Nadia and Aidan

I was relaxing in my apartment the other night with Gwen, the Cappie, and Matty, my personal biographer, watching the Criterion Collection edition of Le Samourai. As is usually the case, we were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was two teenage kids, one a boy and one a girl.

"Hello, is Mads here?" The girl said. She had a French accent, and it was noticeable, but she properly pronounced each word she said in English.

"No, he's out finishing a transaction so he can buy a McDonald's. Who can I tell him stopped by?"

"Nadia and Aidan. We're his children."

Oh, wow, I thought. I had them take a seat on the couch. I tried to guess their age based on what little I knew of Mads' kids. D'Brickishaw was supposedly the second, and he wasn't quite 18 when he was in town. The sister looked a little older than the brother, so maybe these were numbers one and three. On the other hand, they looked a lot alike, and the fact that their names were the other's spelled backwards didn't escape me either. What if they were fraternal twins? That would mean they'd both have to be younger than D'Brickishaw.

As I was speculating, Mads came in. The kids were here to ask for money. Mads told them to come back tomorrow morning. I knew he had something up his sleeve. They left in a bit of a huff.

I found out they were in fact fraternal twins. The names were Mads' idea. These were the children of an American ex-pat living in Paris that he'd carried on a relationship with when he was only 18. They were his first children, but because they're twins, Mads only counts them as one child. Who'd thunk it? So he actually has eight kids.