# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 18 (*Returned Scarf*)

stance: skeptical professional edit; register audited = warm/precise/lightly comic per READING_GUIDE §2, grief-calibrated for rupture aftermath; target reader = O'Leary warmth / Henry-at-60% / Morisaki quiet

## Calibration pre-checks (special instructions)

- `sleeping in shifts`, `zero did not last`, `commits to the bridge`: **searched the chapter text; none of these strings or near-variants appear.** Nothing to audit under those flags; if they existed in an upstream draft they did not survive to this text.
- `hostage exchange` (line 75), Thanksgiving foil-pan (line 21), Tasker/studies overlay wit: audited as inventory items 12, 8, 16–17 below.
- Spent-family checks against `output/tics.md`:
  - Ch16 chair-count comedy (spent): line 41 "She didn't count them" is a negation of the count, not a new count-shaped joke; reads as restraint in the grief register, not a gag. Cleared as transformed.
  - Ch17 `the way` connective (4/4 cap, add none): zero instances in Ch18; line 3 "that was how her mother had done it" is the varied form. Cleared.
  - Ch17 keys cluster (no new key beats): one literal recall of the painted keys inside Theo's canvas description (line 5). Transformed, cleared.
  - Ch17 `stop coming` / stranger clusters: absent. Cleared.
  - Object-personification family (frozen until rupture; rupture now past): two post-rupture uses found — the "honest" colander (item 1, June-voiced, survives) and "padding even in transit" (item 13, narrator caption, blocked below). License resumes at one, not two.

## INVENTORY:

1 — "She took the colander out of the box again and left it in the dish rack, where it was at least honest about being used." (line 5) — mechanism: deflation / self-aimed irony through object — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: makes the half-packed apartment's dishonesty concrete; restates Theo's underpainting verdict without naming it — workshopped: no (considered: "at least honest" is composed, but the setup is in the same paragraph — "she kept taking the colander back out of" — and the joke's target is June)

2 — Sam: "*crooked is dynamic*" / Ruth: "*it's crooked.*" (line 9) — mechanism: register collision + deadpan refusal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: cohort life running without June; the flyer is the kiss photo multiplying — workshopped: no; Ruth one-sharp-line cap check: this is her single dry line this appearance, plain shape, inside cap

3 — "Forty of those existed. Some were now in laundromats." (line 9) — mechanism: deadpan escalation by flat census — source: character (June's exact counting under stress) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the kiss into ambient public exposure — workshopped: no

4 — Mara: "Luis cooked for eleven and we are four." (line 11) — mechanism: specificity / surplus-host incongruity — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: an invitation engineered so refusal costs — workshopped: no

5 — "*Can't — working,* June typed, which was going to be true if she started a painting before Friday." (line 13) — mechanism: technicality (lie pre-licensed by future tense) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: launches the studies-as-avoidance engine the chapter audits at line 43 — workshopped: no; NOTE: `, which` caption shape is at span watch (tracker Ch06–15); this is the chapter's lone instance — keep it singular

6 — "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else" (line 13) — mechanism: register collision (emoji deadpanned into prose) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: non-pressure as the heaviest pressure — workshopped: no; watch: the trailing "and that, somehow, was the part that cost" half-explains a beat the emoji already earned — trim "somehow" (watch, not blocking)

7 — phone plugged in "by the stove, in the kitchen, where it charged badly" (line 17) — mechanism: deadpan displacement / pettiness rendered flat — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: distance-keeping from "Okay. No chair." with zero commentary — workshopped: no

8 — "a man balancing a foil pan on both palms so it would not crease" (line 21) — mechanism: comic image / specificity, plant — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no as used (pays at lines 71/77/85: "Don't tilt it," the foil brick held level, "the foil level the whole time like she'd been told") — dramatic work: the street tells her the holiday she forgot; plants the carried-care image June then obeys — workshopped: no (considered portable as a lone NYC-postcard image; the three-beat payoff chain binds it to this chapter)

9 — Asha: "dana says the radiator works if you kick the valve. bring a sweater if you go see it." (line 35) — mechanism: deadpan practicality — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps the New York column material rather than romantic — workshopped: no

10 — "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: symmetrical self-audit + flat-action deflation — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the avoidance and refuses to dwell in it — workshopped: no (considered: the avoid/avoiding symmetry is composed, but it is June's documented perception→judgment→self-rebuke rhythm, the facts are genuinely symmetrical, and the bowl-rinse kills the quotability)

11 — "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: confession-of-strategy; repetition-with-variation on the Ch03 plant ("take the scarf, I brought two") — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: both parties name the care mechanism without breaking it; licenses the return — workshopped: no

12 — "It's a dish I want back, so it's not even generous. It's a hostage exchange." (line 75) — mechanism: generosity reframed as transaction; register collision — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the dish-tether replacing the scarf-tether is this chapter's machinery; line 99 "one return down, one acquired" closes it) — dramatic work: installs a new tether minutes after June severs the old one, then flows into the plain ask "Sit by me Tuesday" — workshopped: no (motivated in scene; it is the same trick June called out at line 55, now performed in the open). Engine-fatigue logged at item 14.

13 — "She smoothed the fold once against her forearm and settled it into the tote between two dishes. It was padding even in transit." (line 67) — mechanism: wit caption on a completed action — source: narrator-overlay — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the caption transplants to any object in any bag in any book) — dramatic work: gestures at the scarf's unkillable usefulness, but the action sentence before it already shows exactly that — workshopped: yes (no one in the scene generates it; composed for the reader) — **BLOCKING**

14 — "October. It's almost December. You can thank me in soup." (line 83) — mechanism: deflection of thanks into future transaction — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: declines retrospective gratitude, assumes a future where June is reachable, carries the December clock — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING (partial):** third use of the generosity-as-transaction engine inside one ~20-line scene (after items 11 and 12); by this pass the reader is ahead of the move, and June's one plain unguarded sentence in the scene ("Thank you for October") gets deflected instead of received

15 — "The chair did nothing. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door, and if it was unbearable, that was a problem the viewer had brought with them." (line 89) — mechanism: deadpan denial; critique-room register turned on herself — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the fifth study's refusal-to-mean is the chapter's grief thesis; June is the viewer the line indicts — workshopped: no (considered: "a problem the viewer had brought with them" is epigram-adjacent, but it is her technician defense in her own crit idiom and the irony lands against her)

16 — "It was a true question and a competent one, and sending it tonight, this particular night, would have nothing to do with ceiling height." (line 31) — mechanism: deadpan self-catching — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: flags flight disguised as diligence; sets up the drafts-folder discipline that pays at line 97 — workshopped: no

17 — "His silence would be signing her W-2." (line 95) — mechanism: register collision (payroll onto heartbreak) — source: narrator-overlay (nominally June's free indirect, polished past her idiom) — funniness: 1 — portable: no (the W-2 is literal from Nia's terms) — dramatic work: restates the previous sentence's logic ("she would be answering Theo, not Nia") a second time, fancier — workshopped: yes (epigram syntax; a second tap on an already-landed beat; revives the fiscal-figure family capped at Ch07/Ch08 and repaired to zero at Ch13) — **BLOCKING**

18 — "one return down, one acquired" (line 99) — mechanism: deadpan ledger tally — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: closes the tether-exchange arc (scarf out, pie dish in) — workshopped: no (June's compression; checked for ledger-register creep alongside item 17 — with 17 cut, this stands alone safely)

## Distribution checks

- **Density:** 18 items across ~3,100 words of rupture aftermath, all quiet-smile grade, no set piece. That is the correct grief calibration for this register, and it is not thin — the comic texture is continuous (apartment, group chat, street, Asha, Mara scene, studies, ledger). No `CLEAR BUT THIN` defense needed.
- **Mechanism variety:** deadpan/deflation dominates (items 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 18) — but that is June's documented grief register ("gets quieter, funnier, more exact"), and it is offset by register collision (2, 6, 12, 17), specificity (4, 8), technicality (5), and repetition-with-variation (8, 11, 12). One true monotony pocket: **generosity-as-transaction ×3 in the Sunday scene (items 11, 12, 14)** — handled by order 3 rather than a MONOTONOUS verdict, since the engine does not recur outside that scene.
- **Sweetness:** the sharp beats stay sharp. "Okay. No chair." gets no joke. The five studies get no softening quip. The Tasker ledger is unsweetened. The Mara scene's warmth is the book's warmth-floor working, not sugar on the wound — June still leaves with "I don't know about Tuesday" unresolved. Not OVERSWEETENED.
- **Cringe:** none found; nothing misjudges the target reader. Strongest counter-candidate checked: "working girl" (line 43) — affectionate in-cohort teasing, not off-register.

## VERDICT: CLEAR

Majority funniness-2, overwhelmingly character/situation-sourced (15 of 18), non-portable, mechanisms varied; the thinness the rupture demands is in volume per beat, not in coverage.

- **Strongest surviving item:** item 12 — "It's a dish I want back, so it's not even generous. It's a hostage exchange." — character-generated, names the book's care economy while installing the chapter's replacement tether, and is set up by the openly confessed scarf trick twenty lines earlier.
- **Weakest surviving item:** item 6 — "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else" — lands, but the trailing "and that, somehow, was the part that cost" hedges with "somehow" and half-explains a beat the deadpan already earned.

**Blocking findings: items 13, 14, 17.** The chapter is not committable while they stand.

## REVISION ORDERS:

1. **Item 13 (line 67) — narrator-overlay, portable, workshopped.** Cut the sentence "It was padding even in transit." entirely. The preceding action ("settled it into the tote between two dishes") already shows the scarf still being of use on its way out; no caption may replace it. If the usefulness beat must be voiced, it belongs to Mara (voice card: practical names for objects) — one functional clause as she packs it, not a narrator observation.

2. **Item 17 (line 95) — workshopped epigram, capped-register revival.** Cut "His silence would be signing her W-2." The sentence before it ("she would be answering Theo, not Nia") carries the entire logic; the W-2 line is a second, fancier tap that revives the fiscal-figure family the tracker caps (Ch07 at cap, Ch08 spent, Ch13 repaired to zero). The paragraph already gets its one calibrated clerical word in "ratify" — keep that, add nothing.

3. **Item 14 (line 83) — third instance of one comic engine in one scene.** Keep items 11 and 12 (the paid Ch03 plant and the chapter's strongest line). Break the third: cut "You can thank me in soup." and let Mara *receive* "Thank you for October" with one plain beat before the Luis-circling exit — her card allows plain hosting lines, her arc (learning to stop smoothing) supports one accepted thanks, and the reading guide's plain-speech floor wants June's one unguarded sentence in this scene answered, not deflected. "It's almost December" may stay for the clock. Do not replace the cut line with another transactional quip.

Non-blocking watch notes for the repair pass: trim "somehow" from line 13 ("that, somehow, was the part that cost"); item 5's `, which` caption is the chapter's single permitted instance of a span-watched shape — add no more; object-personification license post-rupture is now spent on the colander (item 1) — no further object-as-agent figures in Ch18.
