# Voice Check — Chapters 11–15

Scope: `chapter_11.md`–`chapter_15.md` against `output/style_and_voice.md`, READING_GUIDE §2/§4/§6/§8, `output/tics.md` carried caps, and the chapter packets for 11–15. Calibration sample: chapter 07, lines 56–70 (the established anchor, re-read verbatim; untouched, still the standard). Stance: skeptical editor; the target failure is polished-but-dead.

**Calibration paragraph (step 1).** The sample's rhythm signature: long sentences that accumulate craft fact in working order ("repainting the near cheek with ochre and white to blur him toward the safe man she'd assigned herself, and the cheek went to mud"), then stop on short verdicts that are *factual and falsifiable*, never thetic — "Both were true." / "Quality was not the problem. The problem was that every failed repair had made him more himself." Self-correction runs mid-flow ("Not the scarf. Anyone could do a black scarf. The knot."), and the correction always lands on a more specific noun, not on a smaller fragment of the same noun. Diction temperature is cool-exact (gouache lifts, plumb, raw gesso); feeling is carried entirely by technical observation; the one recognitional simile ("the way you recognize your own voice played back") is the passage's single spent flourish. Stop pattern: long–long–short, with the short sentence doing information, not applause.

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## 1. Rhythm mismatches

Findings:

- "The line that interested her was *true up the Vandercook.* Not the wall. The press." (ch15, line 69) — fragment-stamp pivot at the chapter's thesis point. The sample earns its pivots with content in both halves ("Quality was not the problem. The problem was that every failed repair had made him more himself."); here the second and third fragments restate the first with applause. This is also the exact spot `tics.md` flags as the open "offer-choice thesis risk: pending" — the press-vs-wall insight is then *shown again*, properly, in the next paragraph ("The version that kept returning put her at the press with a rag. Behind her, the wall stayed clean and empty under the raking light."), which makes the fragments redundant as well as off-rhythm.
- Theo cold-open chassis, now 5-for-5 (ch12, line 3: alone at the front desk in the dark, lamp, index cards, self-audit "the whole thing had been easy"; ch14, line 3: alone with the pickup sheet, catching his own date error three times). Voice Check 06–10 ruled this template spent after ch06/08/10 and ordered the next Theo chapter to open "in company, mid-dialogue, or off-task." Both packets for 12 and 14 *ordered* solitary-clerical openings (ch12 packet line 92; ch14 packet line 211), so the drafts complied with their cards — but the span-level fact stands: every Theo chapter in the book opens with Theo alone in the gallery holding a clerical object. The content varies; the chassis does not. This is a packet-level contradiction the audit must log, with one cheap repair available (ch14; see order 8).

Checked and surviving: ch14's closing pull-back, "nine gray spines of Odile Marchetti leaving the building under the arm of June Park, and the flyer with the two of them on it queued up at a print shop somewhere in Queens, forty copies, eighty-pound matte" (ch14, line 159) — long lyric accumulation unusual for Theo, but every clause is manifest-item-shaped (counts, weights, locations), which is his idiom doing the yearning. Survives against the sample's accumulation-then-stop pattern. Also ch11's close, "came out onto a street full of other people's errands, carrying nothing" (line 151): coin-adjacent, but it cashes the chapter's literal carrying spine.

## 2. Banned phrases

Verbatim sweep against READING_GUIDE §6 and the tics watch list, zero-hit entries reported as checked:

- "load-bearing"/"loadbearing"/"load bearing": **0** (ch15's "load-in," line 87, is the legitimate install term, distinct string).
- breath-catching and variants: **0**. Stomach/chest flips, flutters, pooling, electricity: **0** (ch15 line 3 "cradled against her chest" is literal cargo).
- "something shifted" / "the air changed" / unspecified tension: **0** (ch13 line 157 "Priya shifted the clean paper towel" is a physical object move).
- smirk: **0**. chuckle: **0**. "a beat": **0**.
- beauty-unawareness framing, makeover logic, eavesdrop misunderstanding: **0**.
- postcard NYC / "only in New York" / skyline: **0** (Orchard Street is rendered at parked-van width, ch11 line 9 — the opposite of postcard).
- "golden hour": **0**. Weather-as-feeling: **0** (radiator ticking, ch15 line 83, is literal apartment sound). Rain/snow/umbrella: **0**.
- Standalone "Oh.": **0** — the confession's reservation remains unspent.
- Mirror epiphany / watching themselves feel: nearest candidate adjudicated — "June's eyes in it were angled toward him, not the camera, and they were not surprised. That was the trouble with it." (ch15, line 101). June reading her own feeling off her own image is structurally mirror-adjacent, but the trouble named is *publication* (forty copies, hangs she'll never check), not self-discovery — the reader already knows the feeling; the photo only makes it public. Survives, by less margin than anything else in this section.
- One-word reaction paragraphs: **1 hit.** `"Mm."` standing as a complete paragraph (ch13, line 160, Priya, after June's "Thank you"). The §6 ban covers one-word reaction paragraphs generally; the other two "Mm." instances in the span (ch11 line 135, ch14 line 129) continue into action within the paragraph and are legal — but three "Mm." across three chapters is also a forming cohort-wide tic (see ask 5).
- Dialogue diagnosis (zero tolerance): **0 violations** — full adjudication under Focused Checks below.

## 3. AI-sounding constructions

Findings:

- "Not the wall. The press." (ch15, line 69) — not-X-but-Y scaffold compressed to fragments; doubled with ask 1; one order covers both.
- "It had been unopened since the pickup, which was not yet an accomplishment." (ch15, line 11) — evaluative ", which" verdict-caption in narration. This family was driven to a target state in Voice Check 06–10, ch13 was granted exactly one licensed survivor ("which was the most obvious thing she had done all night," ch13 line 79), and the tracker's standing instruction is zero new instances. Ch15 adds one. The joke is June-flavored, which is why it got through; the construction is still the banned chassis (fact, comma, narrator's rating of the fact).

Checked and surviving:

- "So they had a size. What they did not have was anything else." (ch14, line 63) — balanced antithesis, the closest call in the span. Survives because the second half is literally true and immediately costed (the label problem follows from it), where an AI seesaw would be ornamental. Watch the family; do not add another.
- "both of which were real, neither of which had taken until eight-forty" (ch15, line 13) — parallel which-pair, but information-bearing: the timestamps carry the judgment (she stalled), narration rates nothing. Survives.
- "It was the nicest thing about him." (ch11, line 51) — short verdict coin of the family Voice Check 06–10 thinned; survives because it characterizes Dom through a checkable behavior (wanting nothing further) and lands the shop's whole comic premise.
- "He stopped interpreting it after midnight." (ch14, line 9) — about a thumbs-up emoji, comic, self-aimed; not a hedged-reaction template.
- Thesis closers: both June chapter-closers end on object/action ("carrying nothing," ch11 line 151; "left the deadline pinned under the jar she hadn't opened," ch15 line 119) — compliant.

## 4. Anachronistic language

CLEAN — checked period/setting register across all five: frame-shop trade vocabulary (miter, spline, regilding, rider, kraft), letterpress specifics (Vandercook gripper bar, etching-press bearing knock), rental economics (forty-times-rent, guarantor at eighty, occupant status, net-45, W-2), and the contemporary-NYC texture (Key Food circular, J train, Annandale sister). Strongest counter-candidate: "Chicken thighs… Eighty-nine cents a pound" (ch12, line 51) — for Theo at nine this prices to the late nineties, which is plausible for sale-priced thighs in a circular; survives. "Decorator's White. Benjamin Moore. Flat." (ch12, line 79) is verifiably real product language and exactly the register the sample anchors.

## 5. Repetitive metaphors

Findings (span-level counts — this is the check that per-chapter audits cannot see):

- **Object/word-as-agent figures: 4 across the span.** "only the word PARTNER, sitting there in pencil like it had always meant a specific person with a tote bag and opinions about edges" (ch12, line 9); "both frowning as if the paper had taken a position" (ch13, line 107); "read it again as if it might have updated overnight" (ch14, line 43); "in case the rest of the answer came from the same pen" (ch15, line 115). Each is individually defensible and was individually cleared; together they are the Ch08 secret-object-personification family wearing a new coat — paper goods granted intent roughly once per chapter. Cap at two for the span: keep ch12 (the chapter's hinge) and ch15 (June's own joke at her own ritual); cut the middle two (orders 5).
- **Squaring/straightening convergence: ~6, cross-POV.** June "squared the stack with the toe of her boot until all the edges agreed" (ch11, line 143); Theo lines up already-even pens (ch12, line 55); Theo "squared the top catalog with the others" (ch14, line 109) and "squared the stack, eased the paper slip down flush" (ch14, line 141); June "squared the stack with two fingers until the gray edges sat flush" (ch15, line 7). The gesture is Theo's card ("straightens labels"); June's card gives her packing/sorting/brush-cleaning. Two June instances built on the same "squared the stack… until edges [agreed/sat flush]" template as Theo's erodes precisely the differentiation the blind test protects. Ch11's boot-toe version is June-inflected and can stand; ch15's two-finger version is Theo's move in her hands (order 6).
- **Paired echo confirmations: ~9, with three consecutive identical partings.** "Cargo's allowed an opinion about light." / "Cargo just gave it." (ch11, lines 117–119, logged volley); "Tuesday." / "Tuesday, June" (ch11, 135–137); "The wall and the twenty minutes of dead salmon." / "The wall and the salmon." (ch12, 89–91); "Seven?" / "Seven." (ch12, 95–97); "Tomorrow," / "Tomorrow," (ch13, 167–169); "One panel," / "One panel. One ground." (ch13, 173–175); "The wash held." / "It held." (ch14, 23–24); "Then it worked." / "It worked." (ch14, 41–43, both flagged at ceiling by Plain Translation); the coat-counts echo (ch15, 103–105, which survives individually because June's reply adds content: "Somebody marked their position and left."). The echoed word has become the book's default beat-closer, and chapters 11, 13, and 14 all *end their partings* on the echoed time-word. One varied parting breaks the metronome (order 4).
- **"Mm." × 3** (ch11 line 135, ch13 line 160, ch14 line 129) — distributed across Ruth, Priya, and June, i.e., it is becoming the cohort's universal noise rather than anyone's owned one. The bare-paragraph instance is already a defect under ask 2; fixing it thins the run to two.

Checked and surviving: "raking light" twice (ch11 line 3 "rake the light across it"; ch15 line 71) — a real painter's term, both uses literal, but log it: no third use soon. "laughed once" verbatim twice (ch12 line 53, ch12's "low" variant; ch14 line 47) — June's established laugh-economy, identical phrasing; vary at next touch, no order. The "returned column blank" plant (ch14 line 163 → ch15 line 5) is deliberate cross-POV continuity of the unreturned-catalogs object, not a tic. "the way a person could stand too far back and call the room finished" (ch13, line 67) — 1/1, at the logged cap, the span's only recognitional instance: compliant.

## 6. Sentence length problems

Findings:

- ch15, lines 5–11: the apartment-measurement catalog ("The shelf… held her own books at a depth of eight inches; the catalogs were ten and a half. The kitchen table measured thirty inches by forty… The top of the dresser was twelve inches deep…") followed immediately by "Then she made the call station… The call station looked like this:" and another itemized list. Two consecutive inventory-frame passages of same-shape declarative measurements. Individually comic; together they run Theo's interiority rhythm (inventory of needs) in June's chapter for nearly a page. The sample's June paragraph is procedure with *verdicts breaking it* ("gouache lifts when you scrub; she knew better and had done it anyway") — the lift here would come from cutting the presentational announce "The call station looked like this:" and letting the objects accumulate without a frame (order 7). The dimension catalog itself survives once the frame sentence goes; the punch-list fragments at line 83 are the logged, intended device and are fine.

Checked and surviving: the kiss sequence (ch13, lines 127–133) compresses exactly when scene pressure rises — short sentences, mechanics, the locked elbow — and matches the sample's stop pattern under load. Ch12's long June paint-back monologue is the logged single-use license and reads as the memory handoff it is. Trailing-participle counts (ch12 at 9 is the span high) stay below shape-monotony.

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## Focused checks (ordered by the run prompt)

**Blind-POV (June 11/13/15 vs. Theo 12/14): PASSES, with one convergence warning.** Names removed, ch11/13 are unmistakably June — optical verdicts ("A mixed gray could be warm and cool at once. She knew that from paint; she disliked meeting it on a half-sheet at a frame shop," ch11 line 69; the entire clothespin/chicken-thigh-ghost sequence, ch13 lines 45–57) — and ch12/14 are unmistakably Theo — repair-cataloguing interiority ("He had four questions and three of them were repairs," ch12 line 75; "tried to do the thing he could always do: inventory. Nine catalogs. Which years? 1994. 1996. 1998. The faded top edge. Then nothing," ch14 line 161, where the inventory *failing* is the chapter's payoff). Ch15 is the weak panel: the call station, the dimension catalog, and the punch-list put Theo's scaffolding under June's diction for long stretches; what saves it is diction ("established by scribble," "like a reference swatch," "facing them at the wall had been melodramatic and the slip was just paper") plus on-card stress behavior (her card licenses sorting/arranging under stress). Orders 6–7 pull ch15 back from the line; without them the next June-under-pressure chapter inherits a converged voice.

**Repair-era phrase families:** wall/room maxims — 0 in narration (ch13's "Empty rooms flatter badly," line 105, is Odile's, inside her logged quotability count of 4). Work-as-competence captions — 3, all functional (ch11 line 151 job-site look; ch12 line 75 repairs count; ch14 line 161 failed inventory): no order, no headroom. Note/receipt/label personification — 4, finding under ask 5. "the way a person" — 1, at cap, licensed. Paired echoes — ~9, finding under ask 5. Evaluative ", which" — 1 new instance, finding under ask 3.

**Nia and Asha (ch15): DISTINCT, from June and from each other.** Nia: full-clause institutional speech with disclosure built in — "If the city line item holds, the six months becomes a year and the year becomes a job. If it doesn't, you'll have six months of running a building on your resume and a detailed reference from me" (line 53) — warmth as fairness. Asha: text-register hustle shorthand, dropped question marks — "Invoice Jan, see it in Mar. You in or do I give your slot to Dario" (line 87) — warmth as leads ("you'd love it, it's terrible"). June against both: compressed mechanical diagnosis — "That's a spring or it's twenty years of grease where grease shouldn't be. Either way it's an afternoon." (line 35). Watch only: Nia lands two polished placements in one call ("This is why I called you and not the other names on my list," line 33; "I'm offering you work, June, not a rescue," line 57 — a near-twin of her card line). Card-sanctioned, Dialogue-Doctor-cleared, and at ceiling: a third Nia scene at this polish becomes a finding.

**Dialogue-diagnosis zero tolerance: OBEYED, 0 violations.** The three strongest counter-candidates, each adjudicated: "she'd meant her answer as a dodge, and Ruth had matched it with twenty years of her own" (ch11, line 149) — June reports her own *intent* and restates Ruth's literal content ("That was my answer for about twenty years"); no one's phrasing is rated. "That was true in the same limited way *boss* had once been true." (ch13, line 191) — truth-status checking of the cover story against fact, the mode licensed by the standing ch09 ruling. "She read it twice and answered the part that was a fact" (ch15, line 105) — classifies content, then shows perceptiveness by what she *does* (answers it), which is exactly the rule's prescribed alternative. Odile's "Better." / "Than when you liked it." (ch13, lines 37–41) targets the work, never the sentence.

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**VOICE SCORE: 7.5/10** — The span is alive: both POVs pass the blind test on diction, every banned romance-default family sweeps to zero, the figuration is disciplined, and the strongest pages (the ch12 handoff, the ch13 clothespin painting, ch14's failed inventory) are this book and no other's. The score is held under 8 by accumulation, not by any dead page: one banned-list hit (the bare "Mm." paragraph, ch13:160), one regression of a family already ordered to zero (the evaluative ", which," ch15:11), a not-X-but-Y fragment stamp sitting on the span's single most thesis-sensitive moment (ch15:69, the still-open offer-choice risk), the echo-confirmation closer running at roughly nine instances with three consecutive chapters parting on the same echoed time-word, the object-as-agent figure recurring once per chapter, and ch15's structural drift toward Theo's inventory rhythm. Each alone is a watch note; together they are drift.

**POLISHED-BUT-DEAD ZONES: NONE.** Nearest call: "She could see the back room at eight-fifteen. Fluorescents off except the one bank over the sink. The version that kept returning put her at the press with a rag. Behind her, the wall stayed clean and empty under the raking light." (ch15, lines 71–72) — in isolation this vision-paragraph could appear in a competent literary novel about anyone's job offer. It survives against the sample ("she recognized the posture the way you recognize your own voice played back: wrong, and more yours than the one in your head") because the damning specificity is June's own: the rag is in *her* hand and the wall is clean by *her* choice — the paragraph is the chapter's argument, provided the fragment-stamp above it (order 1) stops pre-announcing it.

**REVISION ORDERS:**

1. ch15, line 69: delete "Not the wall. The press." — keep "The line that interested her was *true up the Vandercook.*" and let the back-room vision paragraph (lines 71–72) carry the realization unannounced. Failure type: not-X-but-Y fragment stamp / pre-solved thesis (the open `tics.md` offer-choice risk). Fix direction: the sample's pivot pattern — full clause, then show; no applause fragments.
2. ch15, line 11: cut ", which was not yet an accomplishment" — end the sentence at "since the pickup." Failure type: evaluative ", which" caption; family ordered to zero new instances after ch13's licensed survivor (ch13:79). Fix direction: the fact (unopened, on the sill, one narrow strip) already carries the judgment.
3. ch13, line 160: eliminate the bare `"Mm."` paragraph — attach Priya's exit action in the same paragraph (e.g., `"Mm." Priya was already at the sink.` shaped from existing scene matter at line 157). Failure type: one-word reaction paragraph, READING_GUIDE §6. Fix direction: per the legal instances at ch11:135 and ch14:129, the syllable may stand only inside an action paragraph.
4. ch14, lines 151–157: vary the parting so it does not close on the "Tuesday."/"Tuesday." echo — give Theo's reply its logistics without the echoed head-word (e.g., open his line at "I'll have the panel cut and the chairs counted."). Failure type: paired echo confirmation as default beat-closer; third consecutive chapter-parting on an echoed time-word (after ch11:135–137 and ch13:167–169, both of which stay — ch11 establishes the cohort idiom, ch13's "Tomorrow" carries the photo decision). Fix direction: the sample closes exchanges on new fact ("The feet are accurate… Accurate is fine."), not on the returned word.
5. Object-as-agent family, trim 4 → 2: (a) ch13, line 107 — replace "both frowning as if the paper had taken a position" with the observed action only ("both frowning at it" or the receipt/thumbnail facts); (b) ch14, line 43 — cut "as if it might have updated overnight," keep "read it again." Keep ch12:9 (PARTNER, the chapter's hinge) and ch15:115 (the pen, June mocking her own ritual). Failure type: repetitive metaphor — Ch08's personification family rebuilt at one instance per chapter. Fix direction: deliberately literal replacements, per the Voice Check 06–10 repair precedent.
6. ch15, line 7: recast "squared the stack with two fingers until the gray edges sat flush" away from the squared-stack template June already used at ch11:143 ("until all the edges agreed") and Theo uses twice in ch14 (lines 109, 141) — give the moment a June-owned move (sorting order, the slip volume to the bottom is already hers) and keep the flush-edges *fact* if needed without the curated gesture. Failure type: cross-POV gesture convergence threatening the blind-POV test. Fix direction: voice card — June packs and sorts; Theo straightens and squares.
7. ch15, line 9: cut the presentational frame "The call station looked like this:" and let the objects accumulate as sentences (the colon-inventory is Theo/Ben chassis). Optionally absorb "Then she made the call station, because she had run out of furniture to rearrange" into the first object sentence — the "ran out of furniture" joke is June's and should survive. Failure type: interiority-rhythm convergence (inventory frame in June's POV). Fix direction: sample's June — procedure interrupted by verdicts, never announced as a list.
8. ch14, lines 3–15: re-open the chapter at the group-thread arrival (the phone going off, Mara's 8:14 photo — other voices on the page immediately) and relocate the date-error and panel-check beats after it. Failure type: Theo solitary-clerical cold-open chassis, 5-for-5 across his chapters despite the post-Ch10 "in company, mid-dialogue, or off-task" order; the ch12 and ch14 packets sanctioned the repeats, so also log the contradiction upstream — the Ch16 packet must carry a binding in-company opening for Theo. Fix direction: one Theo chapter in this span must enter through other people; ch14 is the cheap one (the thread is already sitting at line 11, and the date-error beat loses nothing by coming second).

**OVERALL: VOICE-DRIFT (8 findings)**

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Note for the wrapper/orchestrator (outside the audit format): the protocol's output path for this stage is `output/critiques/claude/voice_check_15.md`. Per the process instruction I have not written the file; the text above is the complete audit. Two non-blocking tracker corrections worth a row when `tics.md` is next touched: "raking light" now ×2 (ch11:3, ch15:71, both literal — no third soon), and "laughed once" verbatim ×2 (ch12:53, ch14:47).
