# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 22: The Booth — Round 2 (post-repair verification)

id: positive_prose_audit | owner: claude | tier: risk | pass: cold read, current integrated text, round 2
inputs: `output/chapters/chapter_22.md` (current: post Positive Prose round-1 repairs, Dialogue Doctor round 4, one-word sugar-caddy cleanup); round-1 findings `output/critiques/claude/chapter_22.positive_prose.md` (14 orders); `output/critiques/claude/chapter_22.dialogue_doctor_round4.md` (OVERALL: CLEAN); `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` §2, §5, §6, §8; voice cards (June Park, Theo Brennan); `output/critiques/codex/mechanical/quality_gate_report.md` (0 open, WATCH only); chapter card 22 ("The Booth"). The Comedy Doctor file on hand ("Round 2") predates the Positive repairs and was not relied on for current-text clearance.

Standard of comparison: §2 register (plain-speech floor, blind-POV differentiation, zero-tolerance on narration about speech), §5 care moves never captioned, §6 tic catalog, §8 smallness / earned-stay / followability tests. The chapter card's dialogue risk — "plainness over eloquence" — is binding.

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## Round-1 order verification (all 14 orders, checked against current text)

**§1-1 — Theo's appearance scaffold: EXECUTED.** "He looked bad in the specific way of someone who had slept in ninety-minute installments" is gone. Current L73: "His collar sat crooked under his coat. A narrow pale line below his ear said the razor had missed there. Primer, or maybe just white paint, showed at the base of his left thumbnail, which meant he'd been in the stockroom with his own work lately." Every clause is an observed fact; the one inference is earned by "which meant" and paid off at L109 ("I painted,") and L163. The thumbnail closes the run rather than opening it — the order's letter said "lead" — but the order's target (a generic scaffold carrying the paragraph while the owned detail trailed as garnish) is dead: the sleep math is deleted and the thumbnail is the only observation the chapter develops and reuses. Executed in substance.

**§1-2 — known/not-known triplet reduced to one: PARTIAL.** The sweater beat now stops where ordered: "put on the good sweater, telling herself it was the warm one." (L23 — "Both things could be true. She let them be." is gone). The "too kind in that particular direction" pair is replaced by the plain misreading: "He had made the blank into a prize." (L105). The designated keeper stands at L165. But the repaired sidewalk paragraph introduced a same-family clause two sentences ahead of the keeper — finding 2 in §1 below.

**§1-3 — sidewalk anchored to the block: EXECUTED.** L157: "Outside, a delivery bike leaned against Sonia's window grate, salt dried white on its tires, and neither of them turned toward the corner." Non-portable street fact (dried road salt is the book's winter clock made curb-level) and nowhere-to-be rendered as behavior. "its own kind of question standing there with them" is gone.

**§2-1 — failed drafts on screen: EXECUTED.** L15: "The first draft was *We should probably talk, yes*, which looked like a dentist's reminder. *Fine* was meaner than she felt." Two drafts verbatim, in the same register as Theo's quoted bubbles; the third is described by content ("an explanation of why he should not feel guilty before he'd even arrived"), not by workshop diagnosis — the old "managing his feelings about her feelings" gloss is gone. "she held her thumb down until it disappeared" now deletes words the reader watched.

**§2-2 — speech certificates cut, restart in dialogue: EXECUTED.** Both captions ("She heard herself and kept going anyway…", "The word was out before she chose it.") are gone. The restart is inside the seven-weeks speech itself: "I made those choices with a piece missing. No. With you standing right there with it." (L57). The sanctioned "Oh," (L115) stands with no narrator explaining its provenance; what follows is her arithmetic ("Week three. Started when the secret became worth keeping."), not a certificate.

**§2-3 — stacking insight deleted: EXECUTED.** "placing things on top of other things all morning" is gone. L117 holds the object and the dates and stops: "Finished only after the catalogs came back. She looked at her cup on the old coffee ring." The stacking motif (cup on ring L41/L53/L117; receipt against Dana's page L143) now runs uncaptioned, the reader's to find.

**§3-1 — harm sentence broken: EXECUTED.** L45: "You were in that building making choices about the class. About me. About what we were pretending to be. I had the fact that would have changed what you could say yes to. I kept it." The triple parallel is fragmented; the consent-seminar abstraction ("changed what you were agreeing to") is gone; the block lands on the two plain words, and his fluency does not restart until June's "Week what?" begins extracting.

**§3-2 — deciding-for-you arrives broken: EXECUTED**, by a different mechanism than either the order suggested, and a legitimate one. L67–69: "'I was deciding what you got to know,' he said. 'That's the one. I keep wanting to make it sound cleaner.' / 'Don't.'" The old aphorism ("I don't get to decide anymore what you can handle knowing") is gone; the insight is seven plain past-tense words; the polish-impulse is confessed instead of performed, June interrupts it before he can clean it, and the plain floor follows on schedule: "I called it taking care of you because that sounded better. I was being scared and slow." (L71). The pre-resolved arrival the order targeted is dead.

**§3-3 — June's admission fractured: EXECUTED.** L79: "I wanted you. From about week four, if we're dating things now. And I got worse at noticing. The good easel was just free. The clean jars were just there. I didn't ask who was making it happen, because then I'd have to…" She stopped. — The weather thesis is gone; the easel/jars catalog is kept (her eye); the run fails to finish exactly at maximum exposure, per her card's half-finished self-interruption; both plain keepers retained ("That part's mine. You don't get to apologize for my part.").

**§3-4 — map aphorism cut: EXECUTED.** The map sentence is gone. The speech ends on the ordered facts: "Before your texts. That's the part you need in the right order." … "I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you." (L91). The earned-stay case is carried entirely by the sidewalk facts (Nia, the bodega cat, Asha's name asked first, Dana's room, the W-9), thesis unspoken. §8 earned-stay passes on evidence, not assertion.

**§3-5 — capper run un-landed: EXECUTED.** "I can accept that." / "Look at you." / "I'm trying not to ruin it." are all cut. The payment beat is now line / action / line: "Just coffee means I buy the coffee." (L137, the designated keeper) → "He moved the sugar caddy beside the napkin holder and left the slip under her cash." (L139 — physical reply, no returned capper; the "back" fossil flagged by Dialogue Doctor round 4 housekeeping is confirmed deleted) → "Good," June said. "Keep doing the quiet version." (L141). Dialogue Doctor round 4 verified the staging on all five of its terms; re-tested here against this audit's questions, the beat is action, not polish.

**§4-1 — personified "question" replaced: EXECUTED.** See §1-3; the abstraction is now the bike, the salt, and two people not turning toward the corner.

**§4-2 — stem botany replaced with dates: EXECUTED.** "the wanting and the withholding growing on the same stem" is gone; L117 carries the literal timeline the scene already owned via Theo's "the dates, both of them" (L113).

**§4-3 — dish caption cut: EXECUTED.** "one practical object do too much work" is gone; the action now closes on the practical reason: "took it back out, and put it on the kitchen table, because Tuesday was two days away." (L3). The §5 object channel runs uncaptioned through the close (L177–179, dish wrapped and left in the tote, pure action).

Score: 13 of 14 orders fully executed; §1-2 partially executed with one regression, converted to a finding below.

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## 1. Which paragraphs feel portable to another novel?

`PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH — "while Dana watched with the expression of a woman who had already cleared the room and was letting June arrive at it" — the "expression of a woman who + narrative inference" frame is the same precision-asserting scaffold the round-1 §1 order deleted from Theo's paragraph ("in the specific way of someone who had slept in ninety-minute installments"), and it could sit unchanged in the apartment-hunting chapter of any Beth O'Leary novel; "expression" carries zero visual content — it is a mind-read wearing an optical noun, in the POV whose noticing is contractually optical (§2) — ORDER: replace the expression clause with one observable fact of Dana or the already-cleared room from which a reader infers she has decided (the chapter's own repaired standard is the model: observation first, "which meant" second, as in the L73 thumbnail sentence); the sentence's first half ("measured Dana's wall twice") stays.`

`PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH — "and she had watched him doctor it this morning without admitting she was memorizing it" — the knowing-without-letting-herself-know scaffold re-forms two sentences ahead of the one sanctioned instance ("which she had known he would and had not known she knew," L165), on the same sugar fact; round 1 ordered this family down to exactly one occurrence and the repair added a second at the exact site of the keeper, machine symmetry regrowing in miniature — ORDER: end the sentence at "watched him doctor it this morning" (or state the watching as plain fact); the L165 payoff must land alone as the chapter's single instance.`

Checked and surviving: the opening dish paragraph — "cobalt going almost green where the glaze thinned at the rim" plus the new practical close ("because Tuesday was two days away") is owned painter's-eye observation with its former caption removed; unportable. The booth entrance (L27) — "Third booth, the one with the taped seat, facing the door. One cup in front of him, half gone, which meant he'd been early enough that she would not have to walk in and wait alone." — is the strongest counter-candidate considered for this section besides the two findings: an inference-bearing sentence, but the inference arrives in her earned "which meant" form, sits on counted objects (one cup, half gone), and is specific to this ask and this kindness; it passes. The repaired L73 observation run passes (verified above). The closing index card (`TUES = 4:00 / jar stays / I turn it or it doesn't turn`, L177) remains unreadable outside this book — the §8 smallness test passing at full strength. The kiss paragraph's physical rendering (L165: "getting the angle wrong at first, off-center, his nose cold against her cheek… His hands stayed in his pockets the whole time.") is literal, consent-legible, and correctly closed-door per §3 of the guide.

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## 2. Where does prose summarize pressure rather than make the reader inhabit it?

No findings. What was checked, and the strongest counter-candidates:

- The draft-composing beat (L15), round 1's finding site, re-tested: two drafts are now on screen verbatim and die on screen; the third is summarized — "A paragraph about Tuesday and the class turned, halfway through, into an explanation of why he should not feel guilty before he'd even arrived" — but this describes the draft's content, not a diagnosis of June from altitude, and it ends in the lived action ("she held her thumb down until it disappeared"). Passes; this is the section's strongest counter-candidate.
- "She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for." (L73) — one step toward self-watching (§6), but it is cataloguing, her card's named stress behavior, not feeling-watching; and the filing is cashed twice (L97, L163). Passes. Watch: a third filing-note in any future touch would tip it.
- "It cost her a second to answer." (L105) — pressure reported as a time fact, adjacent to the plain naming of his error ("He had made the blank into a prize."), where naming is the event per §2. Passes.
- "He went still, cup halfway back to the table." (L89) and "He flattened both palms on the Formica, nowhere near her." (L113) — pressure as object behavior; this is the standard working, not a candidate.
- "She made herself finish." (L91) — effort of completing the utterance, an act; carried clearance from Dialogue Doctor round 4, independently re-verified: it inhabits the cost of "It isn't for you" rather than certifying it.

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## 3. Where does dialogue sound polished, therapeutic, or aphoristic?

No findings. The round-1 §3 sites are all repaired (verification above). What was checked, and the strongest counter-candidates:

- "If you were going, I'd hope it went well. Since you're staying, I'm glad. I'm not making more of it than that." (L93) — the strongest candidate in the chapter: symmetric if/since architecture, fully composed. Survives because the composure is the content: the beat before it shows the composing ("He looked at the cup before answering."), the restraint is the chapter card's explicit requirement (no grand-gesture energy at June's stay), and June grades it on the page ("That's the right amount."), converting the polish into scored conduct rather than authorial eloquence. He gets no second speech this composed, and the chapter doesn't give him one.
- "Like if I finished enough of everyone else's problems, eventually there was a square with my name on it." (L103) — carried from round 1 at the same narrow margin: the saving restart ("He looked at his cup and started again.") is intact, and the square stays literal to the canvas. Passes narrowly; do not let a future touch remove the restart.
- "It isn't evidence of anything and it doesn't fix anything." (L113) — paired negation, quotable-adjacent; survives as the anti-gesture disclaimer the chapter card demands, embedded in a logistics inventory (labeled, name, dates, stockroom, faced to the wall) that is his card's register, and followed by reasoning in plain fact ("it has your face in it and you're going to be in that room Tuesday").
- "I want to watch you finish it instead of finding out you did it at two in the morning so nobody would see you try." (L149) — long and insightful for June; survives as her owned §5 care move (precise, unsentimental praise plus an honest warning), aimed at documented behavior ("I stocked it in October," the Thursday-night painting alone), delivered after the scene's pressure has discharged; the praise around it is craft-specific ("The underpainting's good… the color under it is good").
- "That happened because the terms are set," she said. "Not instead of them." (L167) — quotable, but protected direct register: a fact about her own action, structurally required by the earned-stay test, and Theo declines to match it ("I learned it this morning, but I know it" admits recency instead of returning a beat).
- Plain-speech floor spot-check (§2): June — "I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you." (L91); Theo — "I was being scared and slow." (L71). Both principals clear the floor with unangled sentences.

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## 4. Where would literal precision beat figurative language?

No findings. What was checked, and the strongest counter-candidates:

- "how he would restructure the known world so this could never happen again" (L61) — the section's strongest candidate: an abstraction at scale. Survives as June's dry hyperbole about his character, anchored to his card's nouns in the same sentence ("the list, schedules and keys") and immediately corrected by literal behavior ("He reached for his cup instead."). The figure is a joke about him, not mood work.
- "the exit installed before she'd even reached for the door" (L13) — carried clearance, re-verified: exact about what the second text mechanically does; her register.
- "That was fine. Her life had earned one confusing receipt." (L143) — small lift sitting on a literal object the reader watched her file against Dana's wall page; self-aimed, hers.
- "the single inefficient thing in his entire operation" (L163) — "operation" is her dry characterization resting on the literal, held-since-week-one order (black with three sugars); the sentence's payload is the fact.
- "She sent it before the hour could argue with her." (L21) and "pale against the table, somebody else's morning" (L29) — carried clearances, re-verified on current text; the second still earns its lift by seeding the object the scene reuses three times (her cup on the ring).
- Round-1 §4 sites confirmed clean: the question-abstraction is now a bike with salt-dried tires (L157); the stem is now dates (L117); the dish caption is now a Tuesday fact (L3).

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## Chapter verdict

`LLM-CLEAN-FOUND` — 2 revision orders, both in §1, both single-clause deletions/substitutions:

1. Replace the mind-read "expression of a woman who had already cleared the room and was letting June arrive at it" (L5) with one observable fact of Dana or the cleared room.
2. Cut "without admitting she was memorizing it" (L163) so the sanctioned known/not-known instance at L165 stands alone.

Neither order touches dialogue, the payment staging, or anything Dialogue Doctor round 4 verified; both are executable without re-opening that clearance. The 14 round-1 orders are otherwise fully executed and holding: both set-piece speeches now break where the pressure is (the "No." restart at L57, the stall at L79), the earned-stay and followability tests pass on facts rather than theses, the narrator has stopped certifying and captioning its own effects, and the sidewalk stands on a specific block. After these two clauses are repaired, the chapter is inhabited; the outstanding known-stale item is the Comedy Doctor re-baseline (flagged by Dialogue Doctor round 4 housekeeping), which is outside this audit's scope but blocks committability on comedy until run.
