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Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news! I got the rockin’ pneumonia, I need a shot of rhythm and blues…

“Chuck Berry?” Macavity demands when he walks into Tugger’s room. “The fuck is wrong with you now?”

“I’m on the phone,” Tugger tells him, pointing at his cell pressed to his ear with his free hand.

“Is that Mac?” his father asks, voice both deep and a little tinny.

“Yeah.”

“Tell him I said hi.”

“Dad says hi,” Tugger echoes as he finishes marking the record he has in his lap, adorned with a single sticky note.

Well, early in the mornin, and I'm giving you my warnin: don't you step on my blue suede shoes…

“Ask him if he’s taking his thyroid meds,” Macavity immediately retorts.

Tugger sets his marked record aside. “Mac wants to know if you’re taking your thyroid meds.”

“Ask him if he’s taking his thyroid pills,” Dad responds.

“He wants to know if you’re taking yours.”

“…I’ll just text him,” Macavity sighs. “Do you need to go to the hospital or something?”

“Why, because Chuck Berry?” Tugger asks, pointing towards the record player by the wall cheerily bleating out one of Chuck Berry’s compilation albums. “No, I’m good. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but doctors can’t fix it I’m pretty sure.”

Ain't got nothing to lose! Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news--

“I think it’s called ‘a good mood’, Tugger,” Dad points out wryly.

“I have good moods all the time,” Tugger argues as he grabs another record: After School Session it seems. “My life is one big good mood.” He ignores Macavity rolling his eyes and leaving; whatever he wanted to say apparently could’ve been a text it turns out.

“It’s alright to be in a bad mood, you know,” Dad comments with something like amusement.

“I know. I tell people that all the time,” Tugger responds. He marks off Handsome Brown Eyed Man on After School Session with another sticky note and sets it down on the floor in front of him, between Little Richard marked with Lucille and then Prince’s 1999 with Little Red Corvette.

“Not that I’m complaining, but what’s put you in such good spirits anyways? You talked to me for about forty seconds when you called last week.”

“I don’t know. Mac might have to come back and actually put me in the hospital,” Tugger explains, grabbing another record. He’s already set way too many out to listen to all of them, but he has nowhere to be and nothing to do and plenty more records to go through.

“So if you suddenly hang up I should call Mac and tell him to run on up?” Dad asks with more of that wry amusement of his.

“No,” Tugger assures him, ripping off another sticky note. “If I hang up it’s because I got an important call.”

“An important call from who?”

“A guy I met the other day.”

“How mysterious,” Dad comments, but doesn’t push. He never does. “Which record are you listening to?”

“Twist,” Tugger explains, slapping a sticky note on the next record sleeve. “I was actually listening to it for this one.”

Long as she got a dime, the music won't never stop—

“Roll Over Beethoven is a classic,” Dad agrees. “But Twist? What about the ‘Berry on Top’ one?”

“Chuck Berry Is on Top,” Tugger reminds him, glancing over at the vinyl for that one off in a pile to his side.

“That one has Roll Over Beethoven on it. And it’s better.”

“I don’t like Little Queenie,” Tugger admits. “And besides, Twist has Back in the USA in it, you love that one.”

“Twist? Twist doesn’t have Back in the USA in it.”

“Yes it does, I was just looking at the sleeve.” Tugger twists to look behind him, and has to flop over on his side a little to reach over and grab the empty sleeve on the floor by his record player (which he’d plugged back in for the first time in maybe years a couple hours ago). “I have it right here.”

He flips the sleeve over to look at the track list on the back. This vinyl is a bit of an antique, but he pays a lot of money so that even his oldest records are in good condition, and this one is no exception; the sleeve isn’t even dented or worn.

But the small print on the back practically swims before his eyes. There’s a whole little blurb just off to the right, and short lines of nonsense between each track title. His eyes keep going to the wrong spot. Maybelline is first, he knows that by memory. And Roll Over Beethoven should be second but his eyes catch the words Oh Baby Doll next, which is wrong. He scans up and down but he can’t find Back in the USA on the list; he knows it’s there somewhere, but he can’t find it and Dad is waiting silently while the seconds tick by and while he stares fruitlessly at the stupid sleeve.

“Yeah it’s there,” he eventually decides to say after the silence stretches for too long, setting the sleeve down beside him.

“Is it on the B side?”

“I already put it down,” Tugger dismisses the follow up question, grabbing the next vinyl from his stack.

Dad doesn’t push. He never does. “Besides, if you don’t like certain tracks, just skip ahead to the middle.”

“It’s an album,” Tugger reminds him. “The songs are put together specifically by the artist, they’re made to be listened together, it’s like an artistic experience.”

“Twist is a compilation album,” Dad retorts, amused.

“Okay not in that case, but—” Tugger picks up 1999. “Prince. 1999. Little Red Corvette is obviously the best song on the whole album—”

“Where did I go wrong with you?” Dad says with joking disappointment.

“But I listen to the whole thing, because that’s the intended experience. Even though 1999 itself is kind of a lame boring song—”

Tugger smiles as Dad responds. “If I have a stroke any time soon, I’m telling my insurance it was your fault.”

“I only speak the truth.”

“What’s next on your playlist?”

“Pump. Aerosmith,” Tugger says, squinting over at the other side of his assembly of vinyl sleeves on the floor. “Though I’m listening for Love in an Elevator.”

“Love in an elevator,” Dad starts to sing, and Tugger cheerily joins in, “Living it up when I’m going down! Love in an elevator, loving it up ‘til I hit the ground!”

“That’s a classic,” Dad sighs.

“You stick around for an hour and a half or so, you can listen to it.”

“Or I can put it on Spotify right now.”

“For an old man you really do have no culture,” Tugger sighs. His father is more of a whizz with his smartphone than Munk is.

He didn’t feel his phone buzz at any point during this call, but as Tugger shifts to get more comfortable on the floor, he pulls his phone away from his ear to check his lockscreen. Just to make sure Misto didn’t text.