# Audit: Plain-Translation Audit (binding-register defense)

chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_12.md` — "The Memory He Chooses" (Theo close-third, off-Tuesday handoff chapter)
samples compared, by form: **Theo close-third** — Theo voice card (`output/style_and_voice.md`) + Ch10 "Hands" close-third as existing-Theo-chapter sample (hand density NOT imported as a target: gate shows 2 hand hits here vs. 24 in Ch10 — compliant); **June dialogue** — June Dialogue Spec / plain-speech floor (§2 reading guide); **Odile documentary card** — Odile voice card / card register; **comedy register** — reading guide §2 (warm, precise, character-sourced). Cross-checks: tic ledger (Ch11 retirements), mechanical gate report (0 open findings, WATCH only).
locked text: calibration declares none for this chapter — no LOCKED entries below; character-specific speech roughness held rather than smoothed.

## Per-paragraph verdicts

- `HOLDS — "The third index card was going the way..." (l.3) — sample compared: Theo voice card + Ch10 close-third — binding-register rewrite ("Theo crossed out his third idea; Coney Island was true but too safe") is worse because: it loses the windless red kite that never got airborne (the safe memory's own image of inertness), and "the brick wall he had counted one course at a time" plants the l.47 payoff; one clause makes the dilemma concrete before the card is even quoted.`
- `DRIFTED — original: "Odile's card sat propped against the tape dispenser, where it had been since Saturday's pile." (l.5) — binding-register version: "Odile's card had been propped against the tape dispenser since Saturday." — the rewrite preserves the object, its placement, and its arrival time; the drift it removes is "Saturday's pile," a referent no cold reader can decode (no pile is established in Ch11 or here), plus the non-transformative "sat propped"/"the - O. sat" verb repeat inside one paragraph (l.5's closing "- O. sat in the lower corner with no room after it" stays — that detail is exact and earns its place) — ORDER: REPLACE`
- `HOLDS — "WEEK FIVE IS MEMORY..." (l.7) — sample compared: Odile voice card, documentary form — not plain-translated per template rule; checked only against her form sample. ~46 words exceeds the 10–40 epigraph band but this is a prep note rendered in-scene per the packet, not an epigraph. "I WILL NOT HAVE AMBUSHES IN MY ROOM" and the doubled "BEFORE TUESDAY" are her imperative economy; sharp closing line cleared under her license at the gate below.`
- `HOLDS — "He had read it enough times..." (l.9) — sample compared: Theo voice card — rewrite ("He stopped seeing the instructions and only saw the word PARTNER") is worse because: it deletes "a specific person with a tote bag and opinions about edges," which imports June's own card nouns (tote, edges) into Theo's interiority and performs the packet's word-catch beat without naming a feeling.`
- `HOLDS — "The second crossed-out card said RADIATOR..." (l.11) — sample compared: Theo voice card — "bled that radiator," "coffee can for the spit-water," "his whole line of the building" are non-portable craft/tenement specifics (smallness test); the flat doubling "it was a perfectly good story, and it was a story about being handy" is Theo hearing the problem as he says it — a cleaner version loses the self-catch; "at easel height, face-out on a rack" indexes the Ch10 painting without re-diagnosing the wound (packet compliance).`
- `HOLDS — "For two days he had taken out a third card..." (l.13) — sample compared: Theo voice card — avoidance-by-errand (price hardware, answer email, move a frame) is his listed stress tell; "if he gave it to June she would have it" is the chapter's engine stated with flat dread; any rewrite adds words and subtracts custody.`
- `HOLDS — "He had texted her Sunday night..." (l.15) — documentary/text form, checked only against its own form: Theo's text is logistics with one concrete kindness (gate half down); June's lowercase "fine. bringing my own card. don't make it a thing." is her compression. Not plain-translated.`
- `HOLDS — "He had, in the intervening twenty-two hours, made it a thing." (l.17) — sample compared: comedy register §2 + Theo voice card — the highest-risk comic paragraph; rewrite ("He overprepared: two chairs, two glasses, three pens") is measurably worse: it loses the "non-interview angle," the second glass poured after he drank the first without noticing (anxiety as object fact), the dead pen "exiled," and both chair moves each justified by stated practical logic — over-competent flailing rendered exactly as the reading guide defines his comedy.`
- `HOLDS — "The buzzer went at six-twenty..." (l.19) — sample compared: June seen through Theo voice card — shoulder dip / tote cleared over the bar is body-mechanics exactness; her checking gate, lamp, stock shelf is her exits-and-edges tell shown, not captioned.`
- `HOLDS — exchange "You got the frames back..." through "I was." (l.21–27) — sample compared: both dialogue specs — Theo's deleted-drafts confession ("I typed, *Just to clarify*... deleted both") is over-explaining-when-ashamed per his card; June's "I know you weren't on it. I was." is plain-speech floor material. Followable as text.`
- `DRIFTED — original: ""Dom's shop has a form." / "Dom has several forms." He gestured at the two chairs...' (l.29–31) — binding-register version: '"Ruth needed a third set of arms and I was free." She let the tote down onto the desk chair, keeping the strap a moment longer than the bag needed. / He gestured at the two chairs, the two glasses, and watched her look at all of it.' — the rewrite preserves all blocking, the strap beat, and her errand account; the drift it removes is a forms-joke volley that inherits Ch11's retired label/forms comedy family (tic ledger: "do not let Ch12 inherit label jokes"; packet: "Avoid Ch11 forms/labels... joke families") and is the chapter's one banter-for-banter's-sake beat — ORDER: REPLACE`
- `HOLDS — exchange "Theo. It's two index cards..." through "You first." (l.33–37) — sample compared: June Dialogue Spec — "You set a table for two index cards" is a transformative echo (observation → indictment); "I see the water." is her deadpan and pays off at l.99; "You look like you'll lose consciousness otherwise" is the packet's sanctioned single pressure-lowering joke. The dangling "Odile's note said no ambushes, so." is character-specific speech roughness — held, not smoothed.`
- `HOLDS — Theo's memory delivery (l.39–43) — sample compared: Theo dialogue spec — present-tense plain telling; "paint coming off it in a long curl, like a fern," the Riccis' cat-bent screen, clothespins with no laundry: the memory's entire value is this specificity, which Ch13's painting must inherit. A plainer version guts the chapter's payload.`
- `HOLDS — "June stopped scanning the shelves. 'How many clothespins?'" (l.45) — sample compared: June voice card — her attention arriving rendered as one action plus one craft question, zero caption. Nothing to translate; anything added is worse.`
- `HOLDS — "Six or seven. I drew all of them..." (l.47) — sample compared: Theo dialogue spec — doubled ballpoint lines making the wall "vibrate slightly," "It looked more like the wall that way, not less": checked against the not-X-but-Y watch and cleared — it is a spoken perceptual claim, not a rhetorical seesaw, and it arms the Ch13 canvas.`
- `HOLDS — Key Food circular exchange (l.49–53) — sample compared: both dialogue specs — eighty-nine-cents chicken thighs and the chicken-thigh ghost are non-portable (smallness test); June writing *chicken thighs* on his card "before he had offered it" is custody beginning as action.`
- `HOLDS — "Nobody asked me to do it..." (l.55) — sample compared: Theo voice card — "I used to draw all the time" is the packet's sanctioned plainness verbatim; pens lined up "even though they were already even" is his tell; "*Theo, 9*... as she dated school photos" delivers provenance in a clause; "I don't know if it still exists" stays plain.`
- `HOLDS — "Don't find out before tomorrow..." (l.57) — sample compared: June Dialogue Spec — "It's better as the envelope" is her compression (deictic, non-portable); "I'm not going to put laundry on the line to make it friendlier" is her plain-speech floor line and her devastating-precision care move.`
- `HOLDS — "I don't want it friendlier... I want you to have that one." (l.59) — sample compared: Theo voice card allowed-plainness list, where this line appears verbatim as the chapter's sanctioned register. Gate-checked below and cleared.`
- `HOLDS — "She held his look..." (l.61) — sample compared: Theo close-third — Sonia's rubber band "gone matte at the edge" (continuity object), card slid "where it could not crease": care observed through object handling, uncaptioned.`
- `HOLDS — "Okay... Mine." / project-room setup (l.63–65) — sample compared: June Dialogue Spec — "She moved her arm a few inches, locating the interval in the air, and dropped it" is gesture instead of feeling; "The piece doesn't matter. The memory is the last day." is her compression under exposure.`
- `HOLDS — checklist paragraph (l.67–69) — sample compared: June Dialogue Spec — "*Leave the room ready.* That's the actual phrase, it was on the thing I signed" keeps the institution as quoted material fact, not villain story (card requirement); "You unscrew it, you don't tape around it" is exact process.`
- `HOLDS — primer paragraph (l.71–73) — sample compared: June Dialogue Spec — densest paragraph in the chapter: cadmium ghosting, the peach shadow at four in the afternoon, twenty minutes of dead salmon "like the paint is deciding," the formula taped inside the supply closet door ("that's how often that room got put back" — the hurt delivered as logistics). Every plain translation tested is strictly worse on density, drama, and fidelity.`
- `HOLDS — "He had four questions and three of them were repairs." (l.75) — sample compared: Theo voice card — highest-risk interiority. Rewrite tested: "He wanted to ask why the gallery hadn't hired it out, and stopped himself." Worse: it loses the taxonomy of suppressed questions, "fast enough to pass for help" (the self-catch that is the card's custody-not-solution beat), and the pivot landing mid-action — "stopped with the middle pen already in his hand... 'What white, exactly?'" Dialogue-diagnosis check: he classifies his own unasked questions, not her speech — compliant.`
- `HOLDS — notation exchange (l.77–85) — sample compared: both dialogue specs — "Primer, then two. Budget for three. You always budget for three." is habitual craft register; "*you'd never know*" + "And she was right." refuses self-pity; the outlet-plate tap with "If you're going to paint it, that's the true part" is deictic direction, not maxim; Theo's block capitals (l.85) are documentary custody.`
- `HOLDS (with one gate order, below) — "And don't make me noble about it..." (l.87) — sample compared: June Dialogue Spec — "No standing figure gazing upon the white wall" is deliberate mock-elevation; "my own genius decision" is her self-aimed joke; primer-in-hair, billed-zero-hours are material. The paragraph holds; its final sentence fails the Aphorism Gate.`
- `HOLDS — "The wall and the twenty minutes of dead salmon." / "The wall and the salmon." (l.89–91) — sample compared: both dialogue specs — two-speaker echo, transformative: his full clause, her ratifying compression — the handoff signature; "There. Now you have it." is plain custody.`
- `HOLDS — "He kept writing after she said it..." (l.93) — sample compared: Theo voice card — high-risk close. Rewrite tested: "He realized he could no longer call it just the assignment." Worse on fidelity (names the feeling the interiority discipline forbids) and loses "June's outlet plate was under his pen, and his own airshaft was under her rubber band" — the packet's performance-gets-harder beat done entirely in objects; FINE written and crossed out keeps it followable; the PARTNER look closes the l.9 plant.`
- `HOLDS — exit (l.95–99) — sample compared: June Dialogue Spec — "Thanks for the water I didn't drink" pays the prop; she checks the dark street before ducking under the bar (exits tell, shown).`
- `HOLDS — "He locked the gate behind her..." (l.101) — sample compared: Theo voice card — "one empty and one still full" carries the asymmetry; "her memory sat in his block capitals" / "riding to Greenpoint under the rubber band" are positional, not agency — Ch08's spent personification cap is respected.`
- `HOLDS — lock-up paragraph (l.103) — sample compared: Theo voice card — tearing the discards "because anything he kept in that drawer he eventually used" is self-knowledge as logistics; the unlabeled panel behind the backing boards is touched without June asking (thread protected); "dark in the right order" cleared at the gate below.`
- `HOLDS — train close (l.105) — sample compared: Theo voice card — narration absorbs June's process ("the orange had to go gray before it went away") as the custody payoff; ends on action (card behind keys, rides home) per the no-profundity-close rule.`

## Aphorism Gate (zero tolerance)

- `APHORISM-GATE — "Paint the wall. The wall's the thing." (l.87) — the second sentence is a portable maxim: epigraph-shaped, quotable with zero context, and it rides a "the play's the thing" echo. June is not licensed for high-density memorable lines (style_and_voice global rules: Odile only), and the line caps an anti-noble speech with exactly the quotability the speech refuses — ORDER: de-quotablize — replace with "Paint the wall. Not me at the wall." (keeps her imperative and the anti-noble point; the l.89–91 "wall and the salmon" exchange still tracks unchanged)`

Candidates checked and cleared, work shown:
- `"I want you to have that one."` — sanctioned verbatim in the chapter packet's Theo allowed-plainness list; deictic ("that one"), unquotable out of context. PASSES.
- `"GREEN FIRST. THE WHITE HAS TO COVER SOMETHING."` — **not in the revised text** (grep-verified). The current line is "GREEN FIRST. ORANGE INTERVAL RIGHT SIDE. DEAD SALMON BEFORE WHITE." — sequence notation, not a maxim. PASSES; no order.
- `"A memory with the pit taken out"` — **absent from the revised text** (grep-verified). No order.
- `"It never fully runs clear."` (l.73) — strongest surviving candidate: gnomic present with metaphor potential. Passes because the "it" is the slop-sink water two clauses back, the register matches her habitual-craft lines ("You always budget for three"), and she immediately deflates it ("I gave it ten more minutes and packed the tray"). Watch order for Ch13: no character may repeat it as a motto.
- `"IF IT WOULD FIT IN A GREETING CARD, CHOOSE AGAIN."` (l.7) — Odile, the one licensed aphorist. PASSES under license.
- `"It's better as the envelope." / "next person walks into nothing" / "that's the true part" / "the room went dark in the right order"` — all deictic or mid-flow, none survives extraction. PASS.

## Verbatim-Echo Gate (counts grep-verified)

- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "wall" ×19 — two distinct referents (Theo's airshaft brick wall / June's erased gallery wall), the chapter's designed pairing; all referential noun uses, no repeated phrase template once the l.87 gate order lands; the card licenses wall-erasure process as June's memory ("concrete and local") — PASSES with the gate order applied`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "card" ×24 — functional prop noun in an index-card chapter; no sentence-to-sentence card-phrase repeats; circumlocution would be worse — PASSES; density watch flagged for Ch13, which inherits both cards`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "memory" ×7 — subject term; closest pair "her memory sat... His own memory was gone" (l.101) is a built antithesis (the custody swap), transformative — PASSES`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "white" ×8 — pigment/process exactness (gallery white, Decorator's White ×2, coats); June's card mandates exact craft nouns — PASSES`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "whole" ×3 — three distinct idioms; no "That's the whole ___" template, so the Ch11 repair holds — PASSES`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "partner" ×3 — card text (l.7), word-catch (l.9), re-look (l.93): the packet's step-8 device, load-bearing by design under flag:card-names-tension — PASSES as sanctioned motif`
- `VERBATIM-ECHO — "water" ×7 — comedy prop with varied setup/payoff (poured twice, "There's also water."/"I see the water.", "the water I didn't drink", one empty one full) plus literal spit-water/slop-sink; each recurrence transforms — PASSES`
- Strongest residual echo considered: `"sat"` ×2 inside the l.5 paragraph ("sat propped" / "the - O. sat"), non-transformative positional repeat — folded into DRIFT order 1, no separate order.
- `"made it a thing"` (l.17) reusing June's text (l.15): her imperative becomes his comic self-conviction — transformative, PASSES. `"friendlier"` across l.57/59: her refusal becomes his want — transformative, PASSES. l.105 narration reusing "orange goes gray before it goes away": tense-shifted absorption into Theo's reasoning — the custody payoff itself — PASSES.

## Cross-checks

Plain-speech floor met by both principals (June l.57, Theo l.59). No dialogue diagnosis found (l.75 self-classification is compliant). No hands import from Ch10 (gate: 2 literal hits). Mechanical gate: 0 open findings; 9 trailing-participle WATCH hits noted for the tics tracker, no register order. No LOCKED text declared.

## Chapter verdict

`DRIFT-FOUND` — 3 orders: REPLACE l.5 ("Saturday's pile" / sat-sat repeat), REPLACE l.29–31 (retired Ch11 forms-joke inheritance), de-quotablize l.87 ("The wall's the thing." → "Not me at the wall."). Everything else holds at binding register, including the chapter's riskiest paragraphs (l.17, l.73, l.75, l.93), whose plain translations all tested measurably worse.
