The Eternal Intern (Contemporary Romantic Comedy) by Roman Koidl Page A

The shades were blocking the sunlight. I didn't feel that comfortable with the situation. This should be a radio station? At the end of the corridor there was a room on the right. A regular living room. A little wooden table in the middle surrounded by two dark grey couches facing each other. A man was sitting on the couch. He didn't notice that I stepped inside. He was glaring at the wall straight in front of him. Suddenly Steven stood behind me saying “Tom, this is Patrick”.
    Tom turned his head little by little in our direction stood up and walked extremely slow towards me. He moved exactly like a mixture of the hunchback of Notre Dame and Gollum from the movie “Lord of the Rings”. Very creepy.
    “Hello Patrick. I'm Tom,” he introduced himself.
    As he was walking towards me, I noticed that he was feeling the objects that were standing around us. It seemed that he was touching the couch and the table so he wouldn’t accidently bump into them. As he stood in front of me I offered him my hand. He looked down at it, lifted his hand to shake mine but somehow missed my hand. He pushed his hand to the right, to the left, below mine or above it but he always missed. I took the initiative and grabbed his hand as it was again missing mine. This man was absolutely blind . His glasses reminded me of magnifying glasses. So, I should not have been surprised. The three of us sat down and Tom introduced himself as the owner of the station and Steven as his right hand. We started to talk. I wasn't able to concentrate on the conversation. The fact that the room was packed with radio equipment made me suspicious. Each wall was full of amplifiers, microphones, CD players, Cassette Players, and a bunch of other things with a lot of cables coming from them. I felt very uncomfortable. How did I end up here? Either this was a pirate radio station and I was getting into something illegal or they are two perverts that want to kidnap and rape me. The wildest things were crossing my mind. Facing the couch was a big window showing the main road. I carefully watched Tom and Steven as they were asking me all kinds of questions. If something goes wrong here , I thought, I'll try to jump through the window . Even though the window was closed, I believed, I could do it like the movie stars. Jump right through it, roll along the floor, stand up, and run without a scratch on me. I seriously considered this option.
    “Tom, what is all this radio equipment doing here? ,” I asked suspiciously.
    “Oh that! Don't worry. We are moving next week into a new office building. And in the meantime I am storing the stuff here in my living room. It must look weird to you ,” he recognized my doubts.
    “No, not at all ,” I replied.
    They gave me a lasting impression instead. And for sure not the best.      
    “Well Patrick, we would like to give you a chance to host our news show. It would be a daily gig,” he told me.
    I was stoked. On the one side it was a great opportunity for me. I just got back from Africa and now I am being offered my own news show. On the other hand this radio station doesn’t seem too professional.
    “Wow, great. Thanks. I’d love to host the show for you,” I replied enthusiastically trying to hide my reservations.
    Let’s give it a try .
     
    A s the weeks passed, and I was trying to combine working and studying, I was happy to not be with a girl. I honestly didn’t have time for it. At the end of the first semester I had to hand in a term paper about the history of the civil rights movement. Good God, I didn’t even know where to start . I did study hard at the university, but it still wasn’t easy for me to get everything into my head. I had a clear view of my future, I wanted to work in broadcasting and I wasn’t always sure if law would bring me there. But that was the problem that a lot of my friends had as well. They studied something with the hopes of getting a good job afterwards, but most of them