It was a chilly morning when Mortimer entered Le Café Blanc. He didn’t speak French, but it was okay, since it wasn’t really French. It was faux-French. They made good crepes, though. For those delicious crepes, he spent every morning of the last 68 years in Le Café Blanc. There he met his best friend, Walter. Before he met Walter, he had to be content with his imaginary friend, Spanky. How he had loved Spanky, but Spanky became jealous of Walter and stole Walter’s gerbil. Then he ran away to Zimbabwe where he was crowned king and refused to come home. It is rumored that all Spanky ever said during his rule of Zimbabwe was, “Boo.”

Every morning the two older gentlemen would discuss life over crepes. That was their life question, you see. What would life be like if it was spent dangling over crepes? But, while Mortimer and Walter were building their friendship, Spanky was making voo-doo-dolls of them in between taste testing all of the walnuts in Zimbabwe. Spanky did various voo-doo like things with these dolls, including, but not limited to, the pins. Occasionally, he also gave them voo-doo swirlies, but he got less satisfaction from that. Even less often, he would dance with the dolls while mouthing along to Celine Dion (One time he took the dolls to see Fiddler on the Roof. The dolls loved it.) This was the type of imaginary person Spanky was.

Meanwhile, the gerbil was making his way across the Atlantic, scratching his way across the sea floor to get back to Walter’s loving hamster cage. (That had been modified for gerbils.)

Mortimer and Walter continued to build their friendship that, by now, was nearly as tall as the Empire State Building.