INVENTORY:
1 — "One open box of kitchen things she kept taking the colander back out of." / "She took the colander out of the box again and left it in the dish rack." (lines 5) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (the box that won't stay packed) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (half-packed-since-September apartment, the stay/leave ledger made domestic) — dramatic work: stages the chapter's whole decision as a colander; pays off without comment — workshopped: no
2 — "That was the whole plan, and it required no one." (line 7) — mechanism: deadpan understatement — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (shape) — dramatic work: grief armor, the post-office plan as self-sufficiency claim — workshopped: no. Tracker hit: reopens the retired "That's the whole ___" template (Ch11 entry: family broken, Sam's "That's the whole story" stays singular). The "it required no one" half is doing real work; the "whole plan" shell is the retired reflex.
3 — "Sam had written *crooked is dynamic* and Ruth had written *it's crooked.*" (line 9) — mechanism: aestheticizing reframe deflated by literalist correction — source: character (Sam's crit-speak, Ruth's copyeditor flatness) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (showcase flyer, art-class crit vocabulary; "it's crooked" checked against Ruth's one-sharp-line cap — this is her one, within cap) — dramatic work: cohort life proceeding without June; flyer circulation pressure; plants the crooked flyer that recurs in Sonia's window (line 85) — workshopped: no (text-message brevity; the symmetry is the texting, not punchline syntax)
4 — "Forty of those existed. Some were now in laundromats." (line 9) — mechanism: deadpan enumeration / bathos — source: character (June's free-indirect counting) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the cover kiss, the borrowed scarf, the flyer pipeline built in Ch13–14) — dramatic work: converts the kiss into a public-distribution problem; feeds the scarf-return decision — workshopped: no (considered the composed two-sentence drop; survives because the count is plot-true and the flatness is hers)
5 — "Luis cooked for eleven and we are four." (line 11) — mechanism: hospitality arithmetic / specificity — source: character (Mara hosting, Luis cooking) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the invitation June must lie out of; establishes the leftovers that become the pie brick — workshopped: no
6 — "It would even be true if she started a painting before Friday." (line 13) — mechanism: self-aware technicality (lie pre-laundered) — source: character (June's self-aimed irony) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: makes the deflection visible as deflection, per the plain-speech floor; plants the studies — workshopped: no
7 — "Mara sent back a turkey and a heart and asked nothing else, and that was the part that cost." (line 13) — mechanism: incongruity reversed into cost (the light reply as the wound) — source: character (Mara's unpushy warmth) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Mara declining to press is the pressure; grief-calibration in one beat — workshopped: no (note for Plain Translation's lane, not mine: "that was the part that cost" rides the caption edge)
8 — "closed grates, a man balancing a foil pan on both palms so it would not crease" (line 21) — mechanism: holiday-by-synecdoche; June's obliviousness corrected by the street — source: character (optical noticing + rupture isolation) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — this was the calibration's named suspect; I considered portability hard: the pan image alone could transplant, but the joke is June needing the street to tell her it's Thanksgiving, which is the rupture's work, and the both-palms/crease detail is her painter's eye, not city wallpaper — dramatic work: marks her off the social calendar; sets up Luis's leftovers economy — workshopped: no
9 — "her storage unit; her nail holes" (line 29) — mechanism: bathos by ledger-list (assets column breaking into feeling) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: shows the New York column's real content is an unfinished life; pays into the spackle ending — workshopped: no
10 — "sending it tonight would have nothing to do with ceiling height" (line 31) — mechanism: self-aware motive irony — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the offer's pull rendered as a true-but-pretextual question; plants the drafts beat paid Monday — workshopped: no
11 — "dana says the radiator works if you kick the valve. bring a sweater if you go see it." (line 35) — mechanism: self-undercutting sales pitch / deadpan practicality — source: character (Asha's card: practical warnings without dressing them up) — funniness: 2 — portable: no, on consideration — kick-the-radiator alone is stock NYC lore, but "bring a sweater if you go see it" is Asha's specific no-mystique register pinned to Dana/Ridgewood/$340 — dramatic work: keeps the New York path materially real and unglamorous — workshopped: no
12 — "cadmium-adjacent" (line 47) — mechanism: deadpan precision / hedged attribution (a painter won't claim a pigment she didn't see tubed) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — checked the contemporary "-adjacent" meme idiom; here it is literal hue attribution and sits beside "alleged" in her lexicon — dramatic work: ties the scarf physically to the Week 6 underpainting — workshopped: no
13 — "Keep it!! I have two. That was the plan." / "You told me that so I'd take it." / "and it worked." (lines 53–57) — mechanism: running-gag payoff by confession (Ch03 "take the scarf, I brought two," instance 2, varied: the pretext named and cheerfully owned) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the loan into acknowledged care; gets June to Sonia's — workshopped: no. Tracker: scarf-as-agent personification (Ch08 cap 2/2) — zero instances here, the scarf stays an object; clean.
14 — "Better than I treat it." (line 67) — mechanism: stock self-deprecating courtesy — source: character (nominally) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the returned-washed-item politeness quip, unchanged in any book) — dramatic work: NONE that "She smoothed the fold once against her forearm" isn't already doing — workshopped: no
15 — "Are you eating?" / "I'm painting." (lines 67–69) — mechanism: non-answer as answer, deflection legible as deflection — source: character (Mara's feeding card vs. June's compression-when-exposed) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — the line pair could transplant to another artist novel in shape, but the comedy is generated by these two voice cards colliding, and Mara's response (the pie) only works here — dramatic work: triggers the pie; plain-speech floor held on Mara's side — workshopped: no
16 — "There's pie under the turkey. Don't tilt it." / "It's a dish I want back." (lines 71–75) — mechanism: care disguised as logistics; immediate re-run of the just-confessed pretext play (variation: June can see it this time) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: engineers the Tuesday tether the chapter must not resolve; "Sit by me" is the plain want under it — workshopped: no
17 — "Ruth has opinions about wall spacing and I need another painter at the table." (line 75) — mechanism: borrowed-idiom understatement ("has opinions about") — source: character (the recruitment is Mara; the idiom is nobody's) — funniness: 1 — portable: yes (the "has opinions" shell is pre-fab contemporary quip syntax) — dramatic work: real — it's the Tuesday invitation made concrete — workshopped: yes, in the sense that the joke's engine is an off-the-shelf construction rather than Mara or Ruth specifics
18 — "Thank you for October." / ""October," Mara said. "It's almost December."" (lines 81–83) — mechanism: literalist deflation of elegy — source: character (Mara refusing June's closing-the-book framing) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the book's eight-week clock is the joke's content) — dramatic work: rejects severance, reopens the door without pressing — workshopped: no
19 — "the Corolla's hazards blinked once" / "Luis is circling the block; I should go." (lines 79, 83) — mechanism: situation; Luis's entire scene presence rendered as one signal — source: character (his card: signal, placement, no verbal garnish) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: ends the scene on logistics instead of speech; Luis's care-by-signal with zero spoken lines (material-verdict cap 2/2: untouched) — workshopped: no
20 — "the foil level the whole time like she'd been told" (line 85) — mechanism: callback / obedience-as-acceptance-of-care — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June accepting care for the length of a block, routed not-past-the-gallery — workshopped: no
21 — "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: self-aimed irony + flat deflation — source: character (her interiority rhythm: perception, judgment, self-rebuke) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the avoidance knot without self-pity; the saved plate vs. canned soup carries the cost — workshopped: no (considered: the symmetrical irony clause is the chapter's most quotable interiority; the bowl-rinse keeps it in scene rather than on a tote bag)
22 — "The chair did nothing. It was wood at an angle, viewed from the door." (line 89) — mechanism: anti-sentimental deflation (refusing the pathetic fallacy in her own study) — source: character (painter's discipline) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: shows June policing the studies against message-making; sets up the face-down turn — workshopped: no (considered "The chair did nothing." for quotability; the second sentence keeps it material)

DISTRIBUTION AND TRACKER CHECKS (work shown):
- Calibration suspects hunted and absent: `hostage exchange`, `sleeping in shifts`, `zero did not last`, `commits to the bridge` do not appear in this chapter (verified by full-text search of the chapter and the drafter tree; zero matches). Whatever draft round produced those phrases, this text does not contain them.
- Narrator-overlay hunt around Tasker and the studies: none found. The ledger sections are played straight — the closest candidate is "a real job from a person who rated her work and not her story" (line 31), which is earnest assessment, not wit; the study sections' closest is "the hallway's rectangle going dark first" (line 23), which is optical, not jokey. Overlay count: 0 of 22 items.
- Source counts: character 19, situation 2 (items 5, 19 partially), narrator-overlay 0.
- Funniness counts: 2 ×19, 1 ×3 (items 2, 14, 17), 0 ×0.
- Mechanism variety: deflation/literalist-correction family ×4 (items 3, 15, 18, 22) is the largest cluster — it is the book's house mechanism and stays below monotony threshold against running-gag variation ×3, self-irony ×3, specificity/arithmetic ×3, deadpan enumeration ×2, incongruity ×2, callback ×1, situation ×1, bathos-list ×2.
- Sweetness: not OVERSWEETENED. The beats the book wants sharp are left comedy-free — Theo's "Okay. No chair." (line 15), the studies turned face-down (line 93), the no-ratification decision (line 95). Strongest counter-candidate considered: the pie arriving right after "I don't know about Tuesday" — but the warmth tethers the rupture without resolving it; June still doesn't commit, and Mara leaves.
- Cringe: none; nothing misjudges the O'Leary/Morisaki-calibrated reader.
- Density / grief calibration: comic items concentrate where people are (the group chat, the Sonia's scene); the solo Thursday-study and Monday-ledger stretches run nearly joke-free with a named reason — rupture aftermath, June alone, and this book's comedy is social. The comedy that is present carries cost or care in every instance (the emoji that costs, the pie that must stay level, "Are you eating?"/"I'm painting"). Total mass (~19 landing items) meets the "lightly comic" commitment; this is not THIN.
- Ch17 cap inheritance checked: `the way` connective (4/4 cap, add none) — zero new instances; "that was how her mother had done it" deliberately avoids it. Keys cluster (at cap) — one reference, "boxes, keys, the emptied rectangle" (line 5), describing the content of Theo's Ch16 canvas: literal and transformed, no comic key beat. `stop coming` cluster — transformed to "There were no more next Tuesdays" (line 49). Chair-count comedy (spent Ch16) — "No chair" is fact, not a count joke. Clerical figure (Ch16: "Ch17 should add none") — one new instance, "She wasn't going to ratify it" (line 95): single verb, precise to the grievance (he decided unilaterally; she won't co-sign), but the family is at ceiling; logged for the tracker as 1/1 with no room for a second.

VERDICT: CLEAR — comedy lands in register: 19 of 22 items at funniness-2, sources overwhelmingly character, zero narrator-overlay, mechanisms varied, and the joke-free zones are grief-shaped on purpose. Strongest item: the scarf-confession-into-pie-dish run (items 13 and 16) — Mara admits the loan was a pretext ("and it worked") and immediately runs the identical play with a dish she "wants back," with June and the reader both watching it work a second time; that is repetition-with-variation generated entirely by who Mara is. Weakest surviving item: the turkey-and-heart beat (item 7) — the comic charge is one emoji wide, but it is doing the chapter's saddest work and survives on that.

The three blocking findings below stand regardless of verdict; the chapter is not committable while they do.

REVISION ORDERS:
1. (item 14, blocking: funniness-1, portable) "Better than I treat it." — stock returned-laundry courtesy quip; any book could hold it. Cut it. The beat's emotional work is already complete in "She smoothed the fold once against her forearm and settled it into the tote between two dishes" — go straight from "And dried flat" to the smoothing action, or replace the quip with a Mara-specific admission grounded in the scarf's actual history (she owns two and deploys them as pretexts; let her say something only the woman who engineered the loan could say). Do not soften it into a politer version of the same quip.
2. (item 17, blocking: funniness-1, portable, workshopped) "Ruth has opinions about wall spacing and I need another painter at the table." — the joke runs on the pre-fab "has opinions about" idiom, not on Mara or Ruth. Keep the recruitment ("I need another painter at the table" survives as is). Replace the idiom shell with the actual opinion in Mara's reporting voice, sourced from this book's inventory: Ruth's crooked-flyer correction from this same chapter (line 9) is sitting right there — let the wall-spacing dispute be specific (what Ruth measured, what she refuses to allow) rather than gestured at.
3. (item 2, blocking: funniness-1, portable template) "That was the whole plan, and it required no one." — reopens the retired "That's the whole ___" family (tics tracker, Ch11: template broken; Sam's "That's the whole story" is to remain singular). Rephrase the first clause to break the "the whole ___" shape; keep "it required no one," which is the half carrying the grief.
