PLAIN-EVENT SUMMARY:
June and Asha, freelance installers, spend a workday (the Thursday after Week 3 — "Tuesday was five days off") repairing and repainting the project-room walls of a small grant-funded art space run by Marisol, after the deinstall of Marta Oduya's ceramic-shelf show. The space itself is never named, but its kind is fully established (hollow walls, project room, loading dock, invoices paid in halves when the grant check clears). The schedule: crate pickup at 2:00, walk-through with the incoming artist at 4:00. June patches twenty-two toggle holes, screw holes, a peel, and a dolly scuff with five-minute setting compound. Raking light from the east window shows her the wall has yellowed past its labeled "gallery white"; her test swatch reads a step cooler than the aged wall, so she talks Asha into forty minutes to spot-prime the patches with shellac and repaint the whole wall face corner-to-corner so no seam shows. While the shellac dries, June brushes legitimate color-test squares onto a foamcore scrap, then makes a fourth, functionless mark — a long pulled value run with an edge she admires — her first unprompted act of making outside class, which she attributes to "three Tuesdays of being handed charcoal and told to look." She thinks of her portrait of Theo public on the rack at Marchetti Rooms while his of her is "in a folder somewhere," location unasked. Asha sees the scrap, hears June's cover ("The middle square's the match"), and goes to pad the elevator; the narration says "Asha had seen the wrong square" [UNCLEAR: what "the wrong square" refers to — the giveaway mark is a pulled run, not a square; the reader must guess that "wrong square" means the run]. At 12:40 June reads two texts from Nia Torres, an art-school peer: a six-month funded programs-and-fabrication role at a printshop on Tasker in Philadelphia, starting January 1 — keys, W-2 paycheck, after-hours studio access — call this week before it posts. Over a bucket lunch June tells Asha; Asha says call before Friday, then offers a New York lead: Dana is giving up her spot on a shared six-person floor in Ridgewood at the end of January, high hundreds a month, rent on the first, twenty-four-hour access [UNCLEAR: whether Dana's spot is a workspace or a place to live — "spot," "rent on the first," and June's "My sublet's up in January either way" two lines earlier support a housing reading; "twenty-four-hour access" and "a photo of whatever you keep in a corner" support a studio reading]. June registers that staying and leaving both now have concrete forms — "two shapes on the table," the New York shape including "six weeks of armory wages" [UNCLEAR: what armory wages are — no armory job has been mentioned anywhere in the chapter or the book at this point; the reader cannot attach the phrase to anything]. The truck arrives twelve minutes late; the crates ship; the second coat goes on; at the 4:05 walk-through the incoming artist crosses the repainted wall without noticing it and instead complains that the untouched north wall "reads cold"; Marisol says it's the same paint; June, who knows the north wall is lit secondhand, keeps the explanation to herself. Packing out, June rescues the foamcore scrap from the trash and puts it in her tote with the rolled drawings and Mara's scarf [UNCLEAR: the scrap's physical contents — made as three squares plus one run at lines 41–43, described at pack-out as "four white squares and the long pulled veil" at line 123]. At the loading door Asha texts June Dana's contact and Kessler's — Kessler "has the armory build-out in January," six weeks, pays late but real — and tells her to call Nia either way. June clocks out at 4:47, opens Nia's thread, types nothing, backs out, and saves both contacts ("two cities, alphabetized together as if that settled anything"). She decides nothing — checked deliberately against the chapter's outcome rule: "You'd actually go?" / "I don't know" (lines 85–87) and the typed-nothing beat (line 131) keep leaving and staying symmetrically open. She walks to the train with the scrap's corner sticking out of the tote and does not push it down.

INVENTORY:
- "toggle holes / toggle bolts" — introduced: line 13 — first plot weight: lines 17–31 (the patch count drives the schedule and the flash argument) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("every bracket on toggle bolts because the walls here were hollow as a drum")
- "setting compound, the five-minute kind" — introduced: line 17 — first plot weight: same paragraph — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("lightweight spackle would shrink into holes this size and show a dimple by spring")
- "raking light" — introduced: line 19 — first plot weight: line 19 (triggers the color-drift discovery and the whole-wall decision) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("It was how you found the flaws; it was the whole reason you checked a wall at an angle instead of straight on")
- "spot-prime / feather / flash" — introduced: lines 29–31 — first plot weight: the schedule negotiation, lines 31–37 — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("It'll flash. Twenty-two patches, it'll look like the wall has a rash" glosses flash by consequence; feathering's stakes arrive in "New white meets old white at the corner. Anywhere else, people see the seam")
- "wet edge / W-pattern" — introduced: line 59 — first plot weight: none beyond texture — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("keep the wet edge moving so the wall dries as one thing instead of a map of where you stopped")
- "crate pickup / walk-through / invoice halves / clock-out" — introduced: line 13 — first plot weight: line 13 (the day's whole deadline structure) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("Crate pickup at two. Walk-through at four, the incoming artist plus Marisol, who ran the space on a budget that paid small invoices in halves when the grant check cleared")
- "Tasker printshop (Philadelphia)" — introduced: line 65 — first plot weight: lines 71 and 99 (the leaving option) — orientation: SUFFICIENT (Nia's text states the kind and the terms plainly — "Programs + fabrication role… Keys, real paycheck, W-2, studio access after hours" — and the city is fixed by "Philadelphia, where her share of a place would cost less" and June's own "a job in Philadelphia," before "a set of keys on Tasker Street" recurs at line 99)
- "Ridgewood spot (Dana's)" — introduced: line 89 — first plot weight: line 99 (half of the staying option) — orientation: INSUFFICIENT (the reader cannot determine whether it is a workspace or housing; "spot," "rent on the first," "heat is weird," and the priming of June's "My sublet's up in January either way" all read as a room to live in, while only "twenty-four-hour access" and "whatever you keep in a corner" point at a studio — and June's January problem as stated is housing, so the misreading builds the wrong New York package)
- "armory build-out (Kessler's)" — first plot weight: line 99 ("six weeks of armory wages on one side") — introduced: line 125 — orientation: INSUFFICIENT (the weight precedes the introduction by twenty-six lines; at line 99 a first-time reader has never heard of any armory, any Kessler, or any January install; the line-125 orientation — "Six weeks if you can show up with a level. Pays late. Pays real" — would be sufficient if it came first)
- "foamcore scrap / value run" — introduced: lines 41–43 — first plot weight: lines 57, 123, 133 (June's kept private object) — orientation: SUFFICIENT as to kind ("let the white thin out over the gray of the board until it went from solid to veil to nothing, a value run, paint doing the one trick paint does that drywall never asks of it") — but its physical inventory self-contradicts; see Confusion Map 3
- "timekeeping app" — introduced: line 131 — first plot weight: line 131 — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("4:47, seven billable hours, one line item, patch/prime/paint")
- Checked and passed without finding: "Parallel on Banker Street / the photo lab in Bushwick / the framer" (line 15 — oriented as June's client list by "She had built a modest freelance life on liking it"); the unnamed venue itself (its name is never asked to carry weight; the kind of institution is concrete throughout); "the cardboard tube" (line 17 — definite article on first appearance, but resolved by line 123, "the cardboard tube with the rolled drawings," and backed by the rolled-drawings object the reader has carried since Week 1)

CONFUSION MAP:
- "six weeks of armory wages on one side" (line 99) — reader loses: what the New York option consists of, at the exact sentence that declares the chapter's stakes ("two shapes on the table") — opacity: ACCIDENTAL. Nothing is served by withholding: the armory is introduced as ordinary news at line 125, where Asha explains it to June as though June hadn't heard of it — confirming line 99 is a sequencing slip, not a deliberate withhold.
- "Dana's giving up her spot in Ridgewood end of January. Shared floor, six people… Rent on the first" (lines 89–97) — reader loses: whether June is being offered a place to paint or a place to live — opacity: ACCIDENTAL. The housing reading is actively primed by "My sublet's up in January either way" (line 87) two lines earlier; nothing in the passage names the spot a studio. The reading guide assigns no opacity to the material paths; its declared withholds are the nephew secret, Odile's knowledge, and the hidden portrait — not this.
- "Three squares. Anyone would do three squares. / Nobody needed the fourth" (lines 41–43) vs. "Asha had seen the wrong square" (line 57) vs. "four white squares and the long pulled veil" (line 123) — reader loses: the physical inventory of the chapter's most important object — the fourth mark is made as a pulled run, then called a "square," then the pack-out description adds a fourth square that was never painted on the page — opacity: ACCIDENTAL.
- "his of her in a folder somewhere being nothing to nobody, location unasked" (line 45) — reader loses: where Theo's study is and what it shows — opacity: ASSIGNED (later payoff — this is the faced-to-wall portrait thread; Chapter 08 fixed June's knowledge at exactly "off the rack, in a folder," and "location unasked" marks the not-knowing as June's own act, evidence the book is withholding on purpose).
- "two cities, alphabetized together as if that settled anything" (line 131) — reader loses: nothing about events; June's decision is withheld — opacity: ASSIGNED (suspense — the chapter card's outcome rule is "no decision yet," and the prose flags its own non-settlement: "neither one was a fantasy and neither one was nothing," line 99).

CHARACTER CLARITY:
- Asha (first appearance in the book): PLACEABLE ("Asha was at the far end of the project room with the last of the ceramic shelves, sheeting them in poly, bubble side out" — coworker on this job from her first beat; later a working painter: "I've said yes to stable things that ate my painting time")
- Nia Torres (first appearance, text-only): PLACEABLE ("Someone I went to school with says there's a job in Philadelphia" plus the March thread "that ended with Nia's good luck w the install" — old school peer, professional channel)
- Marta Oduya (first appearance, absent): PLACEABLE ("The outgoing show had been Marta Oduya's shelf pieces: glazed stoneware on steel brackets")
- Marisol (first appearance): PLACEABLE ("Marisol, who ran the space on a budget that paid small invoices in halves when the grant check cleared")
- Dana (first appearance, mentioned only): PLACEABLE ("Dana's giving up her spot in Ridgewood end of January" — a person in Asha's network whose spot June could inherit; her unstated relation to Asha carries no weight here; what the spot is, is the problem, and is logged against the institution at Confusion Map 2)
- Kessler (first appearance, mentioned only): PLACEABLE ("Kessler has the armory build-out in January… Tell her I sent you before Friday" — the woman hiring for the January install; the term she is attached to is the finding, not her placement)
- Theo (reappearing by reference): PLACEABLE ("her portrait of Theo riding it in public with his name on the back" — the Week 3 rack callback)
- Mara (reappearing by reference): PLACEABLE ("Mara's scarf" — the standing loan object since Week 1)
- Pair Mara / Marta Oduya / Marisol (three new-or-active M-names in one chapter): UN-CONFUSABLE (Marta never appears without surname or show context — "Marta Oduya's shelf pieces," "Oduya's shelves"; Marisol is bound to the space's budget and the 4:05 walk-through; Mara exists in this chapter only as "Mara's scarf"; their roles never share a scene. This was the closest call — a skimming reader can start to misread "Marta" as "Mara" at line 13, but the surname and the stoneware context correct it within the clause.)
- Pair Dana / Kessler (two new leads in Asha's network, both January): UN-CONFUSABLE (the chapter disambiguates them itself in June's contact saves — "Dana - Ridgewood (Asha)" and "Kessler - armory Jan," line 131 — space lead versus work lead)
- Pair Nia / Asha (two practical artist-peers advising June the same day): UN-CONFUSABLE (different cities and different channels — texts versus on-site — and Asha keeps Nia distinct in her own mouth: "call your printshop friend either way," line 129)
- Pair June's foamcore scrap / Theo's hidden study (two private hidden artworks now live in the book): UN-CONFUSABLE (the scrap is made on-page from job materials and travels in June's tote; the study is invoked in the same paragraph only as "his of her in a folder somewhere"; June's face-down move at line 57 rhymes with Theo's faced-to-wall hiding deliberately, but no reading makes them the same object)

COMPLEXITY CHECKS:
1. Scene action / orientation / focalizer / consequence on first read: HOLDS — the workday is fully navigable (the deadline structure is stated outright at line 13; every move on the wall is glossed by its purpose; the focalizer is unbrokenly June). Strongest counter-candidate checked: "the cardboard tube she had not bothered to take out since Tuesday" (line 17) drops a definite-article object the chapter hasn't shown, but line 123 names its contents and prior-chapter continuity backs it. The one consequence that is not available on first read is ruled under check 2.
2. New terms plain before carrying plot weight: FAILS — "six weeks of armory wages on one side" (line 99): the armory carries half the staying option twenty-six lines before it is introduced (line 125); and "Dana's giving up her spot in Ridgewood" (line 89): the spot must carry the other half of that option at line 99 while the reader cannot tell what kind of thing it is.
3. Mysteries deliberately genre-apt rather than underexplanation: HOLDS — both withheld things are governed: the hidden study's location is the established consent/payoff thread and is marked as June's own not-asking ("location unasked," line 45), and the undecided ending is the chapter's designed suspense, flagged in the prose itself ("as if that settled anything," line 131). Checked specifically that neither leaving nor staying is implied as decided: "You'd actually go?" / "I don't know" (lines 85–87), the cursor-blink/typed-nothing beat (line 131), and the symmetric "neither one was a fantasy and neither one was nothing" (line 99).
4. Plain footholds at high-load moments: HOLDS — the heaviest procedural decision gets its foothold in one plain clause ("New white meets old white at the corner. Anywhere else, people see the seam," line 31), and the heaviest emotional moment gets one too ("three Tuesdays of being handed charcoal and told to look had apparently reopened a valve," line 43); the walk-through irony is carried by "lit secondhand all day" (line 119). The broken foothold at line 99 is logged under check 2, not double-counted.
5. Aliases / near-synonyms making one concept look like several: FAILS — "the fourth" (line 43), "the wrong square" (line 57), and "the long pulled veil" beneath "four white squares" (line 123) are one mark wearing three names that do not agree, and the object's count itself changes from three squares plus a run to four squares plus a veil. (The two material paths, checked for the same failure, hold: Tasker/printshop/Nia/Philadelphia and Ridgewood/armory/Asha/New York each keep one consistent handle set, locked by the contact-label beat at line 131.)

REVISION ORDERS:
1. "six weeks of armory wages on one side" (line 99) — plot weight before introduction (Confusion Map 1, Inventory: armory, Check 2). Move the armory's introduction into the bucket-lunch exchange: after Asha's "I can send you Dana's number. No speech required" (line 93), give Asha the Kessler lead in the same breath and the same register — e.g. "And Kessler's got six weeks at the armory in January if you can show up with a level. Pays late. Pays real." — so line 99's math has both of its components on the table. Then trim the loading-door beat (line 125) to the contact handoff and the "tell her I sent you before Friday" push, cutting the re-explanation that currently plays as news.
2. "Dana's giving up her spot in Ridgewood end of January. Shared floor, six people…" (lines 89–97) — workspace/housing ambiguity at the moment the housing reading is primed (Confusion Map 2, Inventory: Ridgewood, Check 2). Mark the spot as a workspace inside Asha's own pitch with one noun — "Shared floor, six people" becomes "Studio floor, six people" or "Shared floor, six painters" — and/or give June one dry reply that shows she heard it as a place to work, not live, since she has just said "My sublet's up in January either way" and the chapter owes the reader that distinction exactly there. No exposition needed; one word in dialogue carries it.
3. "Asha had seen the wrong square" (line 57) and "four white squares and the long pulled veil" (line 123) — self-contradicting object inventory (Confusion Map 3, Check 5). Reconcile to one consistent set: three squares plus one pulled run. At line 123, "four white squares" becomes "three white squares." At line 57, replace "the wrong square" with the mark's real name — e.g. "Asha had seen the run and chosen the elevator anyway" — which also sharpens the beat: the run, not any square, is what gives June away.

OVERALL: CONFUSING (3 findings)
