# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 20 (*No Advice / Keys Here*) — Round 5

Cold read against the reading guide register (interiority through object and action; plain-speech floor; June compresses and self-interrupts when exposed) and the June/Ruth/Sam/Asha/Nia voice cards. Calibration honored: this round audits only the current text, not repaired prior wording; the physical spine — blue dish, catalog box, receipt, Ridgewood wall, radiator, Kessler net-45, leaving-side study — was checked for inhabitation and left alone where it holds. The predicted failure sites (clean moral equations, brave-choice language, staying-for-herself phrasing, post-Nia-call essay, polished refusal rhetoric) were each re-checked against the four prior rounds' orders; all fifteen previously issued orders are confirmed executed in the current text. What remains is small, and two of the three findings below are seams left by the repairs themselves.

## 1. Paragraphs portable to another novel

No findings. Strongest counter-candidates checked:

- "She'd done it four times and it came out the same every time: the left page won. The left page won on every line." — The echo sentence is the chapter's most cadence-polished moment (round 3 logged it at the edge), and the shape could travel. It passes because both clauses are welded to a specific two-page spread the reader has just read line by line — TASKER against NEW YORK, GOOD against a blank FEB — and the repetition renders the fourth re-check, which is June's documented stress behavior (re-verifying, squaring paper), not narrator rhythm.
- "The five studies stayed face down under the water jar. She could see the staple lines through the back of the top one. Not yet." — "Not yet" is a two-word suspense fragment and the closest thing to a stamp in the chapter. It passes because it is deferral of a specific physical act (turning the study over) that the chapter visibly pays off at line 157–159, and the staple lines are non-portable object detail carrying the avoidance.
- The Sam/Ruth visit and the before-noon montage were both walked for portability; the box errand ("If Theo is there, could you leave them at Sonia's with a note for Mara"), the strip of dust, the January-31-typed-twice notice email, and the index card pinned under the mineral spirits jar are all premise-nailed and pass.

## 2. Pressure summarized rather than inhabited

`SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE — "Below the figures, in the space where a plan should be: FEB = . She had not filled in the right side of that equation because there was nothing to put there." — The blank notation is glossed twice: "in the space where a plan should be" is a portable essayish caption, and the following sentence explains the same blank again — the one place the chapter still narrates its central pressure instead of trusting the object that carries it (FEB = . recurs as "FEB blank" at line 99 and pays off as "FEB = coat" at line 155). — ORDER: Cut "in the space where a plan should be" and at most keep one plain follow-up fact ("There was nothing to put there") or none; the notation and its two later reprises must do the whole job.`

`SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE — "Scrolling for Dana's thread she hit the one that still ended *Okay. No chair.* She did not open it. / With *Okay. No chair.* still on the screen, she put the right page beside it" — The thread-ender is quoted verbatim in consecutive sentences; the second mention is the narrator re-aiming the reader's head at the juxtaposition — insistence quietly replacing the deleted round-3 stamp ("That was a different noon") rather than trusting the act of laying the page beside the screen. — ORDER: Merge the beats: keep "She did not open it," cut the "With *Okay. No chair.* still on the screen," frame, and let "She put the right page beside it: $490, JAN 2--KEYS, ten feet of wall, FEB blank" follow directly; one appearance of the quoted thread, one act of comparison, no restatement.`

Pass-work: the calibration's primary target — essay-ish summary after the Nia call — remains clean; the post-call run is a phone set down, the receipt squared Marchetti-header-up, then timestamped logistics, and nothing narrated has grown back in the gap. The landlord-notice beat now carries its irreversibility physically ("Paragraph 14 allowed email; she checked. In the email body she typed January 31 twice"). Strongest counter-candidate: "The notebook, open to the spread she'd been avoiding" — a told avoidance, but it passes as one-clause scene-setting immediately substantiated by the pencil gone shiny at the folded corner and the twenty-six-hour count.

## 3. Polished, therapeutic, or aphoristic dialogue

`POLISHED-DIALOGUE — ""You do," June said. "I ran it four times. The job's good, Nia."" — Repair scar, the inverse defect this audit's earlier orders created: "You do" was written to answer Nia's since-flattened "I win the math," and now answers nothing — Nia's current line is "Walk me through it. I ran the math with you three weeks ago. It wasn't close," to which "You do" has no referent; a cold reader stumbles at the top of the chapter's highest-stakes call. — ORDER: Delete "You do," and open on "I ran it four times" (which already concedes Nia's math by matching it), or replace with a reply that answers the line Nia actually says ("It wasn't."). Do not restore any "win the math" phrasing to justify the orphan.`

Pass-work — the rest of the refusal call and both other conversations were walked under the same suspicion:

- "Ten feet, north window. It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast." — strongest counter-candidate; "It isn't about the program" is the last etiquette-shaped clause in the call. It passes: round 2 explicitly retained it when cutting "The no is mine," it is followable plain assurance rather than aphorism, and it is immediately cashed in June's actual currency (the itemized freelance offer Nia then answers in kind — "I know her invoices. She itemizes.").
- "The part I keep wanting is the Vandercook. … Trueing the bed, keeping it usable. That part." and "Or the sink would--" She stopped. "They'd call the key number. It would be my phone." — the refusal now fumbles where round 3 and 4 ordered it to; the anaphoric "I'd hang… I'd fix… I'd say…" run survives but breaks off mid-clause and lands on machinery, not rhetoric. Passes.
- "I did want to feel less bad," followed by nothing — the round-4 order executed exactly: the admission is now incomplete, "qualified" stays unsaid, and Asha moves on without absolving her. Passes.
- Ruth's "I kept them to myself and called it manners. … Not all of it was." — her one licensed editorial-sharp line this appearance, paid for with the bag-strap fumble and followed by unquotable help ("We have a car." / "And a hand truck if you need it."). Passes.
- "I know. That's why this is hard." — checked as therapy-adjacent; passes as plain-speech-floor material (a fact stated straight, at cost, per the guide's protected direct register).

## 4. Figurative language where literal precision would win

No findings; the chapter remains unusually literal and its precision is the register the book wants. Strongest counter-candidates considered:

- "the email she'd been not-sending to Nia for nine days" — the one coinage in the chapter; "had not sent" would be flatter. Passes because the progressive carries nine separate daily decisions not to send, which the plain form loses, and compression-by-coinage is inside June's card.
- "the floor going warm where the afternoon came in" — "warm" checked as mood-temperature; passes as painter-literal color temperature inside the leaving-side study, which the calibration protects.
- "Twenty-six hours, give or take the walk from the sink to the table." — time as apartment-distance; passes because both endpoints are the receipt's literal geography (under the mineral spirits jar by the sink; now on the table).
- The freight gate's "specific boom," the printer "feeding a page and catching for half a second," the cobalt "pooled and gone almost black" at the dish's foot, "paint-scabbed floor" ending on "flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall" — all literal, all this book's.

## Chapter verdict

`LLM-CLEAN-FOUND` — 3 orders, in revision priority:

1. Delete or replace "You do," at the top of the Nia call so June's first reply answers the line Nia now says (line 109).
2. Cut "in the space where a plan should be" and reduce the FEB = . gloss to at most one plain fact (line 11).
3. Collapse the double *Okay. No chair.* into one appearance: keep "She did not open it," cut the "still on the screen" frame, and run straight into placing the right page beside it (lines 97–99).

All three are seam-level, not structural. After four repair batches, the chapter's decision material now resolves the way the book requires — in receipts, notations, and timestamps rather than equations — and no clean moral equation, brave-choice line, portable staying-for-herself phrasing, or post-call essay survives in the current text. Execute the three orders above without adding language to the protected objects; beyond them, this chapter is done.
