# Narrator-Publicist Audit — Chapter 08 ("Social Debt")

id: narrator_publicist | owner: claude | tier: risk
chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_08.md` | POV: Theo (close third) | flags: protagonist-heavy, multi-character-scene, mentor-scene

**Narrator-stance check (step 4):** `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` §1–2 declares close third past, warm/precise, with interiority rendered through action and object; no unreliable or publicist narrator is declared anywhere in `premise/`. There is no design license for unattributed admiration. Findings stand on their own. Free-indirect admiration is excusable only where Theo is the named perceiver **and** the chapter treats his read as his, fallible.

**Inventory:** Every narrator description of Theo, June, Odile, and the cohort was collected and run against markers 1–5. Verdicts below; passes show their work per the Critique stance.

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## Per-line verdicts

**PUBLICITY — marker 4 (gesture inflation), with marker-1 shading — "There was no visible hesitation. Her fingers folded the corner of her napkin once, exact, a small pleat, and Theo understood that the hesitation had happened anyway, somewhere he could not see, and June had chosen past it." (line 75) — strip test: what action remains: "Her fingers folded the corner of her napkin once" + June's spoken "I'm in." — attributable perceiver: Theo, named — but the excuse fails: the factive "understood" plus the flat assertion "the hesitation had happened anyway" promotes his guess to narrated fact, and nothing in the chapter marks this read as possibly wrong.**

This is the structural twin of the source failure "one of those economical movements that somehow conveyed entire paragraphs of unconcern": one small exact movement decoded into a complete invisible interior narrative. The line advertises June on both axes the special focus names — specially graceful ("no visible hesitation," "exact") and uniquely unknowable-except-to-Theo ("somewhere he could not see"). The napkin-corner stress tell does exist on June's voice card, but the card is production apparatus; the tell has never been established on the page, so the decoding reads as narrator-granted access, not earned inference. The chapter elsewhere frames Theo's June-watching as compulsive ("taking notes without his own permission," line 11) — that criticizes the watching, not the accuracy; his reads are never shown wrong, so the book does not treat this judgment as fallible where it counts.

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**EARNED — "He had gotten the stance. June leaned toward a thing and angled toward the door at the same time, both true at once, weight already negotiating the exit." (line 11) — the on-page action that backs it: "he had watched her do it in three rooms and had apparently been taking notes without his own permission" (line 11).**
The content is observable body mechanics (lean, angle, weight), not mystique; the admiration is framed as incriminating evidence against Theo, not as June's press release. Strip test leaves a full physical description. Perceiver: Theo, explicitly self-indicted.

**EARNED — "Odile came up the way she did everything in the building, as if the building should be grateful." (line 15) — the on-page action that backs it: "'Nothing stays up here that isn't on the rack,' she said. 'Take it flat.'" (line 19); "pulled open the second drawer without hunting for it" (line 23); "She left ahead of him." (line 27).**
Strongest counter-candidate considered for marker 3. Strip residue: she came up the stairs, unhurried (prior sentence). The figuration's content is proprietary entitlement, not coolness, and it is cashed within five sentences by four imperatives, a pre-prepared folder, and a pre-addressed envelope. Perceiver: Theo, whose filial awe is the wound the book is built to criticize (voice card: "with Odile, filial irritation and awe"). Passes, narrowly.

**EARNED — "newsprint concealed nothing from a woman who had run a studio for forty years" (line 17) — the on-page action that backs it: "which was panel-shaped because it was a panel" (same sentence); the folder "sized exactly for a class panel" (line 23).**
Checked as marker 1 (nothing-escapes-her mystique). The sentence's own first clause undercuts the mystique: no expertise is needed to clock a panel-shaped package. Reputation clause survives the strip test because the residue independently supports the conclusion.

**EARNED — "Luis had clocked the folder, identified the contents as paint by shape and context, issued the relevant material fact, and required nothing further." (line 43) — the on-page action that backs it: "'Not against the wall,' Luis said. 'Radiator's behind that panel. Lay it on the seat.'" (line 41).**
The full transaction is quoted dialogue before the gloss; the gloss is summary, not inflation. Perceiver: Theo ("it took Theo a second to absorb").

**EARNED — "did the inventory under the table the way other people checked their phones. Mara needed the plan ratified… Priya needed the fries close enough to Luis that he could take them without being offered them. June needed the night to stay exactly this size." (line 63) — the on-page action that backs it: "She moved the fries a little closer to Luis" (line 59, occurring before the inventory — observation, not telepathy); "Mara wanted the week-eight plan confirmed by every individual party, and went around the table getting it" (line 71).**
Checked under the special focus: is Theo being campaigned for as especially useful/perceptive? No — the phone-checking simile classifies the inventory as compulsive habit, and the chapter twice treats his competence as symptom ("he distrusted that about himself," line 105). The one unbacked item — "June needed the night to stay exactly this size" — rests on observables (tote on lap, lines 31/63) and June immediately exceeds the read by raising the panel question herself (line 79), which keeps it fallible. Passes.

**EARNED — "She set down a grilled cheese in front of June with the pickle spear already removed and said, 'I remembered.'" (line 45) — the on-page action that backs it: the act itself, performed by a named perceiver (Sonia's daughter), deflated by June's reply "You're the only one in this city who has" (line 47).**
Special-focus note: the flagged phrase "people had learned June" does **not** appear in the final text; this beat is its nearest survivor, and it is the marker-2 fix executed correctly — one named character, one specific remembered preference, no generalized constituency of June-admirers.

**EARNED — "That was the whole goodbye, and it was somehow the most expensive part of the night." (line 101) — the on-page action that backs it: "Mara was planning Tuesdays into December for a couple that had an expiration date in writing" (line 77); "There was a saved seat, not a gap that happened to exist" (line 39).**
Checked under the special focus for Theo-as-tortured. The cost lands on Theo's ledger because of his lie, not on the gesture's communicative power; the wave itself is explicitly graded ordinary. The mechanism is fully itemized in-scene. Polish note, not an order: "somehow" is an unneeded mystification hedge — the chapter has already priced the night; the word can be cut without loss.

**EARNED — "He set the alarm and went home owing everyone." (line 117) — the on-page action that backs it: "One panel, unlabeled, facing the wall, not destroyed" (line 115); "Junes included. Both of you" (line 71); Sonia's envelope errand (lines 25, 39).**
Self-reproach, which the special focus permits. The creditors are each on the page; "owing" is debtor framing, not martyrdom — the line convicts Theo, it does not canonize him.

**EARNED — "The part he had not, and would have to know her better to get." (line 109) — the on-page action that backs it: "where the scarf had covered her for two weeks and he had refused to invent what he did not know, the primed white wedge stayed untouched" (line 9).**
Checked as marker 1 (June-as-unknowable). The unknown is localized to a literal unseen patch of hair and explicitly named as Theo's ignorance ("where his ignorance lived"), not June's mystique. This is the correct, fallible handling of the not-known.

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## Chapter verdict

**PUBLICIST-FOUND (1 line)** — line 75, the napkin pleat.

Cross-audit notes: the codex adversarial-register audit's earlier removals ("whole shape of the evening," "family of anonymous rectangles") are consistent with the low residue found here; this finding is residual, not systemic. Separately, `chapter_08.voice_cover_names.md` quotes two lines absent from the final text ("I'm informing you rather than consulting you"; "I was going to allude to it with dignity"), indicating it ran against a pre-revision draft — its PASS evidence should be re-anchored to the committed chapter.

## REVISION ORDERS

1. **Line 75** — "There was no visible hesitation. Her fingers folded the corner of her napkin once, exact, a small pleat, and Theo understood that the hesitation had happened anyway, somewhere he could not see, and June had chosen past it."
   Cut the decoded interior entirely. Let the observable sequence carry the beat uncaptioned: Mara's "Junes included. Both of you." → "'I'm in,' June said." → "Her fingers folded the corner of her napkin once, a small pleat." End the paragraph on the gesture. If Theo must register it, render the inference as visibly his and visibly uncertain, in his own register (risk inventory, not omniscience) — e.g., he notices the pleat and cannot tell whether the yes cost her anything, and knows he is not entitled to ask. The pairing "no visible hesitation" + "the hesitation had happened anyway" may not survive in any wording: that pairing is the campaign — it asserts both flawless composure and privileged access in one move. Toning down the verbs ("sensed," "suspected") without removing the asserted off-page hesitation is an invalid fix; the assertion converts to the gesture alone or goes.
