INVENTORY:

1 — "*crooked is dynamic* / *it's crooked.*" (line 9, group chat) — mechanism: deflation via literal correction — source: character (Sam's warm reframe vs. Ruth's copyeditor exactness) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the flyer is the kiss cover; June's face and the borrowed scarf are on it) — dramatic work: cohort life continuing without June; the flyer's public spread pressing on her from inside a joke she isn't in — workshopped: no (text-message economy earns the two-beat symmetry; Ruth's line is plain correction, not her capped editorial-sharp register, so her 1-per-appearance cap stays unspent)

2 — "Friday leftovers at ours. 6. Bring nothing. Luis cooked for eleven and we are four." (line 11) — mechanism: numeric incongruity / hosting overshoot — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Luis, and the count quietly states the shrunken table) — dramatic work: creates the invitation June will lie out of; seeds the leftover brick — workshopped: no

3 — "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else" (line 13) — mechanism: deadpan object-reply (emoji as tact) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (immediately sharpened by "and that was the part that cost") — dramatic work: Mara's restraint as pressure; sets the cost of being un-pursued — workshopped: no

4 — "It would even be true if she started a painting before Friday." (line 13) — mechanism: self-indicting technicality — source: character (June's self-aimed dryness per voice card) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the lie while keeping it; plants the Friday clock — workshopped: no

5 — "closed grates, a man balancing a foil pan on both palms so it would not crease" (line 21) — mechanism: deadpan optical specificity — source: character (painter's eye reads the calendar off the street) — funniness: 2 — portable: no, because it is paired: June later carries Luis's foil brick "level the whole time like she'd been told" (line 85) — dramatic work: season clock without weather-as-feeling; sets up the obeyed-care payoff — workshopped: no

6 — "She didn't count them." (line 41, chairs study) — mechanism: repetition-by-refusal of the spent Ch16 chair-count gag — source: character — funniness: 2 (lands as ache on reread; the counting was a shared bit) — portable: no — dramatic work: marks Theo's absence without naming it; complies with the Ch16 tracker order ("chair facts but no new count-shaped joke") — workshopped: no

7 — "We saved you a plate, working girl" (line 43) — mechanism: affectionate epithet tease — source: character — funniness: 1 (stock epithet, under-specified to Mara, and carries an unintended slang shadow the book doesn't want) — portable: yes (any cover-story-of-work in any book hosts this tease unchanged) — dramatic work: keeps June's lie alive and tees up item 8 — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING**

8 — "She'd told a lie to avoid a dinner so she could paint a room she was also avoiding. Then she rinsed the bowl." (line 43) — mechanism: self-indicting symmetry + bathetic deflation — source: character (perception, judgment, self-rebuke — June's documented interiority rhythm) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the chapter's comedy into its avoidance diagnosis at the exact midpoint — workshopped: no (the flat closing verb de-quotables the chiasmus; strongest counter-candidate I weighed for composed-for-quotation, and it survives on the bowl)

9 — "June had taken it because refusing would have taken longer than wearing it." (line 49) — mechanism: measured-duration economy gag — source: character — funniness: 1 (smile-shaped but pre-owned) — portable: yes (a social-efficiency quip transferable to any reluctant gift in any book) — dramatic work: compresses the loan's origin — workshopped: yes (balanced-paradox polish; and it is a third instance of the measured-duration scaffold the Ch05 tracker row hard-capped at two) — **BLOCKING**

10 — "Keep it!! I have two. That was the plan." / "You told me that so I'd take it." / "and it worked. ok." (lines 53–57) — mechanism: scheme confession; repetition-with-variation on Mara's Ch03 sample line "Take the scarf. I brought two" — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (six weeks of plant behind it) — dramatic work: ends the loan on June's terms, converts Mara's care move into admitted strategy, and closes the Ch06 engineered-pretext family by confession rather than reuse — workshopped: no (lowercase texting keeps it spoken, not composed)

11 — "It's a dish I want back, so it's not even generous. It's a hostage exchange." (line 75) — mechanism: generosity-denial reframe with label punchline — source: character, but the mechanism is poached: kindness-disguised-as-logistics epigram is Odile's licensed register (guide §2), and Mara's card explicitly warns against "making every line a social punchline" — funniness: 1 (smile-shaped, but returnable-dish-as-hostage is a pre-owned joke family that arrives in punchline syntax) — portable: yes (appears unchanged wherever anyone hands over food in a dish) — dramatic work: real — it manufactures the dish tether and licenses June to accept food — which is why it must be re-sourced, not deleted along with its function — workshopped: yes (denial-clause setup + label punchline) — **BLOCKING**

12 — "Sit by me Tuesday. Ruth has opinions about wall spacing and I need another painter at the table." (line 75) — mechanism: understatement + transparent pretext — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (Ruth's crookedness thread; the Week 7 table) — dramatic work: the chapter's actual Week 7 invitation, with the want stated plainly under the joke — workshopped: no

13 — "the Corolla's hazards blinked once" (line 79) — mechanism: character-index deadpan (Luis communicates in one signal) — source: character — funniness: 2 (micro, but committed: "once" is the joke) — portable: no — dramatic work: Luis present without spending one of his capped material verdicts; puts a clock on the goodbye — workshopped: no

14 — "There's pie under the turkey. Don't tilt it." → "the foil level the whole time like she'd been told" (lines 71, 85) — mechanism: comic imperative with obeyed-instruction payoff — source: character/situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the only care June physically accepts all chapter; obedience as thaw — workshopped: no

15 — "It was a true question and a competent one, and sending it tonight would have nothing to do with ceiling height." (line 31) — mechanism: pretext self-exposure — source: character interiority, not narrator-overlay — I hunted overlay here specifically per calibration; the wit stays inside June's self-audit and the sentence indicts her, not the scene — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: shows the Tasker pull without deciding; keeps the drafts-folder delay honest — workshopped: no

16 — "dana says the radiator works if you kick the valve. bring a sweater if you go see it." (line 35) — mechanism: practical deadpan understatement — source: character (Asha's lead-idiom: cheap enough to forgive) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: prices the New York path honestly against the Tasker bay — workshopped: no

17 — "The chair did nothing. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door." (line 89) — mechanism: anti-sentimental negation (deadpan refusal of pathetic fallacy) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: enforces the studies-not-message discipline; keeps the grief sharp exactly where sweetening would be cheapest — workshopped: no

18 — "one return down, one acquired" (line 99) — mechanism: ledger tally caption — source: narrator-overlay (the chapter's only true overlay item) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (a symmetry caption attachable to any exchange in any book) — dramatic work: NONE — the rinsed dish drying beside the brushes already shows the exchange — workshopped: yes — **BLOCKING**

Distribution and tracker evidence: Sources run roughly 14 character / 3 situation / 1 narrator-overlay — the overlay hunt around Tasker and the studies turned up only item 18; the other candidates I weighed ("the street told her," "the table a long flat fact") are June's optical idiom, figural not witty, and belong to Figuration's remit, not this one. Mechanisms are varied (deflation, numeric incongruity, scheme-confession, refusal-variation, imperative-payoff, anti-sentimental negation, pretext-exposure); the deadpan family dominates ~8 items but is the register's committed baseline and its sub-mechanisms differ — not MONOTONOUS. Density: the comedy clusters at every contact point (texts, the Sunday corner) and goes silent in the solo study sections — that silence is the design, not a gap: June's isolation is rendered as the absence of the cohort's comic voices, and each section break re-admits one. Not OVERSWEETENED: the sharpest beat ("Thank you for October." / "October. It's almost December.") lands uncushioned, and item 17 actively refuses sweetening; cutting item 11's punchline (order 3) removes the one cushion adjacent to it. Calibration absences confirmed by search: "sleeping in shifts," "zero did not last," and "commits to the bridge" do not appear in the current text. Spent-family checks: no scarf personification (scarf stays washed object throughout); no new "the way" connective (line 3 uses "that was how her mother had done it"); no key beats, no untransformed "stop coming," no Odile (compliant with the Ch16 ceiling order); "That was the whole plan, and it required no one" (line 7) was checked against the broken Ch11 "That's the whole ___" template — narration, grief-bearing, no confession syntax, cleared, but log it and add no further "whole ___" shapes this act; Mara cites Luis three times (lines 11, 71, 83) but all are factual reports, not the retired translation tic — log as watch, not breach. The crooked gag runs three beats in-chapter (Ruth's photo, Sam's defense, Sonia's window) with the third varied into silence — retire "crooked" after line 85; at most one distant showcase callback.

**VERDICT: CLEAR** — majority funniness-2, overwhelmingly character-sourced, mechanisms varied, with comedy correctly rationed to human contact in a rupture-aftermath chapter. Strongest item: #10 — "*and it worked. ok.*" — six weeks of planted care move converted to confessed strategy in four lowercase words. Weakest surviving item: #13 — "the Corolla's hazards blinked once" — committed but nearly subliminal; it survives because "once" is doing named character work, not because it would be missed. Four blocking findings stand; the chapter is not committable until they are resolved.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Item 7 — "We saved you a plate, working girl"** — failure: portable stock epithet with a slang shadow, funniness 1. Cut the epithet: "*We saved you a plate*" alone does the work, or extend it in Mara's documented mode (explains-before-asked — a plate-logistics detail, e.g. who portioned it), per her voice card. Do not replace it with another tease shape.

2. **Item 9 — "because refusing would have taken longer than wearing it"** — failure: workshopped balanced paradox, portable, and a third instance of the measured-duration scaffold hard-capped at two in the Ch05 tracker row. Recast the loan recall without duration-economics: the quoted "*take the scarf, I brought two*" in the same sentence already carries the force; end on June taking it and give the reason in object or social terms (Mara already turned to the next arrival), not in compared time.

3. **Item 11 — "so it's not even generous. It's a hostage exchange."** — failure: portable Tupperware-hostage joke in punchline syntax, delivered in Odile's licensed kindness-as-epigram register out of Mara's mouth, against Mara's own card ("avoid making every line a social punchline"). Cut both clauses. Keep "*It's a dish I want back*" and "*Don't tilt it*" — the tether stays fully material, and June, who two days earlier received "*and it worked*," can clock the second engineered tether without anyone captioning it. If a spoken beat is needed, Mara's version is explanatory (when she needs the dish back, and why Tuesday), never a label.

4. **Item 18 — "one return down, one acquired"** — failure: narrator-overlay ledger caption, portable, zero dramatic work, and a fresh decorative instance of the clerical/fiscal figure family already on watch from the Ch16/17 rows (the chapter's "two columns / arithmetic / ledger" survive only because the notebook literalizes them; "ratify" survives as single and weight-bearing). Cut the tally clause and let the sentence end on the rinsed dish drying — the objects already state the symmetry.
