Focused check passed: the comedy targets Theo's carrying role, not the kiss, and the topper is reaction, not zinger.

17 — "Invite people you can stand in a warm room." (line 83) — mechanism: compressed misanthropic warmth — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: defines the showcase as social risk — workshopped: no. Counts against the Odile quotability ceiling (see distribution).

18 — "June heard the word flyer and wished she had not." (line 83) — mechanism: dread compression — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: plants the photo forcing mechanism a hundred lines early — workshopped: no

19 — "easy to think of as administrative weather" (line 85) — mechanism: bureaucratic incongruity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (anchored to "a date at the far edge of a packet," the PARK / BRENNAN packet) — dramatic work: the showcase becoming a clock — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING on standing directive:** this is a clerical/bureaucratic narration figure, the exact family the Ch12 audit closed at cap with "zero new instances in Ch13 narration."

20 — "Then she remembered she was not supposed to waste time cleaning a brush she still needed." (line 85) — mechanism: involuntary-tell relapse — source: character (her voice-card stress tic: cleans brushes she has not used) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: panic rendered as her owned tell, self-caught — workshopped: no

21 — "June looked at the room because the room had been looking back all evening" (line 89) — mechanism: reversal personification — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (paired easels, tape scars, work-lamp windows itemized on the spot) — dramatic work: motivates the `After Class` subject from inside her optics — workshopped: no

22 — "He took that practically first; she saw him count the room's after-hours tasks before he reached the feeling." (line 97) — mechanism: predictable-processing-order comedy — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: his card's practical-to-emotional sequence rendered as observed action — workshopped: no

23 — "Acceptable. Empty rooms flatter badly." (line 107) — mechanism: verdict + embedded warning — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: approves the joint subject while planting its risk — workshopped: no. Counts against the Odile ceiling (see distribution).

24 — "both frowning as if the paper had taken a position" (line 109) — mechanism: object personification — source: situation (Priya/Ben's paper-mediated relationship) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the housing thread alive without revealing outcome (protection honored) — workshopped: no. Checked against the Ch08 secret-object personification freeze: that family is panel/folder-specific; a receipt is outside it, but this is the nearest neighbor — logged, cleared.

25 — "Sam answered by drawing one line, badly, with the cap still on his pen." (line 109) — mechanism: committed anti-demonstration — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort going public by degrees — workshopped: no

26 — "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." (line 109) — mechanism: self-correction race / gag inversion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: inverts the capped Mara-cites-Luis family (she preempts him) — arc movement, not repetition; cleared against the "no third instance before arc shift" line on those grounds — workshopped: no

27 — "as if the gallery had asked them to wait while someone found the correct invoice" + "the posture he used with difficult clients" (line 117) — mechanism: register collision (romance photographed as commerce), twice in one paragraph — source: character (her work world reading the image) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the photo exposes the cover as professional, not romantic; ignition for the kiss — workshopped: no. **BLOCKING on standing directive + stacking:** the invoice simile is a clerical/fiscal narration figure (Ch12 standing line: zero in Ch13 narration), and it is the first of three "they look like an institution" beats inside six lines (with item 30).

28 — "Closer?" Mara said. "You're not strangers." (line 119) — mechanism: dramatic irony (they nearly are) — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: forces June's hand without anyone requesting a kiss, exactly per card — workshopped: no

29 — "It arrived with the exact caution of a borrowed frame." (line 121) — mechanism: work-object simile — source: character (Theo handles loaned frames; "exact" is June's word) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: his consent-caution rendered physically — workshopped: no

30 — "Committee chairs," Ruth said, and returned to wiping a brush. (line 123) — mechanism: two-word deadpan label — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the social-proof failure and triggers the repair instinct; Ruth's one editorial-sharp line this appearance, cap respected (her only other line is the plain stair-rail question) — workshopped: no

31 — "It's fine. Priya can crop." / "Mara did not offer to take another preview. That was worse than persuasion." (lines 125–129) — mechanism: deflation via logistics + social-logic turn — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: "fine" detonates June's spiral; Mara's tact removes the exit — workshopped: no

32 — "Fine was going onto a flyer. Fine was going into the group thread. Fine was going to sit at the front table..." (line 127) — mechanism: anaphoric escalation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (flyer, group thread, PARK / BRENNAN label) — dramatic work: converts Mara's softener into dread; builds the kiss decision — workshopped: no

33 — "He still had a loaded brush in his grip and was holding burnt umber clear of Mara's scarf." ... "which was such an absurdly Theo answer that June nearly laughed while she was still kissing him. The laugh stayed where it was." (lines 131–135) — mechanism: character paradox under pressure, laugh contained — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: heightens the kiss (her near-laugh mid-kiss IS the awkwardness; "starting it had not made the next second belong to her" keeps the pressure on) — workshopped: no. **ORDER REQUIRED on syntax:** third new `, which` evaluative caption, and "such an absurdly Theo answer" explains the joke the brush detail already makes.

34 — "He crouched for it immediately, as grateful for the problem as he was horrified by it" (line 137) — mechanism: paradox — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: post-kiss displacement into the dropped brush, per the card's awkwardness-through-action order — workshopped: no

35 — "a tact so complete June wanted to be angry at her for it" + "The kiss entered the evening the way the wet panels had entered it: present, inconvenient, not available for group discussion." (line 139) — mechanism: inverted gratitude + deadpan analogy — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (this night's wet panels) — dramatic work: establishes the no-discussion aftermath without applause or wrong joke — workshopped: no, narrowly: the triplet cadence was checked as composed-for-quotation and survives because the analogy is built from objects racked forty lines earlier, not imported wit.

36 — "Your sleeve." / "Old jacket." / "I have solvent downstairs." / "Old jacket, Theo." / "Right." (lines 141–149) — mechanism: repetition-with-escalation; repair reflex rebuffed twice — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the strongest comic-romantic work in the chapter — they negotiate the kiss entirely through umber on a cuff; her repeated refusal means she is keeping the mark; his "Right." is the collapse of usefulness as a hiding place — workshopped: no

37 — "I noticed. I am choosing not to be helpful about why." / "Thank you." / "You're welcome." (lines 153–161) — mechanism: declared discretion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the cohort grants privacy without granting ignorance — workshopped: no. Checked for punchline syntax: the self-narrating clinical shape is Priya's licensed register ("I am not rushing. I am optimizing badly."); the flat "Thank you."/"You're welcome." exit keeps it in-scene.

38 — "I'll be here Thursday. For the joint panel, I mean. I can send sizes." ... "One panel," June said. "She said one." / "One panel. One ground." ... "Limit the list." / "I'll send two." (lines 171–179) — mechanism: near-declaration repaired into logistics + quantity-capping volley — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: post-kiss pace negotiation conducted in panel counts; "You can say no to all of them" is his consent reflex; "I'll send two" is restraint as a love offer — workshopped: no. Family lineage logged: this is the second consecutive chapter closing movement built on June capping Theo's optionality tic (Ch12 easel volley). Varied here (active limit vs. acceptance, and it carries the unspoken kiss), so it passes — but the shape is now at two and must mutate or rest before its next use.

39 — "Theo held the door with his shoulder before he seemed to know he had done it." (line 181) — mechanism: involuntary care reflex — source: character (his owned care move, deployed while scrambled) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: he is undone and still himself; last warmth before the phone — workshopped: no

## FOCUSED CHECKS

**Kiss sequence not softened by joke reflex: PASS, with one trim ordered.** The comic matter inside the kiss is items 33–34 only, and both heighten rather than defuse: the brush held clear of the scarf is Theo's character under pressure, the near-laugh is contained on the page ("The laugh stayed where it was"), and the pressure lines ("the same world as everything else," "starting it had not made the next second belong to her") sit between the comic beats, not after them. The card's no-zinger order is honored — Theo's first post-kiss words are "Your sleeve," not wit; nobody claps; the narration explicitly withholds the wrong joke. The one defect is the "absurdly Theo answer" caption explaining the brush joke (Order 4). The Nia close is comedy-free; the "mug full of dead pens" (line 185) was checked as a candidate and ruled texture inside a serious beat — correctly unjoked, "It was not a fantasy. That was the problem." stays sharp.

**The four flagged passages:** Odile's Brennan line (item 16) — passes, strongest Odile beat, reread-consistent. Mara/Priya/Ruth photo lines (items 28, 30, 31) — all pass individually; Ruth's cap respected; Mara is accurately social, not suspicious. Theo's screw/brush/sleeve logistics (items 14, 33, 36) — all pass; the logistics are the romance, not a deflection from it. Sidewalk panel-size exchange (item 38) — passes with the family-lineage note above.

**Repeated-mechanism censuses:**
- *Dry correction:* 3 distinct instances — plate/screw (14), "She said one" (38), Mara's apostrophe self-correction (26). Different speakers, different objects, one self-aimed; under monotony threshold. Cleared.
- *Logistics joke:* 6 instances (16, 31, 33, 36, 37-adjacent, 38). High count, but logistics is the book's stated tenderness channel and the card explicitly orders post-kiss awkwardness to breathe through action; functions are varied (command comedy, social smoothing, paradox under pressure, rebuffed repair, pace negotiation). Cleared as chapter spine — but this density is spent; Ch14 must not inherit it as default texture.
- *Art-object/work comparison:* 4 in narration (invoice, difficult clients, borrowed frame, wet-panels analogy), with 3 of the 4 photo-adjacent and 2 inside one paragraph. Order 3 cuts one; the survivors are spaced and distinct.
- *Committee/staff-photo comedy:* 3 same-target beats in six lines — invoice simile, clients posture, "Committee chairs" (items 27, 30). The target ("the photo reads professional") is the card's forcing mechanism, so the joke must exist, but three renderings is one too many; Order 3 resolves by cutting the narration's most clerical instance and letting Ruth's label plus one image carry.
- *Sitcom-banter check:* the closest candidate is the sidewalk volley; lines are need-driven, asymmetric, unwitnessed, and nobody answers a feeling with a punchline. Cleared.

## DISTRIBUTION CHECKS

- **Density:** 39 items across ~3,400 words, correctly distributed — thickest in class business and the photo sequence, thinnest inside the kiss paragraphs and zero after the deli door. Meets the register's commitment for the midpoint chapter.
- **Source split:** 35 character / 4 situation / **0 narrator-overlay**. Overlay hunt performed on the four most composed figures (items 7, 19, 27, 35): all are June's optical or work-world reads, not paint-over wit; the one overlay-adjacent move is the "absurdly Theo" joke-explanation (Order 4).
- **Mechanism variety:** correction, deflation, escalation, anaphora, dramatic irony, paradox, personification, synecdoche, inversion, dread compression, declared discretion, involuntary tell, anti-demonstration — varied; no chapter-level monotony (local stacks addressed in Orders 3–4).
- **Sweetness:** not oversweetened. The cohort's tact (items 31, 35, 37) preserves the kiss as inconvenient rather than awarding it applause; "Old jacket, Theo." keeps the mark instead of cleaning it; the Philadelphia beat is left sharp and unjoked.
- **Cringe:** none. No joke lands at unrepaired expense (warmth floor holds: Theo's dropped brush is dignified by item 34 within the same paragraph).
- **Odile quotability: 5 aphorism-grade lines** — the in-room instruction ("Do not punish it for being ordinary," line 11), "Than when you liked it" (41), the Brennan line (81), "Invite people you can stand in a warm room" (83), "Empty rooms flatter badly" (107) — against the standing "next class chapter should run nearer 3" directive from Ch10's audit. At ceiling for the second consecutive class chapter. Order 5.
- **Inherited closures verified:** Dom-forms — zero. Water gag — zero (rinse water at line 85 is process, not prop comedy). Clerical/legal narration figures — **2 breaches** (items 19, 27; Orders 2–3). Decorative straightening — zero. June process-monologue — compressed throughout. Refusal-to-conclude variants — one string-level hit inside item 9 (Order 4). `not a personality` / `cargo` / `Not symbolically` / `That's the whole ___` / label-theme jokes — zero. Standalone "Oh." — untouched. Recognitional "the way you/people" simile — zero (line 139's "the way the wet panels" is object-analogy, outside the capped family). `load-bearing` — zero (gate: 0 open findings).
- **Off-scope note for the Dialogue Doctor:** Mara's "The windows are still workable" (line 113) — "workable" is Priya's voice-card word, not Mara's. Not a comedy defect; flagged for the voice pass.

## CHAPTER VERDICT: CLEAR

Comedy lands in register: 38 of 39 items at funniness 2, zero narrator-overlay, non-portable throughout but one, mechanisms varied, and the kiss sequence survives its own comedy — the jokes there make the awkwardness larger, not smaller. Strongest item: 36 ("Old jacket, Theo." / "Right.") — the entire kiss renegotiated through one umber mark, both voice cards firing at once. Weakest surviving item: 24 ("as if the paper had taken a position") — lands, but on capital Priya and Ben built in earlier chapters, and personification is doing stock work there.

The CLEAR verdict is distributional, not a commit license: five blocking findings stand below, and per the blocking rule the chapter is not committable until they are executed.

## REVISION ORDERS

**Order 1 (item 1 — partial + portable).** "Reading had become a way of not starting." Cut the aphorism or root it in this book's inventory: the stall should run through the card's physical specifics already on the easel — his block capitals, the rubber-band stripe through *Theo, 9*, the clothespin count — i.e., enact her rereading as an action she catches herself in (June's voice card stalls physically), not as a quotable diagnosis any avoider could own.

**Order 2 (item 19 — clerical narration figure, standing-directive breach).** Replace "administrative weather." The Ch12 audit closed clerical/bureaucratic narration figures at cap with zero new Ch13 instances. Keep the packet anchor; resource the figure from June's material world (paint, install scheduling, the physical packet itself) or state it plain — "a date at the far edge of a packet" already carries the beat without the coinage.

**Order 3 (item 27 — clerical narration figure + third same-target photo beat).** Cut the invoice simile ("as if the gallery had asked them to wait while someone found the correct invoice"). It is the second clerical/fiscal breach and the most composed of three "they look professional" renderings in six lines. Keep "the posture he used with difficult clients" (June's earned knowledge of Theo) and Ruth's "Committee chairs" — those two carry the social-proof failure cleanly.

**Order 4 (items 9, 15, 33 — `, which` evaluative caption ×3; monitored-at-cap family).** Recast at least items 9 and 33. Item 9 must also clear the banned "leave it alone" string while keeping the inversion (the wanting-to-fix-it as the proof it is true). Item 33 must lose "which was such an absurdly Theo answer" — the brush held clear of Mara's scarf plus "June nearly laughed while she was still kissing him. The laugh stayed where it was." is complete without the narrator grading the joke; delete the explanation, keep the laugh. Item 15 may stand only if it is the lone surviving caption of the three.

**Order 5 (Odile quotability at ceiling, 5 vs. "nearer 3").** Flatten one of the two announcement-block aphorisms into plain logistics — recommend "Invite people you can stand in a warm room" (charm without unique work; the invitation instruction can be a flat imperative), protecting "Than when you liked it" (assignment-critical), the Brennan line (reread clue), and "Empty rooms flatter badly" (subject-risk work). That lands her at 4, one of which is the in-room assignment instruction proper — defensible against the directive; 5 is not.

**At commit, append tics.md rows:** clerical/legal narration figures Ch13 count after repair (target 0); `, which` caption family count after repair; dry-correction census 3 (varied, cleared); logistics-joke density spent as Ch13 spine, no Ch14 inheritance; Odile quotability post-repair count; Mara-preempts-Luis inversion logged as arc movement; June-caps-Theo's-optionality closing volley at 2 uses (Ch12 easels, Ch13 panel count) — mutate or rest before next use.

VERDICT: CLEAR — blocking Orders 1–5 must be executed before commit.
