# Purple Prose & Show-Don't-Tell Audit — Chapter 20: "No Advice / Keys Here" — ROUND 3 (post-Genericization restoration)

Restoration scope adjudicated first, since every restored item is new exposure relative to the round-2 clean pass and each must survive this audit's criteria on its own, not on the Genericization thread's say-so. All seven calibration items are present and were read in place: the painting-distance figure (line 13), the provisional stairwell scarf (line 23), the ground/scumble inspection of the Ridgewood page (line 99), Asha's decorative radiator (line 83) and "Cheap enough to forgive" (line 87), Sam's hand-truck line (line 51), the Nia column exchange (lines 127–129), and the closing Dana/Kessler day counts (line 161). Each is dispositioned under its governing criterion below. Also verified: all six round-1 orders remain in their round-2-executed state (single "won" at line 13; broken `which` chain at line 35; unlabeled gate boom at line 61; one mid-call receipt orientation at line 129 with the single post-call square at line 141; literal "pinned" at line 155; receipt sentence ending at "put inside the notebook").

**Two-craft-figure ceiling — WITHIN ALLOWANCE, with the count shown.** The chapter's earned allowance (set by the Positive Prose thread and held since) is two craft figures. The current text holds exactly two: (1) line 13, "She had kept stepping back from paintings as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing"; (2) line 99, "She looked at them the way she'd look at a ground: holes, thin patches, places where wanting had been scumbled over need." Every other candidate was tested and does not count against the ceiling: line 23's "provisional" is a single-adjective optical judgment (saturation read as authority), not a craft-vocabulary metaphor; line 5's conditional glaze behavior, line 151's "flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall," and line 159's "foreshortened hard, the near edge left steep" are literal paint/optics description of actual objects, excused by the guide's voice line "she names pigments, edges, kinds of light"; the hand-truck line (51) and the column exchange (127–129) are dialogue, outside the narration-figure count. Neither counted figure is decorative: the line-13 figure is cashed literally at lines 157–159 (she steps back into the kitchen doorway "the distance she'd have at Dana's," steps in "looking for where the corner failed," and the corner stays), and the line-99 figure is the inspection event itself, landing on two deflationary literals ("The $340 room barely held heat. She left the page where it was.").

Watch-lead disposition (leads verified in context, false positives discarded by name): `against` x3 (line 11 "$490 a month against the $1,475," line 13 receipt squared against the notebook's edge, line 15 phone buzzed against the table — literal comparison/position; the rest-in-Ch21 order stands); `from the sink to the table` (line 3, literal deadline joke) and "from here to March" (line 83, Asha's dialogue); trailing participles (line 29 ", lifting an inch, setting it down" — literal box test; line 159 ", looking for where the corner failed" — literal inspection); `hands` (line 31 box grip, line 51 "hand truck" in dialogue, line 161 ink on the back of her hand — all literal); "time, knees, and carried" (line 37, literal lifting sequence, not thesis cadence); `eyes` (line 39, Ruth visibly reading the table from where June stands — observable, not gaze shorthand); the line 91 notation block (intended notebook logistics, gate-cleared); "It is" (line 129, June's bare full-form agreement to "That's a worse offer" — voice card licenses full forms "when trying not to fall apart"); "And June, when it opens" (line 135, Nia dialogue continuation); `key` x2 (line 151 "I'll take the key Jan 2" and adjacent handoff facts, literal object). The tics-tracker `showcase` row (logged at "line 101") remains stale against the current text: the word appears nowhere in the chapter (full read verified; line 101 is "At 10:40 she called Nia."), and the current gate report carries no showcase row.

## Criterion 1 — Purple spans

**CLEAN**

Banned sub-patterns verified absent across the full text: no ripple/stillness similes, no "like a stone"/"rippled through," no "changed everything"/"broke forever"/world-held-its-breath inflation. The chapter's biggest decision (refusing the better offer) is executed in single facts and one turned-over receipt; no restored item reintroduces epic tone.

Strongest counter-candidates considered:
- Line 13 (restored): "as if distance might fix a drawing problem, when the problem was in the drawing." The most figure-shaped narration in the chapter and the obvious ornament suspect. It survives because it conveys the decision's actual logic (the flaw is in the plan, not the vantage), is built entirely from the focalizer's craft materials, and is a plant, not a flourish — paid off physically at lines 157–159 when she performs the step-back at Dana's future distance and the corner holds. Guide excusal: "exact visual nouns (a painter's eye…)."
- Line 23 (restored): "the orange scarf that made everyone else on the stairwell look provisional." One adjective doing one comic-optical judgment; nothing stacked, and the scene drops immediately to double-parking and freight. Conveys a specific relative-visual-weight read only this focalizer would make. Survives.
- Line 161 (restored): "Twenty-nine days until Dana's key. Thirty-one days until Kessler's armory load-in." Parallel cadence at the final page is the classic false-summit spot. Survives because both counts are verifiable arithmetic from dates the chapter established (Dec 4 → Jan 2, Jan 4), and the chapter refuses the cadence close with three mundane actions after it (back-of-hand note, washed cup, study left visible).
- Line 55: "the box of catalogs left June's apartment a quarter before eleven on Thursday… a strip of dust where the box had been." Mild box-as-subject stylization; held from prior rounds — the box literally left, and the dust strip is concrete absence, not claim. Survives.

## Criterion 2 — Telling that restates implied meaning

**TELLING — no instances. CLEAN**

No narration seconds what an object or a line of dialogue already carried. The restorations were the specific risk here — restored vividness often arrives with a re-explaining harness — and none has one: the scumble inspection is followed by facts, not a gloss; the column exchange is followed by a line-item ("Ten feet, north window") and shop talk, not narration about what the exchange meant; the hand-truck line gets "Noted," not appreciation.

Strongest counter-candidates considered:
- Line 99 (restored): "places where wanting had been scumbled over need." Two abstract nouns — "wanting," "need" — inside narration, the chapter's closest approach to explained emotion. It survives under the guide's interiority rule ("named directly only when the naming *is* the event"): the sentence is the inspection happening, not a restatement of something already dramatized — nothing prior in the chapter has shown June testing whether the Ridgewood want is motive-contaminated, and the test's verdict stays physical ("She left the page where it was"). A de-figured version would be the therapeutic telling this criterion exists to catch.
- Line 43: "June looked at the receipt so she wouldn't look at Ruth." Stated motive, not restated: without the clause the gesture reads neutral. One clause, no emotion named. Survives (held from round 2).
- Line 99: "The $340 room barely held heat," now the middle term of three heat facts after the restored radiator (line 83 "the radiator is decorative," line 125 "no real heat" to Nia). Re-tested for duplication with the restoration in place: each remains a distinct transaction — Asha pricing the room down mid-pitch, June weighing the cost alone, June stating it aloud to make her counter honestly worse — and the payoff stays in notation ("FEB = coat," line 155), unglossed. At cap; Ch21 must not restate the cold room.
- Line 77: "I did want to feel less bad." Direct naming under Asha's direct challenge — the naming is the event and the plain-speech floor's register. Survives.

## Criterion 3 — Allowable telling

**TELLING — no instances. CLEAN**

Every compression stretch re-tested against the duplication/replacement bar. "She did the rest before noon" (line 145) and the execution run (Asha text, Kessler email, Dana text, landlord notice) compress exactly the material the reader did not need to live through; the scene that mattered — the no, with its reason found mid-call — is fully dramatized at lines 101–141. The Dana-terms recital inside Asha's call (line 83, including the restored radiator clause) is dialogue doing first delivery of facts, not summary replacing a needed scene. Strongest counter-candidate: line 159, "She had not believed that when she painted it" — one line of past interiority that buys the present verification beat ("She stepped in once… The corner stayed"); compression that sets up showing, duplicating nothing. Survives.

## Criterion 4 — POV-bound sensory detail

**CLEAN**

Every sensory notation routes through June's body, her painter's eye, or the phone at her ear; the restorations add no free-floating detail — the radiator arrives as Asha's spoken trade fact, not as narrated room-dressing.

Strongest counter-candidates considered:
- Line 71: "A pallet jack went by wherever she was." Sound down a phone line, explicitly unlocated — the narration refuses knowledge June doesn't have. Survives.
- Line 107: "a printer feeding a page and catching for half a second" — the half-second catch is the ear of someone waiting through the pause after saying no. Pressure-selected, not checklist. Survives.
- Line 5: "the glaze that milky cobalt that went gray-green at the rim if the light came from the left." Conditional color behavior is the focal painter's eye exactly; excused by the guide's "she names pigments, edges, kinds of light." Light-cap accounting with the restorations in place: the chapter's one deliberate light image remains the Dana photo (line 151, "flat gray light across ten feet of empty wall," with "June looked at the light longest" as the shown want); the dish rim is object description, Asha's "north light steady most of the day" (line 83) is a spoken trade fact, and "the floor going warm where the afternoon came in" (line 159) is depicted content inside the painted study. No breach; Ch21 should add no further light notation.
- Line 23 (restored): the scarf judgment is bound to June's position on the stairwell threshold and her optical habit; it is perceiver-revealing, not authorial decoration. Survives.

## Criterion 5 — Pressure-matched language

**CLEAN**

Syntax tracks pressure section by section: short declaratives through the Thursday ledger and the Friday execution run; clipped call rhythm with Asha (holding a freight door) and with Nia (the no delivered in single facts — "I'm calling to say no." / "But." / "It is."); the chapter's only layered syntax sits in its two sanctioned reflective beats, the Thursday table figure (line 13) and the study inspection (lines 157–159). Concrete nouns hold at every impact point — receipt, dish, box, W-9, nail.

Strongest counter-candidates considered:
- Lines 127–129 (restored): "That's a worse offer on every line I have a column for." / "The line it wins on doesn't fit in a column." Two speakers completing one figure under call pressure is the exchange's polish risk. It survives the pressure test: one shaped construction per side in an otherwise plain-spined call, interrupted by object business (June turning the receipt print-side up, "the Marchetti header, the faded total"), with June's half immediately grounded in the literal line-item and deflated into shop talk ("I itemize and I'm fast"); the column is Nia's payroll diction, revealing the speaker, not the author. Survives.
- Line 51 (restored): "That's not an opinion. That's a hand truck." Joke-shaped under a two-minute visit — but its content is a refusal to say anything wiser, advice converted into equipment in Sam's register, and the other side of the exchange is aggressively unquotable ("We have a car," Ruth said). Survives.
- Line 3: "Twenty-six hours, give or take the walk from the sink to the table." Deadpan under deadline — self-aimed jokes are June's documented stress behavior, and the joke's content is the deadline itself. Survives.
- Lines 157–159: the long inspection sentence ("the door's edge, the rack, the trestle table foreshortened hard…") is the chapter's most layered syntax, placed at its lowest-urgency, highest-reflection moment — the match the criterion asks for, not a violation of it. Survives.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. All round-1 orders remain executed in the current text; round 2's clean verdict holds; and every restored item survives the criterion it most threatens — the two counted craft figures (lines 13, 99) sit exactly at the chapter's two-figure allowance with the near-miss candidates classified out above, and no restoration arrived with a telling harness, a POV-free detail, or pressure-mismatched ornament. Standing cautions carried to Ch21, not orders on this text: rest `against`; no further light notation of any kind; no fourth heat-fact restatement of the Ridgewood room; no lyrical fifth use of the wall/window refrain; the two-figure ceiling resets but the scumble/ground family should rest so it does not harden into June's default inspection move.

OVERALL: CLEAN
