# Dialogue Doctor - Chapter 20 (No Advice / Keys Here)

Target: `output/chapters/chapter_20.md`
Manifest coverage: scenes 02 (lines 24-59), 03 (lines 62-93), 04 (lines 96-145) required. Scene 01 (no dialogue) and scene 05 (1 quoted utterance) not required per `output/critiques/codex/dialogue_scene_manifest.md`.
Calibration applied: READING_GUIDE §§1, 2, 5, 6, 8 (plain-speech floor, zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis, Ruth one-sharp-line cap); voice cards for June, Ruth, Sam, Nia, Asha; Ch20 prompt anti-tics; tics.md Ch15 precedent (delivery-caption family repaired: "Nia's voice stayed level").

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SCENE 02 (lines 24-59, June's apartment — Ruth/Sam box-and-dish visit):

- 1 VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — read with attributions covered; Ruth speaks in unadorned distinctions ("Some of it was. Some of it was easier for me.", line 43), Sam in object-and-body lines ("She'll like that better than the dish.", line 39), June in self-aimed deflection ("I'd offer coffee but I'd be lying about the milk.", line 29). Strongest counter-candidate: Ruth's "We have a car." (line 51) beside Sam's "And a hand truck if you need it." (line 53) — adjacent terse practical offers — survives because Ruth states a bare fact while Sam rides a conditional and a tool; one offer executed in two registers, not one voice. All three default-contract per cards; no stiff full forms found (Rule 4 checked).
- 2 MONOTONE Q/A: CLEAN — the scene contains one real question (Sam's "What's the freight?", line 31); the rest is instruction, admission, and refusal at unequal weights (June's five-sentence catalog instruction at line 33 against Ruth's two-word "All right." at line 35). Counter-candidate: the closing car / hand-truck / "Noted." triplet — three short beats, but they end the scene rather than establish a volley rhythm.
- 3 MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — "June heard herself and kept going anyway, plainly, because there was no version of the sentence that got easier" (line 33); the dish-flaw digression (line 37) prices the Mara reversal before June speaks it. Strongest dark-stretch candidate: Ruth's confession draws no immediate June line — but "June looked at the receipt so she wouldn't look at Ruth" (line 45) is the reaction, rendered as action per Rule 9.
- 4 QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — "What's the freight?" gets a real answer; Ruth declares rather than asks throughout, which her card licenses (withholds her own conclusion). No portent-questions found.
- 5 FAKE-MCCARTHY: CLEAN — attribution regular, stage business continuous (corner-lift test, knees, chair moved six inches). Counter-candidate: Ruth's "All right." (line 35) — earned minimalism: it accepts an errand; the scene has already supplied the weight.
- 6 JARGON: CLEAN — only established names (Sonia, Odile, Mara). Counter-candidate: "the freight" — glossed in the next breath ("Catalogs. Eight.").
- 7 ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — three speakers, every line tagged or blocked (Sam at the door, Ruth at the kitchen edge, line 41); cover-the-tags reassignment succeeds.
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "I kept them to myself and called it manners." (Ruth, line 43) — antithesis-shaped and quotable, but it is Ruth's registered precise-distinction move, it is her one editorial-sharp line this appearance (cap respected: "We have a car." and "All right." are plain assembly around it), and its polish is broken on arrival by the fragmentary self-correction "Some of it was. Some of it was easier for me." plus a costed physical tell (the strap "which did not need straightening"). Second candidate: "Tell her I'll sit where she tells me." (line 37) — humble-plain payment of the Ch18 Mara instruction, speakable in one breath.
- BOOK-SPECIFIC (care-without-advice; §2 zero-tolerance; therapy-speak): CLEAN — Ruth and Sam name only the cost of their own silence and never touch June's options; "You can leave that part out. We came for the dish." (line 47) removes pressure without directing anything; the counter-offer to June's "I'm not asking" (line 49) is material, not verbal ("We have a car."). No advice verb, no therapy-speak in either mouth. Checked "watched her read it and watched her decline to read it out loud" (line 41) against the zero-tolerance rule: no utterance exists to be diagnosed — Ruth is reading a table of objects — so it stands as perception, not conversation-captioning.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — interiority reacts (receipt-avoidance, dish flaw) and never re-explains a spoken line; "It came out before she'd decided to say it" (line 49) reports June's own blurt — the focalizer's lived relation to her speech, which Rule 9 protects — and captions no one else's.

SCENE 03 (lines 62-93 — Asha call, freight floor):

- 1 VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — Asha's lines run imperative and schedule-shaped with object jokes ("the north window's honest light and the radiator is decorative. Wear the coat inside until February.", line 85); June's run setup-and-frame ("First one's a question and it's yours to say no to.", line 67). Strongest counter-candidate: both trade rate/date shorthand ("$980 all in", "W-9 by the 15th") — survives because the terms are the scene's subject and the sentence shapes stay opposed: Asha issues schedules, June asks permissions.
- 2 MONOTONE Q/A: CLEAN — June's two framed asks land against a one-word gate ("Yes.", line 77), a logistics block (line 85), and off-phone interruptions (gate, pallet jack, shouted name). Counter-candidate: "Okay. Second thing?" / "Second thing is I'm in." (lines 81-83) — an echo pair, but a pivot, not a pattern.
- 3 MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — "June had the notebook open and the pen capped, because this part she knew without notes" (line 67); "June looked at the left page of the notebook, at GOOD in her own handwriting" (line 79) prices Asha's warning before June answers it.
- 4 QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — checked "Who writes that?" (line 73): rhetorical, but Asha answers it herself in the same breath ("Nia Torres, apparently."), admiration mechanics rather than portent. "Why aren't you taking it?" is a real question June visibly declines — deflection legible as deflection ("That's tomorrow's phone call.", line 75), satisfying the §2 followability requirement.
- 5 FAKE-MCCARTHY: CLEAN — clipped lines are physically motivated (Asha is holding a door with her whole body; someone shouts her name off-phone). Counter-candidate: "Send it." — clipped, but earned by declared time pressure.
- 6 JARGON: CLEAN — every term is priced in consequences in the same breath: "net-45, you'll see money in March"; "$980 all in with the wall, by December 10"; bad heat translated into behavior ("Wear the coat inside until February."). Counter-candidate: "W-9" arrives unglossed — survives because it is framed as dated paperwork, which is all the weight the reader needs.
- 7 ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — two voices; sparse tags compensated by the continuous freight-noise bed marking Asha's side (gate at line 69, pallet jack at line 73, stepping out of the noise at line 77).
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — strongest counter-candidate: "Send my name because I'm qualified. If you're trying to feel less bad, don't." (line 77) — blunt enough to quote, but it is the card-required warning against referral-as-avoidance, built from speakable monosyllables, and June absorbs it without a return zinger ("It was both this morning. I'm fixing that.", line 79 — a plain-speech-floor line). Second candidate: "Corners like a surgeon." (line 73) — a simile from a no-mystique speaker; survives as two words of trade praise (corner wraps) inside a rate-and-schedule speech.
- BOOK-SPECIFIC (§2 zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis): FAIL — `"Yes," Asha said, no gap at all.` (line 77, narration, June's apartment/freight-floor call) — narration characterizes the delivery of the utterance (response latency) instead of letting adjacency show it. READING_GUIDE §6: dialogue diagnosis is a defect "in any speaker's mouth or in narration about speech," zero tolerance; same family as Ch15's repaired "Nia's voice stayed level" (tics.md, Ch15 dialogue-diagnosis row). The immediacy is already proven by the one-word answer plus imperative; the caption is the narrator rating the line's rhythm. Contrast the legal move later in the scene: "Asha hung up before the word was finished" (line 91) — phone mechanics, an event, not a speech-quality caption.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — post-call, the exchange converts to object action (filling the right page, line 93), and the one editorial note ("It was a joke where the answer went") evaluates June's own notebook, not the conversation.

SCENE 04 (lines 96-145 — Nia refusal call):

- 1 VOICE CONVERGENCE: CLEAN — Nia is directive, deadline-stamped, institutional ("Have her email me today, subject line Tasker, because I'm in Pittsburgh all next week and I have a program to keep open.", line 139); June is confessional in first-person-conditional chains ("I'd hang the shows well. I'd fix what broke.", line 121). Strongest counter-candidates, both documented for the rewriter: June's "Noted," (line 55, scene 02) recurs in Nia's mouth ("Noted.", line 135) — a single shared common token across scenes, insufficient for interchangeability; and the "itemize" rhyme (June "I itemize and I'm fast," line 133; Nia "She itemizes," line 139) — survives as real trade vocabulary Nia independently owns ("I know her invoices"), but the pattern is at ceiling: the opposing rewrite must not add a third shared token.
- 2 MONOTONE Q/A: CLEAN — Nia's short prompts ("But.", line 115; "So tell me the counter, so I know what I lost to.", line 127) run against June's longest turns; asymmetry by design. Counter-candidate: "That's a worse offer." / "It is." (lines 131-133) — one matched short pair, immediately broken by June's extended turn.
- 3 MISSING INTERIORITY: CLEAN — the mind narrates cost during the call, not after: "She'd written a longer sentence in the notebook Thursday night and it had died of length" (line 117); "June touched the TASKER page" (line 121); "She turned the receipt over so the print side was up" (line 133).
- 4 QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS: CLEAN — "You know what I'm going to ask next." (line 135) is a statement doing a question's work, but it is peer shorthand June cashes instantly ("Send you someone good.", line 137) with zero pause-for-effect; the reader never decodes.
- 5 FAKE-MCCARTHY: CLEAN — "But." (line 115) is the most stripped line; it is a tagged phone prompt from a deadline-driven speaker surrounded by full-sentence turns, not performed starkness.
- 6 JARGON: FAIL — "The part I keep wanting is the press," June said. ... "Trueing it. Keeping the room usable. Making the program run." (June to Nia, line 117) — "the press" has no antecedent anywhere in Chapter 20; the Tasker equipment (the Vandercook) last surfaced in Ch15, five chapters back, and "trueing" is unglossed craft. The refusal's core temptation — the exact thing the no is about — rides on a world-term a chapter-cold reader cannot weigh (failure mode 6: "world-terms the reader has no way to weigh"), and it fails the Ch20 special check that scene 04's job/studio terms remain followable as dialogue at precisely the load point. Every other term in the call is priced ("Thirty-two an hour for three weeks in January, invoiced the 25th, paid in March", "A $340 room in Ridgewood with no real heat", line 129); this one is not.
- 7 ATTRIBUTION OPACITY: CLEAN — two-voice call, consistently tagged; Nia's side anchored by office sound and facts (printer at line 111, keys clicking at line 139, "payroll at eleven" at line 143).
- FAKE-SHARP: CLEAN — highest-risk scene in the chapter; every exchange run against the cut-list. Strongest counter-candidates: (a) "I ran the math with you three weeks ago and I win the math." (line 111) — zinger-shaped, but June concedes instead of topping it ("You win the math.", line 113), so no volley forms; (b) "In five years I'd be good at that job and painting would be the thing I say I'm getting back to." (line 125) — quotable, but built on spoken-syntax friction ("the thing I say I'm getting back to"), shrunk on-page from a written draft that "died of length," and it is the refusal's content, not decoration; the noun-list "a deadline, a sink issue, a class roster" (line 121) is how a person argues from lived experience, not aphorism scaffolding; (c) "This no is about me with keys." (line 133) — the most composed line in the call; survives narrowly because it compresses June's own explanation from three lines earlier ("I'd still be the person with keys") rather than minting a new abstraction, and Nia receives it as information ("Noted."), not as a line. The call is at its polish ceiling: the mode-6 repair must not sharpen anything.
- BOOK-SPECIFIC (refusal plainness; Nia card; distinctness; therapy-speak): CLEAN — the no is announced in the first turn ("I'm calling to say no.", line 109 — plain-speech floor met before any texture), and the whole refusal passes the read-aloud test (lines 109-133). Nia never advises the person over the program and never approaches "follow your heart"; her push is accounting ("Walk me through it", "so I know what I lost to") and her warmth is practical ("And June, when it opens, come see it.", line 139), all card-true. Distinctness from Asha holds: Nia negotiates in full sentences with institutional stakes; Asha schedules in fragments with physical stakes; neither could speak the other's lines. No therapy-speak anywhere in the scene.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION: CLEAN — checked the close in both Rule 9 directions: "The clean answer was gone. If February went badly, it would go badly in her own handwriting." (line 145) is the borderline — it restates the refusal's cost after the scene showed it — and survives because "in her own handwriting" converts Thursday's notebook joke (FEB = coat, line 93) into owned consequence: new information about June's relation to the risk, not a second explanation of the call. It is at ceiling; the rewrite must not add a companion sentence.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. (Scene 03 — dialogue diagnosis, READING_GUIDE §2/§6 zero tolerance) `"Yes," Asha said, no gap at all. "Send it."` (line 77) — narration rates the delivery (response latency) instead of letting adjacency prove it; same defect family as Ch15's repaired "Nia's voice stayed level." Rewrite: delete ", no gap at all" so the beat reads `"Yes," Asha said. "Send it."` — the one-word answer followed by an imperative already carries the immediacy. If the rewriter wants the overlap marked, do it with phone/floor mechanics per Asha's card (she is talking before the gate noise cuts, or she answers over the tail of June's sentence as an event), never with a caption on speech quality.
2. (Scene 04 — failure mode 6 plus Ch20 followability check) "The part I keep wanting is the press," ... "Trueing it. Keeping the room usable. Making the program run." (line 117) — anchor "the press" inside this chapter so a cold reader can weigh the temptation being refused. Direction: one concrete clause tying the press to Tasker's shop as equipment June would maintain — in June's mouth or her interiority, in her painter-exact register (the proof press in the back room from the Ch15 offer visit; let "trueing" land as leveling/upkeep by attaching it to the machine, e.g. naming the press bed or rollers as the thing she'd keep true). Constraints: keep it dialogue-weight — a phrase, not a brochure sentence; do not hand the gloss to Nia (she would never explain her own shop to June); do not add polish anywhere else in the call, which is at its fake-sharp ceiling per the scene verdict above; June's card wants exact craft nouns, so one noun does the work.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (2 findings).

Resolution routing per audit spec: both orders go to the opposing model lane for rewrite; self-repair by the drafting model is not an accepted resolution.
