# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 12 (Repair Verification Pass)

id: dialogue_doctor | owner: claude | tier: core | pass: post-repair verification
target: `output/chapters/chapter_12.md` (current revised text)
inputs: revised chapter; prior audit `output/critiques/claude/chapter_12.dialogue_doctor.md`; codex repair memo `output/critiques/codex/chapter_12.dialogue_repair_memo.md`; `output/style_and_voice.md` voice cards (Theo, June, Odile written-card register); `premise/READING_GUIDE.md` §2 + `premise/patterns/reading_guide_bans.tsv`; mechanical gate report (open=0, allowlisted=0, WATCH=51 — matches memo claim).

Stance: skeptical re-read, cold, with specific suspicion of *equivalent-replacement* repairs — the memo's claims were checked against the text, not taken on faith. Residue greps run against the current file for the three ordered phrases, dialogue-diagnosis vocabulary (`rhythm`, `careful`, `rehearsed`, `phrasing`, `delivery`, `tone of`, `sounded like`), and the `load-bearing` ban: zero hits except one `sound` instance at line 3, ruled below.

## VERIFICATION OF PRIOR ORDERS

**ORDER 1 — "before it could become a speech" (prior line 53): EXECUTED, NO EQUIVALENT SUBSTITUTED.** The self-listening sentence is gone. The current paragraph (line 53) runs: "That time, a Key Food circular. There were a lot of these. The circulars were better because the paper was bigger. Chicken thighs on the other side. Eighty-nine cents a pound." — *there were a lot of these* now lives only as spoken dialogue, and the swerve from circulars to chicken thighs performs the avoidance unassisted, exactly as the order specified. No bridging beat was added, and none was needed; June's reaction ("June laughed once, low, and wrote *chicken thighs* on the back of his card stock," line 55) lands directly on the swerve. Equivalence sweep: searched the full chapter for self-listening and speech-shape vocabulary (`heard himself`, `speech`, `voice`, `how he said`) — no replacement caption exists anywhere in the file.

**ORDER 2 — "useful/plain way" pre-delivery caption (prior line 61): EXECUTED, NO EQUIVALENT SUBSTITUTED.** The caption is gone. Current line 61: `"I don't want it friendlier." He pushed the card across the desk. "I want you to have that one."` The repair used precisely the sanctioned mechanism — one physical custody action per Theo's card (practical offer before emotional statement) — and nothing rates the line's manner before, during, or after. The line now lands unlabeled, and the follow-through registers in June's action, not in commentary: "She held his look for a second before she bent and pulled the rolled drawings out of her tote… She slid his card flat under the band against the paper, where it could not crease." (line 63). Equivalence sweep for line-manner labels (`plain`, `useful way to say`, `simple way`, `right words`): zero hits.

**ORDER 3 — Tuesday harder-acting interiority (prior line 97): EXECUTED, NO EQUIVALENT THESIS SUBSTITUTED.** The "harder kind of acting / material is true / deliver it like it is not" clause is gone. The paragraph (line 97) now ends exactly as the order directed: "…Three weeks ago the performance had been a schedule. He had been good at schedules. He looked at PARTNER on Odile's card, propped there against the tape dispenser." The concrete Mara/*fine*/Ruth projection carries the performance-versus-true distinction undeclared. Equivalence sweep for transposed thesis wording (`acting`, `perform`, `true material`, `pretend`, `as if it were real`): the only performance-adjacent token remaining is "the performance had been a schedule," which pre-existed the audit, was part of the showing the cut clause was redundantly restating, and names the fake-dating arrangement itself, not a feelings-are-real thesis. The closest residual thesis risk is the train beat (line 109): "there was no honest way to paint that white without doing the work in the right order, and the right order was the whole memory" — unchanged from the audited text, ruled within tolerance in the prior audit because it motivates the intrusive act of writing on her card and stays in paint-order terms. That ruling stands; Plain Translation retains the thesis-watch on it.

All three orders verified executed with no equivalent replacements. Repair memo claims are accurate.

## RE-RUN: SCENE 01 — Marchetti Rooms front desk, Monday evening (lines 15–109)

(Single scene per manifest segmentation rules — no heading or rule break after the title; ~43 quoted utterances post-repair.)

- **1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN** — re-read with attributions covered; the repairs removed narration, not dialogue, so the line inventory is materially unchanged. Strongest counter-candidate remains the Dom trade: "Dom's shop is very committed to forms." / "Dom has several forms." (June, Theo, lines 29–31) — survives because the functions differ (deflection-while-settling versus host-reflex correction) and register mass diverges everywhere else: June compact with craft nouns ("Cadmium-anything ghosts," line 75), Theo practical-to-emotional and longer (lines 23, 57). Tics-tracker caution on the retired forms-joke family carries over unchanged: one beat, not an engine.

- **2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN** — counter-candidate: June's intake run "What's out the window?" / "How many clothespins?" / "What was it on the back of? The worksheet, or--" (lines 43–51). Survives on sharp mass asymmetry (her questions 3–8 words, his answers long and varied) and on-page consequence (the *chicken thighs* notation, line 55). The repair at line 53 did not flatten the run — if anything the unbridged swerve breaks the volley rhythm harder than the cut narration did. Theo's mirrored spec run (lines 81–87) remains differentiated by the lines 77–79 interiority block.

- **3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN** — specifically re-tested at both repair sites, since cutting interiority was the risk of Orders 2 and 3. At line 61 the focalizer's mind does not go dark: the handoff is bracketed by "He lined the three pens up even though they were already even" (line 57) and "He knew the roll by now, Sonia's wide rubber band gone matte at the edge" (line 63) — lived relationship to the exchange continuously legible. At line 97 the cut clause's removal leaves the projection sequence (Odile's instruction, Mara's question, the *fine*, Ruth watching) fully intact as orientation. Strongest counter-candidate chapter-wide remains Theo's near-silence across June's long turns (lines 67–75), still rescued by lines 77–79 ("He had four questions and three of them were repairs… He picked up the middle pen instead").

- **4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN** — candidates re-checked: "The deinstall." (line 69) and "You were on the frame errand." (line 27) are confirmations the other speaker treats as information; "How many coats do I tell you it took?" (line 85) is a genuine spec question for tomorrow's painting. No portent manufacture.

- **5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN** — the Order 2 repair created the chapter's newest stripped moment: `"I don't want it friendlier." He pushed the card across the desk. "I want you to have that one."` Tested as the strongest counter-candidate. It survives: the starkness is earned by forty lines of accumulating specificity (clothespins, brick courses, the chicken-thigh ghost), the physical action carries attribution and body, and the scene does not perform the cut — June's next beat is custody logistics, not reverent silence. "Decorator's White. Benjamin Moore. Flat." (line 83) survives as before: spec-giving to a man writing block capitals.

- **6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN** — unchanged text; rulings carry over. "Ready means gallery white, patched, no ghosting, next person walks into nothing" (line 71) translates in-breath; ghosting is translated by consequence ("a peach shadow at four in the afternoon," line 75). Residual untranslated texture (cut-in, sash brush) carries no reader-weighable stake.

- **7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN** — re-checked the repaired junctions. Line 53→55: the untagged paragraph could only be Theo (first-person memory content) and June's laugh re-anchors immediately. Line 61: the inserted action beat "He pushed the card across the desk" *improves* attribution over the cut narration. The lines 81–87 untagged run still anchors via role separation and "She watched him write."

- **FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN** — full cut-list re-run on the revised text:
  - "I want you to have that one" (line 61): now unlabeled, object-bound ("that one" = the card specified down to clothespin count), inside Theo's allowed-plainness ledger. The prior defect was the caption, not the line; the caption is gone. Survives.
  - "Don't make me noble about it" / "Paint the wall. The wall's the thing." (line 91): rulings stand — instruction grounded in anti-noble concretes ("primer in my hair and I billed zero hours"); the Hamlet-shimmer line remains an executable subject constraint that gets spoken past ("The wall and the salmon.", line 95), not a curtain line.
  - "It never fully runs clear; you just decide a point at which it's clear." (line 75): quotable shimmer, but it is June's card-listed self-correction tic in process truth, speakable at conversational speed, and embedded mid-instruction, not positioned as a landing. Survives.
  - "Thanks for the water I didn't drink." (line 103): exit joke, self-aimed-adjacent, deflates Theo's over-hosting rather than scoring on it; speakable, ordinary-exit register. Survives.
  - "GREEN FIRST. THE WHITE HAS TO COVER SOMETHING." (line 109): written not spoken, completes June's own layer order. Survives per standing ruling; thesis-watch on the preceding narration stays assigned to Plain Translation.
  - Loaded-short-line-plus-silence check at the handoff: the beat after "I want you to have that one" is not unmarked — June's held look and custody actions register what the transfer costs and changes (line 63). No unregistered silences found.

- **INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION (rule 9, both directions): CLEAN** — this was the prior FAIL; re-tested hardest. Second direction (explaining twice): the line 97 paragraph now shows the Tuesday problem once — projection, then "He had been good at schedules," then the concrete look at PARTNER — with no taxonomy clause restating it. The chapter's remaining interpretive narration was each tested for double-explanation: "it was true in a way that made the card under his pen feel misfiled by size" (line 97) renders recognition through object scale, not thesis; "both halves of the evening on the desk" (line 105) is inventory, not explanation; the line 109 train clause stands per the Order 3 ruling above. First direction (over-stripping): the repairs cut three narration sentences, and at each site the surrounding interiority was checked — pens (lines 39, 57), water-glass quarter turn (line 49), the repairs-versus-questions block (lines 77–79), the quotation-marks beat (line 89) — the focalizer's mind never goes dark. Strongest counter-candidate for over-stripping: the line 53→55 junction now has zero interior beat between Theo's longest confession run and June's laugh; it survives because the dialogue content itself ("Nobody asked me to do it… That's the part," line 57, immediately following) is the interiority surfacing as speech, which is the scene's design.

- **DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS SWEEP (reading guide §2, zero tolerance; full-chapter re-run): CLEAN — zero instances.** Every candidate, shown per stance:
  - Line 3, "He could hear exactly how it would sound when he handed it over. Charming. Round at every corner. A memory with the pit taken out." — the chapter's strongest surviving candidate and the only `sound` hit in the file. Cleared: the rated object is the *memory as material*, not anyone's wording, rhythm, or delivery — and evaluating memories for sufficiency is the literal assignment (Odile's card: "IF IT WOULD FIT IN A GREETING CARD, CHOOSE AGAIN"). Nothing spoken is being captioned; no utterance follows to be undercut. The judgment converts directly into dramatized action (the voided card), which is the guide's required mechanism — perceptiveness shown by what he does with it.
  - Line 23, "how to say that without making it an announcement with a correction attached" — speech-act category (announcement, correction), same family as June's "don't make it a thing" (line 15); not wording or manner. Cleared, consistent with prior ruling.
  - Lines 77–79, "three of them were repairs… was not even a question; it was a closing argument. Each arrived fully formatted" — narration categorizing Theo's own *unspoken, suppressed* questions by social function (repair, closing argument), never delivered, resolved by action (the middle pen, the spec question). Not narration about speech; nothing was spoken. Cleared.
  - Line 71, "*Leave the room ready.* That's the actual phrase, it was on the thing I signed." — June citing documentary contract language, not rating a speaker. Cleared.
  - Line 89, "The quotation marks felt necessary. He did not examine why." — rates written punctuation on his own note card. Cleared per standing ruling; stays on the tics/Plain Translation watch.
  - June full sweep: she never characterizes Theo's words anywhere in the chapter; her sharpest moves act on content (writing *chicken thighs*, line 55; "Don't find out before tomorrow," line 59).

- **SELF-DELIVERY-CAPTION SWEEP (full chapter): CLEAN — zero instances.** Both prior instances confirmed cut (Orders 1 and 2). Remaining candidates: line 3 (cleared above — no delivery occurs); line 37, "You look like you'll lose consciousness otherwise" (June rates his face, not his coming words); line 41 onward, every Theo line now arrives unannounced. No sentence in the file rates the manner of a line before or after it is spoken.

- **PLAIN-SPEECH FLOOR: PASS** — unchanged from prior audit and re-confirmed post-repair: Theo's "I don't want it friendlier." / "I want you to have that one." (line 61) now land *cleaner* without the caption; June's "I did it myself. Nobody made me." (line 71) and "I mean it." (line 91) stand. Both principals direct and followable as text.

## REVISION ORDERS

None.

OVERALL: CLEAN
