# Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 20, "No Advice / Keys Here" — Round 13 (final current-text verification)

Target: `output/chapters/chapter_20.md` (current text, post-Plain-Translation-round-2 repairs). Manifest requires scenes 02 (Ruth/Sam visit, file lines 23–57), 03 (Asha call, file lines 61–91), and 04 (Nia call, file lines 95–141). Scene 01 (0 dialogue lines) and scene 05 (1 quoted utterance; documentary text-message form) fall below the manifest threshold and are excluded from blocks; scene 05 was swept for diagnosis/therapy-speak leakage only (none found — "ok now the boring parts" is documentary chat texture, spent per the tics ledger). Read cold, attributions covered, against the voice cards for June, Ruth, Sam, Nia, and Asha; reading guide §§1, 2, 5, 6, 8; the fake-sharp cut-list; and the Ch20 prompt anti-tics.

Round-13 charge: two dialogue lines changed since round 12's CLEAN — Asha's line 87 ("The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it.") and June's line 129 ("I know. I want the wall anyway. It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast."). Those two lines and the column exchange they sit in or beside are the prime suspects of this round, not pre-cleared repairs. Scene 02 is verbatim-unchanged since round 12; it is re-run in full anyway, because a clean prior round is not evidence about the current read.

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SCENE 02 (June's apartment, Ruth/Sam catalog errand, file lines 23–57):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — covered attributions across all 14 lines and re-sorted by ear; three assignable registers. Ruth: flat inventory with no images ("We're double-parked," "We know how to deliver a box," "We have a car"). Sam: physical-warm, object-converting ("What's the freight?", "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck."). June: compressed logistics fracturing under exposure ("The class is--" She stopped. "The class is the part that works."). Strongest counter-candidate: Ruth's "We know how to deliver a box" beside Sam's hand-truck line — both dry refusals of June's over-instruction. Survives: Ruth's is a two-beat correction with no prop; Sam's manufactures an object. Swapped, Ruth would own an equipment joke her card (one editorial-sharp line per appearance, spent at line 41) does not license.
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — one true question in the scene ("What's the freight?"), answered by an over-long routing paragraph, not a matched return; the remainder is declaration, reversal ("Actually, no. Tell Mara I'm bringing the dish myself Tuesday."), confession, and refusal of confession. Strongest counter-candidate: the closing run "We have a car." / hand-truck line / "Noted." — three short turns. Survives: none answers a question; the weights are offer-as-inventory, joke, and a thanks that fumbles ("Both of you--thank you. For the box.").
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's mind is lit at each pressure point: the cardboard edge pressing "a line into her thumb" during the routing speech; the glaze flaw read ("the cobalt had pooled and gone almost black, and it was the best part of the dish") motivating the reversal; "June looked at the receipt so she wouldn't look at Ruth"; "June did not turn the receipt over" registering where Ruth's eyes stopped. Strongest counter-candidate: Sam's box-carry choreography (line 37), four clauses without June register. Survives: under two sentences of business between two interiority beats, and the chair moved "six inches to the left" is June's optical measurement.
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — every interrogative checked. "What's the freight?" wants and gets its answer. Strongest counter-candidate: "I want to be clear that I'm not asking." — a position as meta-statement. Survives: it is the scene's engine stated plainly (§2's protected direct register), and Ruth and Sam answer its content, not its aura — a car and a hand truck.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — attribution regular (tags plus owning actions); short lines priced by the announced two-minute double-park. Strongest counter-candidate: "We have a car," Ruth said. — four words at a loaded moment. Survives: the car is established fact from line one, the clip is offer-as-inventory, and Sam immediately un-strips it with the hand truck.
6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — the scene's one term of art, "freight," is asked while testing the box's weight and answered with contents, count, owner, route. Strongest counter-candidate: "leave them at Sonia's with a note for Mara" — three proper nouns in one instruction. Survives: all established persons/places; the contingency-routing shape is itself the characterization.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — covered-tag read produced zero mis-assignments; every turn is tagged or preceded by an owning action (Sam at the box, Ruth unmoved at the kitchen edge). Strongest counter-candidate: "She'll like that better than the dish," Sam said. — arrives after a Ruth-adjacent beat. Survives; tagged, and the warmth is Sam's register regardless.
FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — all 14 lines run against the cut-list. Strongest counter-candidate: "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." — the "not X. That's Y" template, quotable and joke-timed. Survives on the cut-list's own terms: the exchange does not exist to deliver wisdom (its content is a refusal to say anything wiser — advice converted into equipment, the scene's assignment); it is speakable in one breath by a person holding a box; Sam is licensed to be light here (June has forbidden opinions, not confessed); and its partner line is aggressively unquotable ("We have a car."). Second counter-candidate: Ruth's "I kept them to myself and called it manners." / "Some of it was easier for me." — "called it manners" carries editorial polish. Survives as her 1/1 licensed sharp construction, spent on self-implication, delivery broken by the bag-strap beat, the second sentence left unfinished in content (what was easier is never supplied — friction kept per rule 8), and Ruth herself refuses the therapeutic turn: "You can leave that part out. We came for the dish."
INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — rule 9 both directions. Mind present (mode 3) and never doubling: Ruth's admission gets an object response (looking at the receipt), no narration about what it means; the hand-truck line gets "Noted," not appreciation; nothing captions the care mode (tics ledger marks it fragile — verified: no line names or rates the no-advice behavior). Strongest counter-candidate: "The rectangle by the door was bare except for a strip of dust where the box had been." Survives as concrete absence, no gloss; the next line is dishwashing.

SCENE 03 (Asha call, 4:05, file lines 61–91):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — the risk is Asha/June convergence, both trading rates and dates; the repaired line 87 was tested here as prime suspect. Covered tags and re-sorted: Asha carries dock-floor compression and environment intrusions ("Talk fast, I'm holding a door with my whole body," "Forty-nine five and written access is real," "Take the crating if you get it. It's indoors."); June carries offer-sheet order and consent framing ("First one's a question and it's yours to say no to," "Today I need a yes or no on sending your name"). The repaired "The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it." was interrogated for June-bleed since "ugly" sits on June's word list: cleared — the syntax is Asha's, not June's compression; a rate-anchored second-person invoice judgment (forgiveness quoted at a price) is her card's exact mechanism ("money/time specifics; no mystique"), where June's version of the same content would run optical. "Ugly" as shared working-painter bluntness does not transplant the line. Strongest counter-candidate: June's terms recital ("Terms: W-2, $49,500, six months funded...") in Asha's information register. Survives: narration prices it as recitation ("this part she knew without notes"), Asha demanded speed in line one, and June's unguarded line in the same call reverts to card ("I did want to feel less bad" — full form under exposure, no craft-noun armor).
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — recital, physical interruption (gate boom, pallet jack, off-phone shout), and unmatched turn lengths: Asha's Dana/Kessler paragraph (line 83) against June's seven-word "$2,643 and whatever paid crating I can get in December." Strongest counter-candidate: "Okay. Second thing?" / "Second thing is I'm in." — question and echoing answer. Survives as a single two-turn hinge; the echo is June accepting Asha's agenda structure, the call's power arrangement made audible.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — the two candidate dark stretches checked: June's own recital (lit by the capped pen and "this part she knew without notes") and Asha's long terms turn. Strongest counter-candidate: line 83, nine clauses with no June register. Survives narrowly: first-delivery plot facts the reader must weigh, broken twice by dock events, and June's reaction is the scene's closing act — uncapping the pen and filling the right page, notation instead of feeling words per card. The orientation beat at the true pressure point is present: eyes on GOOD in her own handwriting before "I did want to feel less bad."
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — "Say the studio clause again" (imperative wanting information, gets it), "Who writes that?" (answered by the speaker herself, in character), "Why aren't you taking it?" (de-fanged by its own speaker: "That's not me being polite"), "can you get from here to March?" (answered with a number). Strongest counter-candidate: "So the real question: can you get from here to March?" — the "real question" frame flirts with portent. Survives: literal solvency arithmetic, immediately answered; the framing is Asha's hustle-math triage, her card's schedule-awareness.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — clipped lines priced by the held freight door and the shout; environment beats keep starkness situated. Strongest counter-candidate: "Asha hung up before the word was finished" — a stark exit. Survives: action, not stripped dialogue, and it denies the repaired line 87 any landing room — the opposite of performed minimalism.
6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — the chapter's heaviest term load (W-2, W-9, net-45, load-in, deposit structure), each term arriving with its consequence: "You invoice the 25th, net-45, you'll see money in March"; "$980 all in with the wall, by December 10"; "a body on January 4, eight a.m., three weeks minimum." Strongest counter-candidate: "he needs your W-9 by the 15th" — the one untranslated form name. Survives: the weight is the deadline, not the tax mechanics, and June's notation ("DEC 15--W-9 KESSLER") confirms followability.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — two speakers, phone form, asymmetric environment (freight noise only on Asha's side) functioning as attribution. Covered-tag read clean. Strongest counter-candidate: "Okay. Second thing?" — untagged short turn. Survives; only Asha holds the agenda role at that beat, and the reply re-anchors.
FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — the repaired line is this scene's center of gravity. Strongest counter-candidate: "The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it." — the site where a workshopped sample once stood ("Not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive.", her card verbatim, round-12 text nearly verbatim). Verified: the sample string and its fragment-cut shape appear nowhere in the chapter; the repair re-agents the forgiveness (tenant forgives, at a stated rate) rather than re-cutting the same aphorism. Run against the cut-list: it is a price judgment doing first-delivery work (why $340 is livable), spoken mid-shout with the hang-up amputating resonance, flanked by the radiator deadpan and the coat instruction — it prices the room down, the reverse of aphorism inflation; and "At $340 you'll forgive it" is meaningless detached from Dana's room, failing the quotability test a maxim would pass. Second counter-candidate: "Send my name because I'm qualified. If you're trying to feel less bad, don't." — edge at June's vulnerable moment. Survives the zinger-at-wrong-moment bullet: the ashamed party is June, not the speaker, and the text refuses the volley — June's return is the chapter's plainest sentence ("I did want to feel less bad"), Asha's is its flattest ("Okay. Second thing?").
INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — no narration re-explains the consent beat, the referral ethics, or the admission; meaning lands in the notation act ("DEC 10--DANA, $980..."). Strongest counter-candidate: the beat after "If you're trying to feel less bad, don't." — a loaded line where June's register is owed (cut-list bullet 7). Survives: the silence is marked — June's eyes go to GOOD on the left page, the exact cost of the line registered in object before she answers.

SCENE 04 (Nia call, Friday 10:40, file lines 95–141):

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — Nia must stay distinct from Asha and June, and the repaired line 129 was tested here as prime suspect for voice bleed. Covered tags across both calls: Nia's lexicon is institutional clock-and-column ("Torres.", "Walk me through it. I ran the math with you three weeks ago," "every line I have a column for," "I have payroll at eleven"); Asha's was dock-and-rate; June's is press-and-surface ("The proof press in the back room. Trueing the bed, keeping it usable."). Strongest counter-candidate: June's "If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast" against Nia's "I know her invoices. She itemizes." six lines later — the same verb crossing speakers. Survives: "itemize" is the work-world's literal word for the practice both are pricing; each use makes a distinct claim (June's reliability offer; Nia's reference evidence for Asha); and June borrowing the counterparty's procurement register to keep a door open is a speakable professional move, not authorial bleed — her sentence's spine ("I want the wall anyway") is compression under exposure, her card's mechanism, not Nia's efficiency.
2. MONOTONE Q/A RHYTHM: CLEAN — the column exchange re-checked post-repair as charged. Nia's prompts run one to five words ("But.", "Okay. Tell me the counter.", "You know what I'm going to ask next."); June's answers run one word to five sentences with a mid-turn breakdown ("Or the sink would--" She stopped.). The repaired exchange now runs: Nia's column verdict → "It is," → object business (receipt turned print-side up) → June's want and disclaimer. No matched-weight volley, and the exchange no longer closes as a completed two-speaker figure — Nia's metaphor is answered by a want, not by a counter-metaphor. Strongest counter-candidate: the opening prompt/answer/prompt/answer run ("Walk me through it" → walk-through → "But." → the Vandercook turn). Survives: radically unequal weights, and the second answer fails on the page, which volley rhythm cannot survive.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — June's mind runs through her hands on the decision objects at every turn: receipt under her hand at "I'm calling to say no"; finger on the crossed-out VANDERCOOK line at the want; touching the TASKER page while conceding the job's goodness; the receipt turned print-side up ("the Marchetti header, the faded total") at the repaired line 129 — the object beat now carrying what the cut column-cap used to over-carry; "June read it off the right page" grounding the counter recital. Strongest counter-candidate: Nia's closing double-turn (the Asha acceptance through "come see it") passing without June register. Survives: the call's decompression, answered in the scene's own currency ("I will."), and the post-call register is object-rendered — phone down, receipt squared with the table edge.
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — Nia's interrogative force is all imperative prompt, her card's deadline mode; nothing rhetorical. Strongest counter-candidate: "You know what I'm going to ask next." — a statement standing where a question would go, the classic portent shape. Survives: the referent is established business (her card's own "If you say no, send me someone good"), June answers its content instantly and completely ("Send you someone good. I did the asking already, yesterday, with her permission."), and a cold reader can state what was asked and delivered — followability holds.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY MINIMALISM: CLEAN — short turns attributed or unambiguous; the starkest line priced. Strongest counter-candidate: "But." — one word, no tag, no beat. Survives: two-person phone alternation leaves no assignment doubt; the line is brisk elicitation matching "under pressure: deadline-driven"; and the scene refuses starkness elsewhere — office noise, the printer catch, key clicks keep the far end embodied.
6. JARGON-TRADING WITHOUT TRANSLATION: CLEAN — "Vandercook" arrives pre-weighted (the notebook's crossed-out line, planted at line 9, touched at line 113) and glossed in apposition ("The proof press in the back room. Trueing the bed, keeping it usable."); the counter recital is a physical act of reading the notebook aloud, each figure carrying its consequence ("invoiced the 25th, paid in March," "no real heat," "February is a blank line in my notebook"); Nia's column metaphor translates itself by enumeration. Strongest counter-candidate: the counter recital (line 125) — four figures and a blank in five sentences. Survives: every number was established on the page (Thursday's right-page ledger and Asha's call), so it reads as compression of known weights; its last line is a cost, not a term.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — tags regular; far-end action beats (printer, keys) own Nia's side. Covered-tag read clean. Strongest counter-candidate: the run from "Okay. Tell me the counter." through the repaired exchange — tags on alternating lines only. Survives; strict alternation plus register difference (column diction vs. want-and-line-item diction) leaves no doubt.
FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — the round's center of gravity: the repaired line 129 and the column exchange around it. Strongest counter-candidate: "That's a worse offer," Nia said. "That's a worse offer on every line I have a column for." / "It is," June said. ... "I know. I want the wall anyway. It isn't about the program. If the program ever needs freelance install, I itemize and I'm fast." Ran every applicable bullet. It survives, on current-text specifics: (a) verified dead — "The line it wins on doesn't fit in a column," the doesn't-fit-in-a-column shape, and any June column-capping do not appear anywhere in the chapter; the exchange no longer completes as a two-speaker aphorism figure, which was the fix's purpose; (b) Nia's half is literal spreadsheet truth in her own payroll diction, doubled as same-speaker emphasis while losing a hire she is right about — the cost her card requires, not an installed metaphor, and it is now the exchange's only shaped construction; (c) June's half is four plain clauses — a want with an anaphoric referent ("the wall" is contentless detached), a disclaimer addressed to the program's director about the program, and a shop-talk exit ramp ("I itemize and I'm fast") that deflates rather than lands; quotable-but-not-speakable fails to attach — the line is speakable in one breath and refuses inversion, balance, and portability; (d) the volley is broken mid-exchange by object business (the receipt turned print-side up); (e) tested against the therapy-speak and slogan bans specifically: "I want the wall anyway" states a want, not a growth claim; "It isn't about the program" is a factual disclaimer with a named referent, not "it's not you" therapy syntax — no "choosing herself," no inspirational refusal, no advice sought or given. Second counter-candidate: "For the record, I didn't put the studio clause in to sweeten it. I meant it." — "for the record" plus a two-beat close. Survives as plain repair of a specific earlier fact (the clause June cited twice), humane without being wise — Nia's licensed single shaped moment. Third counter-candidate: "It's 10:52," Nia said. "Have her email before one. I have payroll at eleven." — a spoken timestamp could read as a composed exit stamp. Survives: literal deadline management by the deadline character, revising her own instruction ("email me today" → "before one") with a stated reason, and cashed as fact by June's text ("Said no at 10:52") — load-carrying data, not cadence.
INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — both directions. Mind present through object handling (mode 3), never doubling the dialogue: the refusal's reason is spoken once, in scene, with no narration gloss; the Vandercook want gets a finger on a crossed-out line, not an essay; the call closes on action ("turned the receipt square with the table edge") with zero summary. Strongest counter-candidate: "I know. That's why this is hard." — direct emotion-naming in the double-explaining shape. Survives under the guide's interiority rule: the naming is the event (the concession that the offer's best clause is exactly what makes refusing cost), spoken not narrated, unrepeated. The second "I know" (line 129) was checked as a potential hardening pattern: two non-adjacent concession-openers, twelve turns apart, each followed by different content — functional modal speech the style contract requires, not a device yet. The Plain-Translation WATCH (no third bare "I know" concession-opener from June in Ch21) is endorsed and carried.

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SPECIAL ROUND-13 VERIFICATIONS (per charge, dispositions above, indexed here):
- Asha's repaired line: "The room's ugly. At $340 you'll forgive it." is Asha's register (rate-anchored second-person invoice judgment; her card's blunt-job-details license), and the workshopped sample echo is dead — "Not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive." and its fragment shape appear nowhere; the surviving "forgive" coin is re-agented and rate-anchored, family retired (scene 03, modes 1 and FAKE-SHARP).
- June's repaired Nia-call reply: speakable (four plain clauses, one breath each), not therapeutic (no growth syntax; a want and a factual disclaimer with named referents), not slogan ("the wall" is contentless detached — §2's protected direct-want register, the card's "I don't know what to do with wanting it" finally resolved into wanting it out loud), not voice bleed ("itemize" adjudicated at scene 04 mode 1) (scene 04, modes 1 and FAKE-SHARP).
- Column exchange post-repair: Nia's column sentence stands as her licensed spreadsheet verdict; June no longer caps it with a column metaphor — verified absent chapter-wide; the exchange breaks on object business and exits through shop talk (scene 04, modes 2 and FAKE-SHARP).
- No dialogue diagnosis: full-chapter sweep of narration around every spoken line — zero wording/delivery/rhythm characterization; nearest candidates ("That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." — self-referential content claim; "That's not me being polite" — Asha framing her own intent; "because this part she knew without notes" — knowledge, not delivery) all fall outside the banned family.
- No therapy-speak, no "follow your heart": absent chapter-wide; "feel less bad" is plain diction; Nia's counsel never leaves material ground ("That doesn't have to happen" is a staffing fact claim, answered with a probability claim and other people's mornings).
- No fake-sharp quote volley: the chapter's three shaped constructions (hand truck, Ruth's "called it manners," Nia's column verdict) each sit alone against unquotable partners; no exchange completes a figure across speakers.
- Contractions (rules 4–5): default-contract holds for all five speakers; full forms found are licensed — June's "It is" (bare agreement while conceding; card: full forms when trying not to fall apart; tics ledger logs it watch-only), "I did want to feel less bad" (emphasis under exposure), "I will." (commitment), Ruth's "I want to say one thing" (no contraction site), Asha's "the radiator is decorative" (deadpan spec, no natural contraction). No stiff-formal defect.

REVISION ORDERS: None. No verdict line above is a FAIL; every criterion carries its checked evidence and strongest counter-candidate per the stance requirement.

OVERALL: CLEAN

Standing cautions for Ch21+, carried as constraints rather than orders on this text: no third bare "I know" concession-opener from June; "itemize" is at two mentions and must not become June's credibility default; the forgive-the-room coin is retired for the book; "ten feet"/"north window," "keys day one," and "in writing" are at ceiling and retire as diction; "Noted" stays at two; the "not X. That's Y" template (used twice here) rests; the spoken-timestamp move is single-use; Asha's card samples are spent — future Asha appearances must not recite them; and the care-without-advice mode stays unnamed on the page.
