# Chapter 22 Dialogue Doctor

Scope per manifest: scene 02 (lines 26-159, booth), scene 03 (lines 162-185, sidewalk). Scene 01 (lines 2-23) has zero dialogue lines — not required. Reading-guide exclusions applied: the single "Oh," (line 117) is the §6-sanctioned once-at-the-confession use and is not flagged; ordinary-talk allowance not needed (no scene here is transit/meal filler — both are peak-pressure).

## SCENE 02 / Sonia's booth (lines 26-159)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — read the full scene with attributions covered; June compresses ("Week what?", "Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays."), Theo runs practical-to-emotional at greater length ("If you were going, I'd hope it went well. Since you're staying, I'm glad."). Strongest counter-candidate: the bare "Okay." lines — June's "Okay," she said. "You asked." (line 43) vs. Theo's "Okay" (line 75) — they survive because position and surrounding mass disambiguate: hers opens proceedings and takes a turn, his accepts an instruction he was just given. Contraction policy also holds per Rule 4: June's uncontracted "I did not." (line 39) and "you do not touch my stain" (line 151) are deliberate emphasis, which her card licenses ("full forms only for emphasis").

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — the scene alternates long confession blocks against one-word replies, then inverts (June's seven-week accounting paragraph at line 59 against Theo's "Yes," he said). Strongest counter-candidate: the volley "Week what?" / "Three." / "Three." (lines 51-55) — three near-equal clipped lines — survives because it is not Q/A/Q/A of similar weight: June repeats the number as arithmetic and immediately expands into the longest speech in the scene ("So for seven weeks I was in a real thing that I thought was a fake thing...").

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's mind stays lit at every hinge: "She filed that away without knowing yet what it was for" (line 71, the thumbnail paint); "June had known his reading would be too kind. She had not known it would be too kind in that particular direction, and it cost her a second to answer" (line 103); the week-three arithmetic after "Oh" (line 119). Strongest dark-stretch candidate: the check volley (lines 137-147) runs five lines without interiority, but it is bracketed by the sugar-caddy action and the receipt-in-notebook paragraph, which carry her read of the moment.

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "Can I ask what happens now?" (line 81) — survives because Theo audits the question mid-line and strips it to a real one ("Not as a pitch... No. I'm asking. Are you going?") and June answers it with facts, not portent. "Did you paint my face?" (line 121) is genuine information-seeking and gets a factual answer.

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — clipped stretches ride on physical beats that earn them (cup set on the old coffee ring, palms flat on the Formica "nowhere near her," sugar caddy on the slip). Strongest counter-candidate: the four-line unattributed portrait volley "Did you paint my face?" / "Not the part I didn't see." / "Tell me nothing else." / "Okay." (lines 121-127) — survives because the starkness is the content: June is demanding less information, and the compression enacts the consent term she is about to set.

6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN, at capacity — the densest cluster: "I called Nia from the sidewalk... I gave her Asha's name after asking Asha first. I'm taking Dana's room, and I sent Kessler the W-9." (line 89) — five proper nouns plus a form number in three sentences, the closest this chapter comes to plot-ledger dialogue. It survives on three grounds: scene 01 pre-weights Tasker (the folded receipt) and Dana (the measured wall), each noun arrives attached to a completed concrete action rather than traded as a token, and the sentence the list serves is stated plainly and immediately: "I'm staying, Theo. It isn't for you." June even tells the reader why the inventory exists — "Before your texts... That's the part you need in the right order." The plain-speech floor is met, and the followability test passes: a cold reader can state what June refused (Tasker), what she chose (Dana's room, the Kessler job, staying), and why the order matters. Do not add nouns to this speech in any revision pass.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — longest unattributed run is the five-line check volley (lines 139-147); strict alternation plus content-locking (only June sets payment terms, only Theo self-monitors) keeps speakers trackable. The portrait-terms run (lines 129-135) re-anchors with "she said" and "he said" at both ends.

FAKE-SHARP: FAIL (two findings).
- FAIL — quotable-aphorism / voice-card violation — "The one that matters is that I don't get to decide anymore what you can handle knowing. I kept doing that. It felt like taking care of you. It was me buying time." (Theo, line 69) — the closing antithesis is a polished two-beat aphorism about care, which Theo's card bans outright ("never says: ...polished aphorisms about care"), and it fails Rule 8: it lands cleanly at the exact moment friction is owed. Worse, it arrives four lines after "I wrote six things. I'm not going to read them" — the text promises the unrehearsed version and then delivers prepared prose. This is the one place the apology reads as a completed essay rather than a man still learning; everything around it (the self-interrupted "If you're going, I can..." / "No. I'm asking.") does the still-learning work correctly.
- FAIL — every-line-lands / lecture density — "The assignment was fear," she said. "It's a portrait, Theo. That blank isn't a place you earn. It's your station, empty. The rest of the room works because you make it work, and your own ground stays clean." ... "Only paint fixes that." (June, lines 105-109) — the fear-canvas correction stacks three capping lines in a row ("That blank isn't a place you earn." / "It's your station, empty." / "Only paint fixes that."), violating Rule 7 ("a conversation where every line lands perfectly is a written conversation") and cut-list bullet 1 ("exchanges that exist mainly to deliver a compact aphorism" — "Only paint fixes that" is the compact aphorism, quotable at bumper-sticker compression). The chapter card is explicit: "Week 6 fear canvas returns as object memory, not lecture." This beat tips into lecture: June explicates the canvas's meaning in earned/abstract terms instead of through the object.
- Cleared counter-candidates, work shown: "Freight elevator," he admitted (line 85) — comic, but it is confession-as-comedy caught in the act, card-true logistical tenderness, and June has just made the deflection visible as deflection ("You were about to offer me crates"), which is exactly the guide's required handling. "Not the part I didn't see." (line 123) — composed double negative, but its precision IS the consent content (he painted nothing he had not actually seen) and any expansion would collide with June's next line ("Tell me nothing else"); it is speakable and answers the question asked. "I'm staying, Theo... I picked New York with the map I had before you handed me the rest of it." (line 89) — one metaphor inside an otherwise plain speech, coined by June in direct answer to his "I had a fact that changed what you were agreeing to"; she has had since Friday to compose it and the speech is diegetically rehearsed. Theo's opening apology block (line 45) was tested the same way and survives for the same reason: the parallel "So does" listing is card-behavior ("lists facts... then strips down"), and line 65 retroactively marks it as prepared text he wrote — rehearsed-by-character, not workshopped-by-author.

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2, zero tolerance): FAIL.
- FAIL — narration captioning delivery — "'The umber one.' He said it like a man who had been thinking about it." (narration, line 153) — this is narration characterizing how a line was said, the exact banned shape ("no 'that had the rhythm of a partial answer'"; §6: "any instance is a defect, in any speaker's mouth or in narration about speech"). The perceptiveness it wants to convey — that Theo has been carrying her stain around in his head — must be shown by what June does with what she heard, and her next line already does that work ("Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays.").
- Cleared candidates, work shown: "That's the right amount." (June, line 93) — rates the size of the claim Theo is making on her staying ("I'm not making more of it than that"), i.e., his stance and behavior, not his language, phrasing, rhythm, or delivery; it enforces a boundary, which is her card's register. "Good. Keep doing the quiet version." (line 147) — instructs conduct (quiet care over performed usefulness, the chapter's behavioral ask), not phrasing. "I know. You put it in the second text." (line 167, scene 03) — factual citation of what he sent, not a rating of it. All three sit close to the line; none crosses it. But note the cumulative pattern — "Good." (line 67), "That's the right amount." (93), "Good. Keep doing the quiet version." (147) — June grades Theo's conduct three times in one scene. Within tolerance because each grades behavior and her card owns dry correction, but this scene is at the ceiling; any rewrite touching these beats should not add a fourth.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — interiority reacts rather than re-explains. Tested the highest-risk spot: after Theo's staying-response (line 91), the narration goes to "the white paint at his thumbnail" (line 95) — new material, not a restatement of his line. The "Oh" paragraph (line 119) adds the week-three arithmetic the dialogue did not state, rather than paraphrasing the reveal.

## SCENE 03 / sidewalk (lines 162-185)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — Theo over-explains recursively ("my plan was nothing. My whole plan was to do nothing and let it be your call," line 165), which is his card's shame register; June answers in compressed imperatives ("Tuesday. Four. Bring nothing.", line 177). Strongest counter-candidate: "I know the difference now," Theo said (line 175) — short and June-adjacent in compression, but the qualifying second half ("I learned it this morning, but I know it") is his careful-apology cadence, not hers.

2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — no interrogatives at all; the exchange is statement-and-answer with the long kiss-interiority block breaking any volley pattern. Checked the closing pair ("Bring nothing. The room has everything we need." / "It does... I stocked it in October.") — asymmetric weights, and the second line detonates its own comedy.

3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — the kiss carries the scene's densest interiority: the memorized coffee order ("black with three sugars, the single inefficient thing in his entire operation," line 169) and "he tasted like too much sugar, which she had known he would and had not known she knew" (line 171). The focalizer is fully present through the physical beat.

4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — no spoken questions. Nearest candidate is narration, not dialogue: "neither of them had anywhere to be, which was its own kind of question standing on the sidewalk with them" (line 163) — June's perception of unstructured time, not a character delivering a position disguised as a question.

5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — attribution present on four of six lines; the one weighted silence (the kiss, hands in pockets) is marked with its cost and meaning ("His hands stayed in his pockets the whole time" — consent information, per the cut-list's requirement that silence register what it carries).

6. JARGON-TRADING: CLEAN — nothing traded; "Tuesday. Four." is a scheduled fact both parties and the reader already hold from line 151.

7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — six dialogue lines, four attributed, two locked by adjacency.

FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "That happened because the terms are set," she said. "Not instead of them." (line 173) — quotable, but it is the plain-speech floor's protected direct register: a fact about her own action, followable without decoding, and structurally required (the earned-stay test demands the kiss be sequenced after the terms, out loud). It survives also because Theo's reply refuses to match its sharpness — "I learned it this morning, but I know it" admits recency instead of returning a beat, which is the man-still-learning register done right. Second candidate: "It does. I stocked it in October." + wince (lines 179-181) — the joke lands at Theo's expense and is repaired in-scene by June's laugh (warmth floor holds); it is a self-incrimination, not a zinger displacing shame.

DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2, zero tolerance): CLEAN — checked "I know. You put it in the second text." (line 167): factual reference to content he sent, doing followability work (she names which text installed the exit), not a caption of his phrasing. Checked "I know the difference now" (line 175): about the kiss/terms distinction, not about her sentence. No narration about speech in the scene.

INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — interiority reacts (the sugar she "had not known she knew") rather than explaining the kiss twice; the closing index card renders the terms as object, not summary.

## REVISION ORDERS

1. Line 153, dialogue diagnosis (zero tolerance, reading guide §2/§6) — "'The umber one.' He said it like a man who had been thinking about it." Cut the caption. Replace with plain attribution ("he said") or a June-eye physical observation consistent with her optical noticing (her card: perception first — something she sees, not a read of his delivery). Do not relocate the insight into another caption; June's next line ("Leave the jar. I might want clean water. The stain stays.") already demonstrates what she took from it, which is the guide's required mechanism.

2. Line 69, fake-sharp / voice-card violation — "It felt like taking care of you. It was me buying time." Keep the preceding admission ("The one that matters is that I don't get to decide anymore what you can handle knowing. I kept doing that." — allowed plainness per his card) and break the antithesis. Theo's card: "qualifies when guilty, then forces himself plain" — let the second clause arrive with friction (a misstart, or an uglier plain word than "buying time"), so the line reads as a man discovering the sentence rather than reciting one of the six things he said he would not read. The rewrite must not become longer or more eloquent; it must become rougher.

3. Lines 105-109, fake-sharp lecture density at the fear canvas — "That blank isn't a place you earn. It's your station, empty. The rest of the room works because you make it work, and your own ground stays clean." ... "Only paint fixes that." Reduce the stack to one landing line: keep "It's your station, empty." (the concrete portrait fact, June's visual-noun register) and roughen or cut the framing lines around it — route the correction through the object per the chapter card ("object memory, not lecture"): what she painted and why she recognized it, in her self-interrupting cadence. Replace "Only paint fixes that." with a functional, unquotable close (style bible: in this register at least half of dialogue should be functional or incomplete) — her existing "Mine looks different, but not enough" can carry the weight if the aphorism capper goes plain.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (3)
