# Fresh-Reader Clarity Pass — Chapter 09 ("Local Work"), Round 3 (post later-audit line repairs)

Inputs read in full: current `output/chapters/chapter_09.md` (137 lines), both prior clarity artifacts (note: `chapter_09.clarity_pass.md` and `chapter_09.clarity_pass_round2.md` both contain the Round 2 text — the Round 1 artifact was overwritten; Round 1's blockers were reconstructed from Round 2's verification notes), the four later audits that changed lines after Round 2 (`dialogue_doctor` Round 4, `positive_prose` Round 3, `characters_wrong` Round 2, `narrator_publicist` Round 2), rolling summaries 07–08, `continuity.md`, `canon_sheet.md`, `style_and_voice.md`, all of `premise/`, chapter card 09, and `research_dossier.md`.

**Stale-evidence register, established before re-pressing (Round 2 verdicts that cite lines no longer in the chapter — every one re-checked fresh below):** (a) "The cover had not worked. Asha had seen the run and chosen the elevator anyway." — cut; the beat now ends at line 55. (b) "two shapes on the table… neither one was a fantasy and neither one was nothing" — replaced by the rebuilt inventory paragraph at line 101. (c) "two cities, alphabetized together as if that settled anything" — gone; the close is now the typed-nothing beat at line 135. (d) Asha's "That's not advice" and "stable things that ate my painting time" — replaced by lines 105's "If you pass, send her my name…" and the 2019 anecdote. (e) "the way everyone did" — deleted from line 123 per narrator-publicist. (f) "a valve she had spent **two** years assuming was hand-tight" — now **six** years (line 43), which also closes Round 2's continuity referral against Chapter 01's six-year lapse. No verdict below leans on any of the cut lines.

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PLAIN-EVENT SUMMARY:
June and Asha, freelance art installers, work a one-day repaint of a project-room wall at a small grant-funded art space run by Marisol, the day after the deinstall of Marta Oduya's ceramic-shelf show; the schedule is stated up front — crate pickup at two, walk-through at four with the incoming artist, "Patch, prime, paint. One line on the invoice" (line 13) — and the chapter sits midweek between class Tuesdays ("Tuesday was five days off," line 45). June patches twenty-two toggle holes, a screw-hole run, a peel, and a dolly scuff with five-minute setting compound. Raking light from the east window shows her the wall has aged warm past its labeled "gallery white"; her test swatch dries "a whole step cooler, blue against the field" (line 21), so she argues Asha into forty extra minutes: shellac spot-prime on every patch, then paint the whole wall face corner to corner so the seam hides where "light folded and no eye would ever go" (line 113). While the shellac dries, June brushes three legitimate color-test squares on a foamcore scrap — can white, an umber-nudged square, a halfway mix — then makes a fourth, functionless mark: she pulls the loaded stroke long down the scrap into a value run with an edge she admires, her first unprompted act of making outside class, attributed on the page to "three Tuesdays of being handed charcoal and told to look" (line 43). She thinks of her portrait of Theo public on the rack at Marchetti Rooms while his of her is "in a folder somewhere being nothing to nobody, location unasked" (line 45). Asha sees the scrap, hears June's cover ("The middle square's the match"), looks "at the middle square, and at the run beneath it," and goes to pad the elevator; June sets the scrap face-down "before she could make another mark" (line 55). At 12:40 June reads two texts from Nia Torres, an art-school peer silent since March: a programs-and-fabrication role at the printshop on Tasker in Philadelphia, probably opening January 1, six months funded, decent renewal odds, keys, W-2 paycheck, after-hours studio access, start flexible after mid-December — call this week before it posts (line 63). The second text, "Not a favor. I need someone who can run a job and fix the press" (line 67), makes June mad; she types the defensive reply "I didn't say it was a favor," deletes it, and corrects herself — "Nia had not written charity" (line 69) — then rereads the offer for what *keys* and *after hours* would do once they dried (line 71). Over a bucket lunch she tells Asha, who says call before Friday and supplies the New York side in one speech: Dana is giving up her studio spot in Ridgewood at the end of January — shared floor, six painters, high hundreds, rent on the first, twenty-four-hour access (lines 89–97) — and "Kessler's got an armory build-out in January if you can show up with a level. Six weeks. Pays late. Pays real" (line 97). June laughs late; the narration states the day's change plainly: "Now it had a corner in a Ridgewood studio and six weeks of armory wages. Philadelphia had a set of keys on Tasker Street. Neither one was nothing" (line 101). Asha says she herself would call and maybe not go, asks June to send Nia her name if June passes, and offers her 2019 museum-prep anecdote ending "You catch up" (line 105); June silently registers that she "had spent six years not catching up" (line 107). Her stated deadline is "My lease is up in December either way" (line 87). The truck comes twelve minutes late; the crates ship; June rolls the second coat; the wall dries toward "one thing" (line 113). At the 4:05 walk-through the incoming artist crosses the repainted wall without noticing it and complains the untouched north wall "reads cold"; Marisol says it's the same paint; June, who knows the north wall is "lit secondhand all day, a full step cooler in practice than the wall June had just matched by eye" (line 123), tightens a hand on the ladder rail and says nothing. Packing out, June rescues the scrap — "three white squares and the long pulled run with its good edge, dry now" (line 127) — from trash-by-definition and puts it in her tote with the rolled drawings and Mara's scarf. Asha texts Dana's and Kessler's contacts and says to call Nia either way (lines 129–133). June clocks out at 4:47, saves the contacts as "Dana - Ridgewood (Asha)" and "Kessler - armory Jan," opens Nia's thread, finds only the deleted lunch sentence — "Wrong, and still the only sentence she had" — types nothing, and backs out (line 135). She walks to the train with the scrap's white edge sticking out of the tote and does not push it down (line 137). No `[UNCLEAR]` markers required. The two nearest calls, both resolved on the page: whether the roller batch carries the chosen tint (the test is framed as the committal step — "Standard practice was to roll test squares before committing a color decision," line 41 — and line 123 confirms "matched by eye"); and what Asha concluded from the run (the narration tracks her gaze to it explicitly; her conclusion is withheld as June-POV limit, ruled ASSIGNED below, not a literal-event gap).

INVENTORY:
- "toggle holes / toggle bolts" — introduced: line 13 — first plot weight: lines 17–31 (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-face repaint) — 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; spot-priming is then enacted, not lectured — "stain-blocking shellac on every patch and the peel," line 39; "feather" is the patch-local alternative whose cost the rash line prices)
- "wet edge / W-pattern" — introduced: line 57 — first plot weight: texture only — 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 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"; clock-out cashes out at line 135 with the app, the time, and the line item)
- "Tasker printshop (Philadelphia / Nia)" — introduced: line 63 — first plot weight: lines 71 and 101 (the leaving option) — orientation: SUFFICIENT (Nia's text names kind and terms in plain nouns — "Programs + fabrication role… Keys, real paycheck, W-2, studio access after hours" — the city is fixed by June's own "a job in Philadelphia," line 75, before "a set of keys on Tasker Street" recurs at line 101)
- "Ridgewood studio spot (Dana's)" — introduced: line 89 — first plot weight: line 101 (half the staying option) — orientation: SUFFICIENT — Round 1 blocker #2 still REPAIRED in the current text: the spot is a workspace from its first nouns ("her **studio** spot in Ridgewood… Shared floor, six **painters**," line 89), re-marked by "**Studio rent** on the first" (line 97), and the old housing misprime cannot re-form because the lease is a separate fact in a separate sentence two lines earlier ("My lease is up in December either way," line 87); "a photo of whatever you keep in a corner" (line 97) reads as studio-share vetting, not a roommate interview
- "armory build-out (Kessler's)" — introduced: line 97 — first plot weight: line 101 ("six weeks of armory wages") — orientation: SUFFICIENT — Round 1 blocker #1 still REPAIRED in the current text, re-verified against the **rebuilt** line-101 paragraph (Round 2's "two shapes on the table" evidence is stale): Asha's line-97 speech supplies Kessler, the armory, January, the duration, and the pay character ("Six weeks. Pays late. Pays real"), and "show up with a level" types it as the install labor June already does, all before the wages phrase lands four lines later; the loading-door beat (line 129) remains pure contact handoff
- "foamcore scrap / value run" — introduced: lines 41–43 — first plot weight: lines 55, 127, 137 (June's kept private making-object) — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("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") — Round 1 blocker #3 still REPAIRED: the object holds one inventory at every mention — made as three squares plus one pulled run (lines 41–43), "the run beneath it" (line 55), "three white squares and the long pulled run with its good edge" (line 127), "the corner of the foamcore… white edge" (line 137); "the fourth" (line 43) is the making-moment ordinal, immediately re-described as the run; "veil" survives only inside the line-43 gradient description, never as a competing handle
- "timekeeping app" — introduced: line 135 — first plot weight: line 135 — orientation: SUFFICIENT ("4:47, seven billable hours, one line item, *patch/prime/paint, project room, walls to neutral*")
- Checked and passed without finding: "Parallel on Banker Street / the photo lab in Bushwick / the framer" (line 15 — typed as June's client list by "She had built a modest freelance life on liking it"); "GALLERY WHITE" (line 19 — a can label, glossed in the same sentence by what the wall has drifted to); "the cardboard tube she had not bothered to take out since Tuesday" (line 17 — resolved at line 127, "the cardboard tube with the rolled drawings," backed by the rolled drawings carried since Week 1); "Mara's scarf" (line 17 — standing loan since Week 1); "the deli's order confirmation" (line 135 — disposable texture anchoring Nia's thread in a real inbox).

CONFUSION MAP:
- "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 — the faced-to-wall consent thread; Chapter 08's summary fixes June's knowledge at exactly "off the rack… in a folder," and "location unasked" marks the not-knowing as June's own act; continuity reserves resolution for Ch23/Ch27).
- "Asha looked at the middle square, and at the run beneath it, and went to pad the elevator." (line 55) — reader loses: what Asha concluded about the cover story — opacity: ASSIGNED (voice — the reading guide's interiority discipline, §2: feeling rendered through attention and action; the narration hands the reader the data — Asha's gaze lands on the run, the functionless mark — and June's immediate face-down move carries the exposure; June's POV cannot certify Asha's verdict, and no later beat in the chapter requires it). Logged explicitly because Round 2's clarity here rested on a since-cut narration sentence ("The cover had not worked…"); the leaner beat was re-pressed from scratch and the scene logistics survive without it.
- "She typed nothing and backed out." (line 135, with line 101's "Neither one was nothing.") — reader loses: nothing about events; June's stay/leave decision is withheld — opacity: ASSIGNED (suspense — the chapter card's outcome rule is "no decision yet," and the chapter performs non-decision in actions: both contacts saved, Nia's thread opened and left blank, the scrap kept). Round 2's evidence for this verdict ("alphabetized together as if that settled anything") is stale; the replacement beats carry the same withholding.
- Checked and not logged as findings: "June laughed, and the laugh came late" (line 99) — the event is plain; the laugh's meaning is interiority left to action per voice rules, and the cost lands two paragraphs later (line 107). "The sentence from lunch came back first: *I didn't say it was a favor.*" (line 135) — the referent is supplied verbatim in italics, so no reader has to hunt the line-69 beat; "from lunch" is loose by minutes (she typed it at 12:40, just before the sandwich), already cleared at that tolerance by characters-wrong Round 2. "New York had been her old room and overdue invoices" (line 101) — "old room" could flicker as "former room," but line 71's "the room she was losing here" has fixed the referent thirty lines earlier. "Marisol's paying us both to come back Thursday" (line 37) — no weekday is stated on the page, so no first-time reader computes a collision with the implied midweek date. Canon check ordered for this round, VERIFIED: the lease clock is December and only December — "My lease is up in December either way" (line 87); January attaches exclusively to options (Ridgewood "end of January," line 89; "armory build-out in January," line 97; Nia's "probably opening Jan 1… Start date can flex after mid-December," line 63) and never to the lease; this matches canon row 2 (lease ends mid-December).

CHARACTER CLARITY:
- Asha Ibrahim (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 from her first beat; a working painter by line 105, "I can do the boring parts and still paint at night" and "didn't stretch a canvas until May" — note this placing evidence replaces Round 2's stale citation of the cut "stable things" line and still does the job)
- Nia Torres (first appearance, text-only): PLACEABLE ("She had not seen the name on her screen since March, a thread that ended with Nia's *good luck w the install*," line 61, plus June's own gloss, "Someone I went to school with says there's a job in Philadelphia," line 75)
- Marta Oduya (first appearance, absent): PLACEABLE ("The outgoing show had been Marta Oduya's shelf pieces: glazed stoneware on steel brackets," line 13)
- Marisol (first appearance): PLACEABLE ("Marisol, who ran the space on a budget that paid small invoices in halves when the grant check cleared," line 13; on stage at the walk-through, lines 119–125)
- Dana (first appearance, mentioned only): PLACEABLE ("Dana's giving up her studio spot in Ridgewood end of January," line 89 — a person in Asha's network whose workspace June could inherit)
- Kessler (first appearance, mentioned only): PLACEABLE ("Kessler's got an armory build-out in January if you can show up with a level," line 97 — a hiring contact for January install work, locked by the saved label "Kessler - armory Jan," line 135)
- The incoming artist (unnamed): PLACEABLE ("the incoming artist plus Marisol" at line 13 sets her role three hours before she appears; "younger than June had expected, wore the good kind of terrible jacket," line 115)
- Theo (reappearing by reference): PLACEABLE ("her portrait of Theo riding it in public with his name on the back," line 45 — the Week 3 rack callback a Ch07–08 reader carries)
- Mara (reappearing by reference): PLACEABLE ("Mara's scarf," line 17 — the standing loan since Week 1)
- Pair Mara / Marta Oduya / Marisol (three active M-names): UN-CONFUSABLE (Marta never appears without surname or show context — "Marta Oduya's shelf pieces," "Oduya's shelves riding inside them," line 111; Marisol is bound to the budget and the walk-through; Mara exists in this chapter only as the scarf's owner; no two share a scene or a role)
- Pair Dana / Kessler (two new leads in Asha's network, both January): UN-CONFUSABLE (introduced in one speech with disjoint terms — studio rent and house rules versus wages and a level — and held apart by the contact labels "Dana - Ridgewood (Asha)" and "Kessler - armory Jan," line 135)
- Pair Nia / Asha (two practical artist-peers advising June the same day): UN-CONFUSABLE (different cities, different channels — texts versus on-site — and Asha keeps Nia distinct in her own mouth: "call your printshop friend either way," line 133)
- Pair June's foamcore scrap / Theo's hidden study (the book's two private hidden artworks — pressed per this round's risk list): UN-CONFUSABLE (the scrap is made on the page from Marisol's paint and foamcore and travels home in June's tote, lines 41–43 and 127; Theo's study is invoked only as "his of her in a folder somewhere," line 45, fixed at Marchetti Rooms by Chapter 08; the line-45 paragraph itself holds the two apart by contrasting whose portrait is public and whose is hidden, and the face-down move at line 55 rhymes with Theo's faced-to-wall gesture deliberately — same gesture, two distinct objects in two named locations)

COMPLEXITY CHECKS:
1. Scene action / physical orientation / focalizer perception / plot-bearing consequence on first read: HOLDS — the deadline structure is stated outright at line 13, every wall procedure is glossed by its purpose, and the focalizer is unbrokenly June. Strongest counter-candidate: the leaner test-square beat at line 55, where the cut narration sentence used to certify that Asha saw through the cover — the beat survives because the gaze-tracking clause ("and at the run beneath it") puts the incriminating object in Asha's field of view on the page, and June's self-arresting face-down move makes the stakes physical. Second candidate: the untinted-roller gap between line 53's decision and line 57's rolling — carried by line 41's framing of the test as the committal step and confirmed at line 123 ("matched by eye").
2. New terms plain before carrying plot weight: HOLDS — both Round 1 term failures remain repaired in the current text: Kessler/armory introduced at line 97, four lines and zero scene-breaks before "six weeks of armory wages" (line 101); the Ridgewood spot is a studio from its first sentence (line 89) before it must carry half the staying option at line 101. Strongest counter-candidate: "armory" is never glossed as a venue type — but "build-out… if you can show up with a level. Six weeks. Pays late. Pays real" tells the reader exactly what kind of thing it is for June (paid install labor on a date), which is all line 101 asks it to mean.
3. Mysteries deliberately genre-apt rather than accidental underexplanation: HOLDS — both withheld things are governed: the hidden study's location is the established consent thread, marked as June's own not-asking ("location unasked," line 45), and the undecided ending is the chapter card's designed outcome ("no decision yet"). Pressed specifically per this round's order that the chapter plant both options without deciding: "You'd actually go?" / "I don't know" (lines 85–87); the symmetric single-sentence-per-city inventory closing "Neither one was nothing" (line 101); Asha's hedged own answer ("I'd call. I don't know if I'd go," line 105); and the typed-nothing close (line 135). Saving both contacts while answering neither thread is the chapter acting out non-decision. No line implies a lean either way; line 71 prices Philadelphia's draw and its cost ("ninety minutes and one state line from every Tuesday she had ever stood in") in the same sentence.
4. Plain footholds at high-load moments: HOLDS — the procedural peak gets "New white meets old white at the corner. Anywhere else, people see the seam" (line 31); the emotional peak gets "three Tuesdays of being handed charcoal and told to look had reopened a valve she had spent six years assuming was hand-tight" (line 43); the options peak gets Asha's all-nouns speech (lines 89–97) before the abstraction of line 101; the misread peak gets the self-correction in plain declaratives ("Nia had not written charity. She had written *run a job*, *fix the press*, *shortest list*," line 69); the walk-through irony is carried by the concrete fact ("lit secondhand all day, a full step cooler in practice," line 123).
5. Aliases / near-synonyms making one concept look like several: HOLDS — the foamcore object wears one inventory at all four mentions (three squares plus "the run," lines 41–43, 55, 127, 137). Strongest counter-candidate, re-pressed from Round 2: "The middle square's the match" (line 53) against the painting order at line 41, where the halfway mix is painted third — positionally the umber square is the row's middle, so a reader mapping "middle" to position rather than value gets a flicker; ruled holding because "the middle square" is one consistent handle in June's mouth and the narration (lines 53–55), and no later beat depends on which recipe won — line 123's "matched by eye" is square-agnostic. The two material paths, pressed for the same alias failure: Tasker/printshop/Nia/Philadelphia and Ridgewood-studio/armory/Dana/Kessler/Asha/New York each keep one handle set throughout, separated city-by-city at line 101 and locked by the contact labels at line 135.

REVISION ORDERS:
None. All three Round 1 blockers remain repaired in the current text and were re-verified against the post-Round-2 line changes rather than against Round 2's now-stale quotations: (1) "six weeks of armory wages" (line 101) follows its full introduction at line 97 inside the same conversation; (2) Dana's Ridgewood spot is a workspace from its first nouns (lines 89, 97) with the lease fact separately and correctly fixed at December (line 87); (3) the foamcore scrap holds one stable inventory across lines 41–43, 55, 127, and 137. The four later-audit line changes (the cut cover-failed sentence, the rebuilt lunch close, the new pity-misread beats at lines 69/135, the two narrator-publicist deletions) introduced no new UNCLEAR / INSUFFICIENT / ACCIDENTAL / UNPLACED / CONFUSABLE / FAILS finding. One bookkeeping note for the orchestrator, not an order: the Round 1 clarity artifact was overwritten with Round 2 text (`chapter_09.clarity_pass.md` ≡ `chapter_09.clarity_pass_round2.md`); restore from archive if the audit trail matters.

OVERALL: CLEAR-UNDER-COMPLEXITY — heaviest-load passage: the rebuilt inventory paragraph at line 101 ("Now it had a corner in a Ridgewood studio and six weeks of armory wages. Philadelphia had a set of keys on Tasker Street. Neither one was nothing."), which asks three sentences to hold both plot paths and four chapter-new proper nouns; it is carried by the foothold of Asha's bucket-lunch speech immediately above (lines 89–97), which has already converted every term into a concrete thing with a price, a month, and a contact — and re-secured at line 135, where the saved labels "Dana - Ridgewood (Asha)" and "Kessler - armory Jan" replay the whole structure in six words.
